I love this useful Botanic Latin name pronunciation guide: overplanted.com - Botanical Latin Pronunciation GuideI just used this too look up Bulbine frutescens - bul-BYE-nee froo-TESS-enzI WAS saying it correctly, so good for me. But I was with someone recently who was not pronouncing the -nee at the end.
Pots on a Deck
This area is quite hilly, and many homes feature decks with stunning views. In some cases, the backyard slopes so steeply that a deck is the only way to fully enjoy the outdoor space. Beautifully designed plant containers can enhance the deck experience, surrounding you with nature and making it even more enjoyable.
I love designing pot vignettes. Selecting pots with harmonious colors and appropriate sizes is crucial. Tiny pots on a large deck or oversized pots on a small deck can frustrate clients and detract from the overall deck experience.
Container shopping can be quite enjoyable, whether you're doing it alone or with clients. It's essential to invest in high-quality containers. From my observations of various client landscapes, I've noticed many small, cheap, and abandoned containers cluttering their side yards. I really don’t love the fiberglass containers I keep seeing. Pottery store inventory can change frequently, so it's important to shop and purchase your pots in a timely manner.
I love the other garden ornaments you can find. Concrete cats, pigs, chickens, etc.
Plants ready to get installed into new homes!
A selection of pots about to get planted up. In the background there you can see two crappy older fiberglass (or plastic even) pots that have simply failed at the seams. They will get hauled off and dumped. We replaced them with nicer ceramic containers in the same basic shape. I love this color palette.
People can get serious sticker shock when it comes to buying contains. Jaws hit the floor, etc. I like to emphasize that they will lat a lifetime and beyond.
A visit to Delta Bluegrass
If you are looking for quality sod in the Bay Area Delta Bluegrass is the place to go.
In the droughty Bay Area, we're encouraging people to remove their lawns. While there is a time and place for some lawn in a residential setting, it's often overemphasized. A common misconception is that families with kids need a huge lawn for play. In my opinion, this is a myth. Lawns are large, monotonous spaces that can limit play opportunities for children. A sprawling lawn might be useful if a child is passionate about soccer or another ball sport, but otherwise, it doesn't offer much in terms of stimulating play and I’m just not into it at all!
That said, a small patch of lawn can be nice, I admit! However, if you simply want a cool, grassy spot to relax with a glass of wine, a meadow is a far better option. Picture an Adirondack chair under dappled shade, with your bare feet in a soft, lush meadow—that's my idea of heaven. OR, picture a couple o tree stumps set up to be a table and chairs and your small children gathered around adding items like pine cones or flowers or rocks to the “table”. Anyway, meadows not only provide a more diverse and interesting landscape with ‘scope for the imagination’ - to quote Anne of Green Gables, but they also support local biodiversity and require less maintenance than traditional lawns.
But, again, there is a place for lawns even in the Bay Area. And there are low water and native options and that is why I am at Delta Bluegrass to hear about them all.
Rolls of Sod at teh Delta Bluegrass growing grounds.
Kurapia! Kurapia is a ground cover plant developed (I think developed in Japan?) from Lippia nodiflora. Kurapia is a low-maintenance, drought-tolerant ground cover that is being used as an alternative to traditional lawns. It requires less water, fertilizer, and mowing compared to typical grass lawns, making it an environmentally friendly option. Kurapia also has strong resistance to pests and diseases and can handle a wide range of soil types, making it versatile for various landscaping needs. Its ability to establish quickly and provide a dense, green coverage makes it an appealing choice for residential and commercial landscapes. It fills in quickly and WILL overrun sidewalks/hardscapes. It works well in shade as well as sun. In the sun this is not great if you have lids and pets running about because it will be absolutely COVERED in bees. In shade it does not flower much.
They have a handy dandy installation exhibit of various sods
The sod cutting and rolling machines were badass. I love weird industrial equipment. They also fed us lunch!
Neighborhood sketchbook
Snapped a picture of a Tibouchina urvilleana on a neighborhood walk and then decided to sketch it. I love the look of the dark river rock and the fallen purple petals.
Visualizing with SketchUp
Still thinking about visualizing. I do like 3D scenes in SketchUp. It’s nice to have a but of that realistic texturing and the rendered shadows are super nice as well. In my own hand drawings I tend to not put those dramatic shadows in because I worry about ruining the drawing. :D
I think one of my annoyances with SketchUp is just have to do with finding the right plant objects to use. If a picture looks fairly realistic the plants need to be pretty darn close the actual plant being spec’ed in the plan otherwise homeowners get confused. With a hand-drawing you can just be like, “oh yeah, this is an artistic rendition”.
Again, these are not my design they are from the wonderful Susan at Garden Alchemy.
Oh, yeah, I also created that metal hoop sculpture you see in the photos in SketchUp and you can find it in the 3D Warehouse and use it if you want to!
