BLOOMTOWN

Ta Da!! ... The Official Unveiling of Bloomtown's Front Garden Renovation

Last fall, I began a comprehensive renovation, rejuvenation and overall heavy edit of my front garden. I've been gardening on my 50 x 100 lot in NE Portland since 1998, so some of my initial plantings had run their course.  I removed several large shrubs to make some of the larger framework plants more "comfortable" and to make room for some fresh understory plantings.

But I'm particularly pleased with and excited to show you the hardscape additions I've made. These new hardscape features include a steel and stone retaining wall along the front of my garden and the addition of curvaceous raised beds made of steel flat bar woven in a sinuous, basket weave pattern.

I'd been enjoying working with steel in my client projects for some time, but hadn't yet landed on a way to incorporate some of my ideas into my garden at home. I believe that the combination of the steel with the basalt boulders really make this addition "work" within my existing garden. I've got a fair amount of existing stone and steel in my garden, so the union of these two materials make sense and ensure that the wall and the raised beds in the parking strip feel like a part of the larger whole.

Deciding to pursue these changes was the result of a combination of forces.  Believe it or not, it started with the decision to change the way that I water my garden ... but alas, that’s a topic for another post. All that I’ll say about that part of the decision at this juncture is that I decided that I needed a wall or edge of some sort that would prevent water from immediately running off the slope and onto the sidewalk. And one thing led to another.

Additionally, some of the primary structural plantings in my garden had developed some heft and were ready to do more of the heavy-lifting in terms of holding the overall garden structure together. In particular: two Japanese maples (Acer palmatum), a crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia x indica 'Zuni'), a Magnolia stellata and my dynamic duo of Taxus x media 'Sentinalis' that were planted in the early stages of the garden's development and which are now quite established.

Another important factor was that some very lovely shrubs that I've enjoyed for a number of years had simply outgrown their welcome. The most significant removal was a very large, very beautiful doublefile viburnum (Viburnum plicatum tomentosum 'Mariesii').  It was one of the initial framework shrubs in the first incarnation of my garden, and a dozen years later it commanded the bulk of the southwest corner of my front garden. It was somewhat difficult to decide to remove this shrub, but once it was gone, it was immediately obvious that it was the right thing to do. Its removal allowed the structural plants I mentioned first to really do their thing.

The three photos above were taken very recently and give a pretty good idea of how the newly-installed steel elements fit into the front garden and provide a structural frame to embrace the exuberant plantings. The flowing form of the woven steel presents a satisfying juxtaposition to the sturdy, linear lines of the retaining wall. 

As always, I'm certain that I’ll continually tweak and tinker with my planting schemes, which is one of the things that I find most enjoyable about garden-making. With the addition of this steel frame and the editing of my structural plantings, I'll be able to do that and preserve a sense of orderliness in the overall scene. 

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I always like to see process shots, so I've included some of those as well. In the first photo in the sequence just above, the paint lines show how I "roughed-in" the cuts and general shape of the raised edging in my parking strip. While I moved and removed a number of plants, I wanted to work around an Albizia julibrissin 'Summer Chocolate' that was really starting to develop a nice shape. The second photo is taken from the same angle immediately after we completed construction. The third photo gives a closer view from a different angle. The fourth and final photo was taken at the same angle very recently. 

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There are two pathways that are cut into the parking strip to improve pedestrian access. The series of three photos above show the primary path leading to the front walkway to our house. 

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The two photos above show the front retaining wall just after construction was completed.  The second close-up view shows the steel and boulder joint. The wall face is constructed with sheets of 3/16 Cor Ten steel plate, trimmed with a 3 x 2 angle iron cap situated such that there is a 2" reveal on the front and 3" on top. The wall seams are finished with an additional piece of flat bar and secured with bolts.

I want to close with a note of thanks to the landscape professionals who helped bring my concept to life. Once again, I had the pleasure of working with Pete Wilson of Pete Wilson Stoneworks on this project. Pete and his crew are skilled professionals that have been behind the construction of many of my most memorable projects. In particular, Niall Hannan of Pete Wilson Stoneworks was an instrumental partner in the implementation of the woven steel and boulders in the parking strip. Rob Trautmann is another frequent contributor on client projects and was a natural fit to work with Pete on the installation of the steel wall. This project was a first for all of us in terms of bringing the steel and stone together in this way and shows the true power of a collaborative construction process.

