White

I started thinking about this when all of my white shrubs bloomed at once this spring. They are supposed to bloom in a kind of sequence. The absence of color was just as, if not more powerful, than a garden full of color.

Just the spireas--lilacs & fothergilla were blooming too

I know the idea is not new, but white has a symbolic power beyond the absence of color and I think it's appropriate for our times.

The staircase at Chanel for the 2009 Haute Couture collection
photo via Chanel

A puff of dandelion seeds (plenty of those around here)

A lace table cloth

Santorini

Nautical ropes

Weathered Picket Fence

Dodecatheon meadia--native and beautiful
Photo via Vanderbilt.edu

White wicker

The White Garden at Sissinghurst
photo via Meade/flickr.com

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'

Hussies!

I always know it's really spring when the hussies of spring bloom. Hawking their wares from curbside, stoop, border, and garden these brightly colored plants can't help their garish adornment--they want us to notice them and come hither.


Screaming yellow forsythia and daffodils...fuchsia, shocking pink and cerise azaleas...tulips and hyacinths of every hue...redbuds all call out and strut their stuff

Inspiration and Influence -TV & Technicolor

A few weeks ago in a post titled Inspiration and Experience I wrote about my viewpoint as a designer as a unique culmination of life's experiences. Writing that post has made me--probably temporarily--more acutely aware of what I look for my daily inspirational 'feed'. In other words, I have become more self-aware of what I look at, talk about, read, experience and absorb for future reference. I know this will fade into the background again, but it's winter, I'm inside a lot and have the time to reflect.

I am first and foremost a designer. My current design discipline is landscape design. I have in the past worked in others. I didn't come to landscape design from a desire to create gardens, but from a desire to design three dimensional living spaces that compelled human interaction and enhanced and respected the environment. Sure, I've been a lifelong gardener and find incredible beauty in plants, but that has never been the departure point for my inspiration.

So, what do I look and where do I go to fuel the creative fire? It's a daily feast of input that swings wildly between subjects--some of which I'm going to explore here and in future posts. I try not to question the process too much and always try and stay open and observant. I am a voracious reader and looker. Even a few seconds spent looking is absorbed in some way. Years ago as a fashion jewelry designer, I found visual inspiration while driving to my studio in Brooklyn in a pattern of diagonal wires on a construction site--those patterns became the basis of a series of pieces while the time spent looking at the original wires was as fast as I was driving by them.

Some of the constant influences have been images from television and old movies - black and white and technicolor. Not just those with fabulous fantasy landscape images in them-like the Wizard of Oz, but others that jog my visual sensibility in some way. Just yesterday I watched an old (and awful) Doris Day move - 'Move Over Darling'. In one scene Day was wearing an acid green ensemble and running up the stairs against a grey background. Add that to Michelle Obama's choice of an acid green Isabel Toledo outfit for the inaugural, and the choice of Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola' as the 2009 Perennial Plant of the year and pop goes the inspiration weasel.


Wow! Would I like to use that combo in a garden. In the movies it's retro, in a garden- modern, provocative and fresh.