Honeysuckle Sipping, The Plant Lore of Children
My previous post about Making Daisy chains reminded me of this book I’ve been meaning to review: Honeysuckle Sipping The Plant Lore of Children by Jeanne R. Chesanow
What is my plant lore? It’s not much, really. How to braid pine needles and attempt to weave them, how to use a blade of grass as a whistle, making play environments for my glass animals with moss and flowers and sticks and stones, where to find the blueberries and chipmunks at my grandparents house… dandelion seed heads, maple seed ‘rhinoceros horns’, what else?
I had a suburban upbringing. But it was the 70’s and 80’s and supervision was lacking in comparison to current times. As I read through this book I kept saying to myself, ‘Oh yeah! I did that too!”. I think that, anyone who reads this book will have those moments of remembering too and it will bring joy.
I just love this book. The author sent out a call for people to remember and write to her about the plant lore of their own childhoods and she amassed a lovely set of stories and reminiscence.
In the intro and through out the book she mentions more ancient childhood plant lore. And, I would like to point out here, MOST of this book is white, European and European-American childhood plant lore. There are some mentions of Indigenous North American children, however. I would love to read about other cultures nature play. Note to self: see what you can find about this!
One of my favorites mentioned is a game from ancient Greece in which the kids throw a nut into a circle. Sounds a lot like the (horribly named) game cornhole, doesn’t it?!
Here is a link to a whole scholarly article about play and childhood in ancient Greece!
I’ve mentioned before that I worried about this a lot when my kid was an infant and small child. What would my kid’s childhood plant lore/memories of time spent in nature end up being?! We lived in a loft in West Oakland and there was concrete for days!
I feel lucky that my mother’s group ended up creating a Forest Pre-School which we called ‘Oakland Urban Forest Community’. We hired a Waldorf teacher and spent a ton of time trying to make it work. It DID work for quite a while and then it didn’t and I can’t even remember why! I do know that my kid spent three days a week in nature with other kids, guided by like minded parents and a teacher. They made boats out of bark and sailed them, created puppets out of natural materials for plays, went on nature walks, and many other things.
This is also one of the reasons I sent him to Park Day School in Oakland.
At home we had squirrel tea parties with flowers and seeds as the meal, we picked and ate ‘sour grass’ (Oxalis) on our walks in the neighborhood, and we made roly poly houses with natural materials, so I hope he remembers those things!
New skatepark landscape
I noticed the other day when I stopped at CVS on San Pablo that they added a really interesting skatepark along the parking lot to this strip mall. What a great use of space! I really love the large boulders they used.
Designed by Wormhoudt Inc.
Here is a cute SketchUp walk through of the concept. They did include one female presenting entourage with a skateboard!
There is a you tube video of the grand opening here.
I stopped to walk through it and took a few pictures.
Sibling Road Trip and all the Succulents!
It’s road trip time with my sister! You can find her here: Bookmaniac. She’s incredibly smart, funny, insightful, and all the things I love. Simply the best!
Anyway, we’re embarking on a road trip south towards Santa Cruz filled with infinite silliness, and our last stop is to pose by the giant artichoke, stay tuned. It’s May in California so it is grey and FOGGY. We have many layers with us.
Succulent Gardens
2133 Elkhorn Road, Castroville, CA 95012
I mostly took pictures of succulents on this trip because we stopped at Succulent Gardens in Castroville, CA, to marvel at their amazing collection. This huge nursery, hidden along a winding road near Moss Landing and all the otters in CA, specializes in a wide variety of succulents and has some fun and creatively designed display gardens and greenhouses. I don't know why but seeing rows and rows of tiny succulents all alike is so visually pleasing! While there, I also signed up for a workshop to create a succulent frame planter, though I somehow forgot to take a picture of it.
Succulent close-ups.
More succulents….
I did buy some stuff…
As promised, here were are looking a bit disheveled in front of a large artichoke.
Visualizing Designs
I’m imagining that everyone has their own work flow for creating client visuals. I love 3D and, in fact, have a degree in 3D Animation and Computer Modeling (or something along those lines… it’s been a long time). Making 3D renderings look good is fairly time consuming and I often don’t love the final product. The time consuming part is what is important here though, I’m not sure your small to mid sized residential projects will want to pay for that time. The GOAL of these visuals is to help the client imagine their space and maybe it doesn’t have to super elaborate and 100% perfect and I need to remember that.
Right now I am using SketchUp. It’s good enough but I do still love that hand-drawn look. Lately I have been rendering a line drawing in SketchUp and then coloring over it. Here is an uncolored example.
Firepit with shrubs
Same view but with different plants and chairs.
And a color example. The color on this scan came out a tad weird but you can see how I go about making a test drawing and trying out markers.
I print out several and then us AD Markers to color. I do love to color!
My current process:
Create basic SketchUp model and use one of the sketch filters. Create several views and print them out.