 

Darcy Daniels of Bloomtown Gardens featured in Sunset March 2011

Darcy Daniels of Bloomtown Gardens has a client garden featured on page 46 of the current issue of Sunset Magazine (March 2011).  Follow the link to see additional photos of this garden or take a moment to review this portfolio of gardens Darcy has designed.

Dry stack basalt seat wall

I'm lucky to have a great working relationships with a talented stonemason, Pete Wilson of Pete Wilson Stoneworks based here  in Portland, Oregon. We've collaborated on many wonderful gardens together.

Pete and his team built this dry stack basalt stone seat wall for a Bloomtown Gardens client in NE Portland and I think it's some of their best work. The joinery in this sinuous, curving seat wall is crisp and tight.

You've seen, and will likely see more, photos of the plantings in this garden on this blog, but I wanted to take a moment to put the spotlight on the fine craftsmanship that went into the building of this garden. While the plantings in this garden are gorgeous, I believe that a solid hardscape "frame" is an essential element for creating successful all-season gardens. 

A foliage-driven garden

I designed this foliage-driven planting scheme for a client in NE Portland, Oregon and it looks good all year. At the time the first photo was taken, its interest is solely derived from pleasing constrasts in the texture, form and color of foliage. While there are floral players that come into play at different times during the season, they're considered a bonus, as in the addition of Echinacea 'Sundowner' and an annual purple fountain grass (Pennisetum 'Rubrum'), which provide bloom color and movement to this scene later in the summer as illustrated in the second photo. 

 

The foliage-driven planting in early June

A close-up view a couple of months later in mid-August.

Vegetable Garden Update: Building a Protective Cage

I wanted to share a project that we completed this weekend at "the farm." We built these these protective cages using a method that we found in Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardener; page 65 in the edition that I have, in the chapter entitled "Building Boxes and Structures."

Our day started with a trip to the hardware store. Got supplies for our next couple of projects, but here's what you'll need for this particular project:

• Wood for the frame: We used 1" x 2" x 8' strips and used the hardware store's saw to cut them to our 4' length.
• Chicken Wire Mesh: we bought a 50' roll, the best value since we plan on making several of these at varying heights.
• Screws: We bought 1 3/4" wood screws
• Plastic ties: I wasn't crazy about using plastic for the attachments, from an eco-standpoint, but they're pretty darn slick and super-easy to use. 
• Drill: I already own this.
• Wire snippers: I already had these as well.
• Staple Gun: If you don't have a staple gun, you could use the plastic ties which is what the book recommends. But again, I think the less plastic we use the better. Plus, by using the staple gun we were able to make our attachment a bit more snag-free which is a consideration when working with this rascally wire-mesh.

I apologize for the skip in the photographic documentation that occurs here; but we learned that it takes two to wrangle the wire mesh into submission. I'll try to document these steps when we build the next ones and provide an update to this post. But I wanted to get these photos up that I have so far, because I was pretty impressed at how quickly it went together and optimistic that they're going to be super-useful to us. They're also quite economical to build. Even purchasing the materials, I estimate that we spent about $10 in materials for each frame. But these could be even less expensive if you happen to have scrap wood around that you could re-purpose for building the frame.

Here's the gist of what we did.

1. Figure out what size you want your frame to be. For our beds we wanted them to be 4 foot square so that they would sit on the lip of our 4' x 8' raised beds and cover half of the bed. 
2. Build your four-sided frame. I recommend that you pre-drill your holes to limit the possibility of the 1" x 2" splitting. Make your attachment with one of your wood screws.
3. Cut your wire mesh to appropriate size with wire snips. For the cage pictured below, the finished height is 6 inches, so we cut two lengths of wire mesh, that were 5 feet long each, off of the roll, which is 4 feet wide.
4. Prepare the chicken wire mesh. Now here's the tricky part to visualize and also the reason that I don't have good photos of these steps. The wire mesh has a mind of its own and wants to fold back on itself, but once creased will hold its shape. So we creased the mesh at 6 inches from each of the ends.
5. Attach the mesh to the frames. It will really help if you enlarge the pictures below (click on them and they should open up larger in a separate window) and look closely at them. The two mesh panels are stapled to the inside of the frame.
6. Once you have attached the mesh and your frame looks like the one below, you can consider yourself done, or you can cut frost cloth to size and clip on the frame as we have done.

