It's right there in Black & White...

I have the opportunity to design a small black and white pocket garden. Tucked into a corner with between a screen porch and the house, the area is also home to multi-utility boxes including a low voltage transformer smack dab in the middle of one wall that has no wriggle room.

My client's request other than a fountain which is a blue glazed olive jar, is that I put Colicassia esculenta 'Black Magic' somewhere in the garden.

A quick color study for the garden

I still render presentation drawings for clients by hand but I use a color add on for my CAD program because it's fast for down and dirty color studies. At the point I'm using it I don't pay much (read some) attention to texture because the choices the program offers are limited--hence the Heuchera x 'Obsidian' in the drawing really looks more like stone than a plant! These quick visual thoughts are working drawings and I know what the plants look like, so the color studies are more for the ratio of one color/texture to the adjacent ones and the rhythmic flow of the planting design. I change my mind often when designing planting plans--it's not always intuitive for me. Spatial relationships and human interation with and through space are much easier.

The very simple plant list includes:

Buxus sempervirens 'Elegantisima' Colocasia esculenta 'Black Magic' Chamaecyparis obtusa 'Nana Gracillis' Hydrangea arborecens 'Annabelle' Heuchera x 'Obsidian' Iberis sempervirens Lamium maculatum 'White Nancy' Odhiopogon planiscapus 'Ebony Knight'

A Trip without a Map

As many of you already know, I am very involved with the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD), as its International Membership chair, and this past weekend I was in Chicago for their 2nd annual Chapter Symposium. At that meeting I was responsible for presenting state and regional chapter leaders with ideas to retain and recruit chapter members.

Things got really interesting when I presented Social Media opportunities. Energy, confusion, disbelief and social media evangelism mingled together in the room. I realized that I had with a simple PowerPoint presentation taken the group into unknown and virtually unexplored territory. I had, along with my own experiments in the past several months, established, managed or embellished APLD's social media presence on Facebook, LinkedIn, Land8lounge, Landscapedia, and Twitter. Just like starting a new landscape design, these savvy design professionals needed a 'site' map to follow to achieve their goals.

I contacted social media PR professional, Jessie Newburn, from Nemetschek North America to see if we could use social media jointly to promote an event that APLDNJ had planned to demonstrate their Vectorworks Landmark CAD program to New Jersey chapter members.

We established an extremely fluid and organic (read highly experimental) social media marketing plan which will unfold during the next week prior to the March 3rd event which is currently full with a waiting list. Hopefully, in addition to creating a format for sharing the event, the end game will be a base map that others can use and build on--we're navigating new territory and exploring the possibilities. You can follow the progress and see it unfold over the next week here.

Current Project Update

Another work in progress—probably the final one until the thaw. The plan, originally included in my 8/27 post, is below and is largely unchanged from the presentation drawing you see below. I used Dynascape color for a down and dirty rendering. I’m not overly fond of the color module of Dynascape despite its ease of use, but clients love the drawings. I can save them as a PDF and email them or print them out full size. Even a very detailed drawing takes less than an hour to color up with this point and click program. I still prefer the look and feel of hand colored drawings, but they're more cumbersome to deal with electronically.


This particular project has been challenging due to the laundry list of elements to be included as well as the stone that we finally chose to use. Since bluestone was not an option, we settled on local granite that is quarried in upper New York state. It's got lovely texture and color and is available both as wallstone and flagging. Below is a photo of the patio seatwall, firepit and stone carpet in progress.

The patio is raised one step up from grade to create a better transition from the house to the steps I'm stood on to take this photo. We ordered custom salt and pepper granite curbing to create that transition. Each 8" wide and 8" tall piece was snapped on three sides to work with the rusticated look of the stone. The dark spots in the photo are dirt...not defects.

I'll continue to post on this one as more progress is made.

#4--Plants and Problems

I've done a quick CAD color rendering to try and approximate the quantities of plants that I will need to order in the next few weeks. It's difficult since I really have no idea what lies beneath the surface stones, how many stones there are, or how many plants I'll be able to squeeze in between the finished placements. Below is one thing I'm sure of--some long dead tree trunks. If you look closely at the base you'll see that a lame attempt was made at one time to cut that baby down.
I'm sure we'll find other under the debris. I also don't really know how far down the boulders go, this thing's been around for 100+ years at least and the area is known for the unusual large boulders that bygone masons used throughout the property. So, long story short, I can only guess at what I'll need plant wise. Below is an image of how I'm figuring it out.
The area is deer ridden, chipmunk infested and sunbaked. Add to that the May bloom time, the wow factor and my commitment to sustainability and you get the picture.

• Here's a short list of contenders so far. The trees are decided and I'm going out to a tree farm in Stockton (about an hour from here) to tag them as soon as it thaws abit.
• These are high up on the list--Euphorbia polychroma, Dianths g. either 'Bath's Pink' or 'Firewitch', Sedum reflexum 'Angelina' and 'Blue Spruce', Phlox subulata 'Emerald Cushion Blue', Teucrium hyranicom 'Purple Tails', Eregrostis spectabilis, Carex morowii 'Ice Dance', Thymus praecox, Salvia nemerosa 'May Night', Sempervivum sp.
• A little lower down on the list--Santolina sp., Yucca filamentosa (not sure which one), some kind of low growing conifer, some of the other sedums.

As you can see I still have some work to do. I don't want to use any annuals because they won't be able to be re-used after the show is over, so I guess that's another qualification for plants--I have to be able to find new homes for them later in the season.