Draw in the plants - sometimes I draw directly on to the print out and sometimes I do a more elaborate dance with tracing paper, rescanning, color adjusting in Photoshop but honestly that takes way longer.
Choose a coloring medium - I have been using AD Markers lately but sometimes I use colored pencils. I would love to do watercolor. One of the joys of watercolor is how fast and blendable they are. I have not really worked out HOW to do this yet though. I don’t think my printer will work even wth the flimsiest watercolor paper. I could trace the drawing on but haven’t tried that yet. Something to work on, I guess!
Then scan, color correct, and done!
I don’t have my own clients yet but I get to color other peoples designs and I freaking love it.
The above landscape designs are by Susan of Garden Alchemy.
Color Blobs
If I’m not feeling inspired to draw/paint anything in particular I like to just play around with color. Sometimes I even just paint circles of single colors. It helps that my paint of choice, Daniel Smith watercolors, has such amazing vibrant pigments. A mistake I see people make is buying student grade watercolors. ALWAYS buy artist grade. I don’t care if they are more expensive! Even if you can only buy your warm and cool primaries artist grade is the way to go.
Vendors? What are vendors?
I went to my first NorCal event this year. NorCal is a trade show for the landscape business that is held at the San Mateo event center every year. Every possible thing related to the landscaping industry can be found and explored there.
Who are these vendors? Why do I want to know them?
Vendors are the sales representatives for all the landscaping products used in the industry! Who knew?! Not sure why I find this so weird and novel but I do.
Why do you and I want to know them? Because they will help you spec their products, they will spend a decent chunk of time explaining things to you and your clients. They will even sometimes go to your project site and bring samples for your clients. Amazing!
I, while not exactly shy, do not love to chit chat. I marvel at people who can chit chat. I just can’t do it, my mind goes immediately blank and I become the most uninteresting person in the universe. Although, (CW: alcohol) if I have a glass or two of wine I will totally hang out and chit chat. There is no wine at NorCal so just forget that. Anyway, you can chat up these folks and they will be absolute fonts of knowledge about their products.
Some examples:
Local stone yards will often have sales reps that rep various paver companies. For instance, PBM - Peninsula Building Materials has showrooms all over the Bay Area. If you contact them with a question about a product you will be directed to the sales rep for that product.
Specific paver companies - For instance, StepStone has a sales rep for the Bay Area. Need color samples? Call them!
There are sales reps for sod, plants (think Proven Winners or Sunset Plants), landscape lighting, and irrigation companies are just a few I can think of.
Not sure if I emphasized this enough but these people will help you for FREE. It’s great.
The SF Wave Organ
My sister and I jaunted over to SF to visit the Wave Organ in January, sketchbooks and coffees in hand. How had I never been here? All the years I was living in SF and specifically exploring everything I could and I somehow never ended up here. Anyway, I went now and it was a beautiful winter day with the sun shining. It was so nice to just sit and draw in my sketchbook listening to the waves and people and sea gulls.
Sun shining on an open sketchbook with a pen and green pencil. There is a pen drawing of the wave organ in the sketchbook
The sculpture was delightfully like an ancient ruin. I do love a good ruin. A real ruin not to miss is the Sutro Baths. I go there all the time and I should post some pics of that landscape.
This wave organ is a sound sculpture made from reused items including stones from an old cemetery. I love that and it makes for some very interesting sculptural stone work. The actual organ pipes are PVC and concrete. I think it sounds kind of like rubber bands!
Panorama picture with a woman with purple hair pointing a camera , the Golden Gate Bridge in teh background, the smooth waters of the San Francisco Bay and then some palm trees and a sea wall on the right.
Sunset Headquarters in Menlo Park
I heard the Sunset headquarters is going to move so I wanted to dash down there to visit it before it relocated. When I first moved to CA I worked just down the street but did not know about Sunset magazine at that time. Nor did I particularly care about gardens at age 19. Anyway, my friend and I jaunted down there to take some pics.
I’m so glad we did! I just love the color and texture they are playing with. The bright orange, round trellis is also speaking to me. I would like to own this moon gate trellis for myself!
Pavement 2 Parks in SF
This Pavements to Parks initiative in SF is really interesting. I must see if Oakland has something similar.
I drove by this little parklet on my way somewhere and I came back later to investigate more thoroughly.
Guerrero Park by Shift Studio in SF
This Places for People idea is marvelous. I love how they have created these planting spaces and seating areas on the harsh concrete of this street using recycled materials. I hope people come hang out here!
2015 - APLD Washington - Garden 2
This was a very cool modern garden. It had tons of insteresting details. I particularly noticed and liked the combination of materials. Like, where materials combine.
Corten meets gravel meets plants meets stone work etc. You know what I mean?!
Those little drain covers?!!! That Muhly grass?! So soft soft looking!
