Category: Uncategorized
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Book Review: ‘The Bartlett Book of Garden Elements’
‘The Bartlett Book of Garden Elements: A Practical Compendium of Inspired Designs for the Working Gardener’ by Michael Valentine Bartlett & Rose Love Bartlett David R. Godine, Boston 2014 $40.00US ISBN 978-1-56792-426-8 When I think of garden elements, images of containers and benches come to mind. The Bartlett’s expanded that notion immediately. In over 1000…
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Sweet Autumn Splendor
The starry mass of the late blooming “Sweet Autumn’ Clematis welcomes visitors to Carlisle Center Park. It’s a great example of vertical gardening with the clematis’ amazing span across the fence. The planting also creates one ‘wall’ of the “outdoor room” I created for the conversation area. The massed plantings flank the benches and create the…
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Autumnal Pink: Alternate Palette
Orange, vermilion, scarlet, burgundy, and yellow–they’re the colors we usually associate with the fall garden palette. We rarely think about pink. As I walked within my garden this morning less than twelve hours from the Fall Equinox, I realized the predominant flower color is pink. And…
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Come to my One Day Workshop in Perennial and Shrub Design
It was a beautiful summer to study the unfolding color of MASS HORT’s Bressingham Garden . The summer ‘s four- session workshop (Perennial and Shrub Planting Design for Seasonal Color taught by Maria von Brincken) was held at Elm Bank. This advanced seminar, developed for students with some horticultural expertise/background, included lectures, practice exercises in…
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How to Deadhead Perennials.
Ask the Green Thumb Garden Tutorial Series: Latest Short video answering a common gardening questions posted by readers in the Boston/Metro-West area. How to Deadhead Perennials? frequently asked by gardeners–especially new ones! When you remove spent blossoms your garden instantly looks better. A bonus is that many plants will bloom a second time if deadheaded. Plants…
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Making a Bird and Fish Pond
Pictures tell the story of making this bird and fish pond and waterfall garden. It took a team of contractors, machines, a pond expert, and myself as the designer directing the placement of every stone and every plant. The concept was to build a natural looking pond. It was important…
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What’s a Weed?
Announcing a new blog series: Ask the Green Thumb. Short videos will answer common gardening questions posted by readers in the Boston/Metro-West area. And will also be posted in the resource section of my website: www.mariavonbrincken.com Here’s the first: How do I tell the difference between a Weed and a Plant? Hope this helps you make…
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Masses of Yellow: Antidote to a Gloomy Day
Winter seems to be dragging along. It’s late April, but feels and looks like March. The antidote to the gloom appears to be the bright yellow of the massed planting of the Forsythia shrubs. It adds a glow to these driveway gardens that I designed when one psychologically needs it most–in the drab days of…
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Eary Spring Flowering Bulbs Add Much Needed Color
It happened this morning. I noticed it. Blue tones of black, white, and a range of grey. Textured shapes of sky, clouds and evergreen trees softly back-lit by the sun rising below the trees. Fleeting beauty framed by my bedroom window. Engrossed, I just watched. And then, the thinking crept in. I realized that I…
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Contemporary Ikebana–Yuji Ueno Style
Not my mother’s Ikebana! That was my first response as I beheld the cover of japanese ikebana for every season by Rie Imai and Yui Ueno with photography by Noboru Murata. You see I lived in Tokyo as a toddler. A US Army Officer’s wife, my mother took classes in Japanese Flower Arranging. When we…