 
Their reason for being: our buddy Jack! He's a digger and wreaked major havoc with a lot of our plantings last year, so we really hope that these will deter him. We'll create some method of securing them more firmly to the beds.

And here's a little closer view. If you click on the image to enlarge this, it might help you understand the construction better. Perhaps you've already got it, but I have to say I had a terrible time visualizing how the mesh was connected to the frame when I was reading about these in the book. We've strayed from his method somewhat but I hope you get the gist.

And of course, this is what it's all about, right? We were able to plant our first cold-season greens with more confidence that Jack, or raccoons, or whatever other creatures we're bothered by, won't undo our hard work.

And since, it's still pretty early here and quite cold, we attached reemay to the cover; mostly for added warmth at this point, later it can help us out with pest deterrence as well.

Ta da! Now that we've built one, making more will go a lot faster. We'll make these in varying heights for the most flexibility in terms of how we'll use them. We've got enough supplies so that we should be able to make four frames of varying heights. They can be covered, or uncovered, with cloth and easily moved from bed to bed, to wherever we need a bit of added protection, shade, or pest protection.

I'd love to hear from you if you've built something like this in your garden or if you take a shot at building these. Let us all know about your project by leaving a comment on this post.

Vegetable Garden Update: Work party on a cool spring day

It's been pretty hectic between the nursery, client work, and teaching but we finally got back out to the "farm" for a work party on Sunday.

We got a tremendous amount of work done in a short time. We got our remaining two raised beds into position and filled with soil; bringing our total to the ten 4' x 8' raised beds, as planned.

We had some extra soil so have started an additional in-ground garden space. We'll grow the large scrambling plants like summer & winter squash in these beds and we'll choose an area of this bed where we'll grow sunchokes on a permanent basis (you can't easily remove them once you get them started, so think carefully about your placement before planting).

We did some additional sowing of our cool season crops such as spinach, argula, carrots, and scallions and a first sowing of a couple of interesting broccoli varieties and kale, and some other things that I've likely forgotten at this moment.

It's so exhilarating to see the seedlings emerge. We had our first taste of greens direct from the soil ... thinnings from our arugula and radish sowings from a couple of weeks back. Can't wait until we have enough for a real meal!

Vegetable Garden Update: Houston, we have lift off

After our big push two Sundays ago, we took a break so this was my first trip back to the plot in two weeks. What a thrill to see the first of our seedlings emerge! Radishes, spinach, peas, and arugula that were sown on the 16th are beginning to emerge, no sign of the carrots yet ...

The broccoli starts and onion sets are settling in and starting to grow. Potatoes and shallots were planted on the 16th also, but won't be showing themselves for a while yet.

Today's activity -- a power planting session. We were short on time and only had a little over an hour to spend but wanted to make sure that we kept on track with successive sowings. We planted a second sowing of peas, arugula, radishes and spinach and transplanted another round of broccoli starts. We also transplanted some cauliflower and kale seedlings. We made our first sowing of scallions and baby bok choy. I'm probably forgetting something, but you get the gist.

Even with ten raised beds, feels like the garden is filling up fast!

Bloomtown client project featured on Sunset blog - Fresh Dirt

What fun! I have a client garden featured at Sunset's blog, Fresh Dirt, today.

I've posted a few photos of this garden below. More photos of this garden can be found in this photo album along with shots of other client gardens. Also watch for a write up on this garden in an upcoming issue of Sunset Magazine.

Vegetable Garden Update: Ready for Planting

OMG - what a busy day we had. We went from a pile-o-soil at the street in the morning to getting our first plantings in by day's end.

For now, I'll let the pictures speak. I'll write more later to give a fuller update on our project.

Vegetable Garden Update: Construction Begins

A "photo documentary" of our most recent work party.

First of all, I wanted to make sure that we captured a true "before" shot, warts and all, of where our garden will be.

After last week's visit to the lumber yard we were all set & ready to get busy right away. Henry Ford's got nothing on us; we set up a veritable assembly line and built ten boxes in 3 hours. (Special thanks to today's guest helper!)

Laurie clearing the decks - brambles beware.

A long day behind us; good progress has been made, but enough for one day.

Next week we'll finish setting and leveling the boxes into their final positions. Soil is scheduled for delivery this week. I hope that we'll have at least of couple of the beds ready for planting by the end of our next work party so that we can get our early plantings in -- peas, potatoes, and broccoli for starters.

Onward, upward, hey-ho! Stay tuned.