Category: Uncategorized
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As a Landscape Designer I design the seen and the unseen
In April and May, our native and cultivated landscapes come alive. Some are magical–other’s not- so- much. My work as a landscape designer takes the “not-so-much” into magical. As humans we notice the plantings–when they bloom and their shapes in relation to others. What we feel, but don’t usually notice in a successful garden is the…
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Latest Discovery
The Bloodroot pictured above responded to yesterday’s sun by opening its’ flowers. Bloodroot or Sanguinaria canadensis occurs in our native hardwood forests and as you would expect from its’ name has a red colored root. For me it’s one of spring’s delights to rediscover each year on my garden journey. I treasure it as it’s fleeting–a spring efemeral…
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Discovery, Astonishment, and Sharing
A few lines from Mary Oliver’s poem were sent to me. It reads “Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” Living within a garden makes it easy to follow her instructions. A journey of discovery offered each day. It’s the opportunity to pay attention and discover, and in that process, notice your breath and connection to…
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The Garden Comes Alive
I know it’s really spring because the flowers have started. These early blooming spring bulbs cheered me despite the clouds and threatening rain yesterday. Who knows what I’ll find tomorrow after today’s downpours.
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Pansies & Pussywillow Brighten the Early Spring Garden
Planting the large containers in this city garden/outdoor room I designed and installed last year brightens the early spring garden. Any day now the spring flowering bulbs will bloom in bursts of color. Soon after the earliest flowering shrubs will add to the chorus. The hellebore are blooming now. The blue, white, dark pink pansies highlighted with the pussywillow…
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Muted Tones of Early Spring Woodland
Driving around and thru local towns, I notice the brown and grey theme of the local woodlands–nothing wrong with it, but I’m winter weary. It’s always this way in early spring here in New England–uninspiring native landscape and my own cultivated land a mess. But I find if I look to the places with water…
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Favorite Flower Show Image
I love this image and this display taken at the Boston Flower Show, March 18, the morning I managed to attend. It shows color, form, texture from plants, sculpture, and field-stone steppers. I love the use of sculpture in this exhibit as a whole. I wish more people would go the extra step and…
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Boston Flower Show
Thoroughly enjoyed my morning at the Boston Flower Show, so much lovely color to our winter starved eyes. Okay, I’m talking color and tons of flowers, yet the image I chose displays huge stones and plantings to create a wonderful garden room. Note the suggested walls, windows, and floor. And this landscape’s got a little of everything– a deciduous…
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Ochids & Witch Hazel-Two different Winter Flowering Plants
An unlikely combination, but the welcoming cheer of early blooming Witch Hazel ‘Arnold’s Promise’ greets me outside, while the white orchids inside provide a note of grace. Note that the green leaves of the broad-leaf evergreen Rhododendron provides contrast so I can “see” the wonderful yellow flowers of the Hamamelis. In earlier winters,…
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Gray, White, Black
Yesterday while visiting the new Museum of Fine Arts wing in Boston, I saw a fabulous photo of tombstones. While the inspiration photo was much more amazing , my photo gives a hint of the possibilities of gray, white, and black forms seen in a winter landscape. It’s one I pass by daily in…