Big House Buy » The Home Gardner

Admin — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 18:30:08 +0000

I visited a famous producer’s beautiful NYC roof garden this week and advised him on care of his birch trees. The main problem with the birch trees is that they are on a north-facing terrace, which only gets a few hours of sun. They are losing leaves and there is a bagworm infestation. I recommended replacing the weakest looking ones with something that will tolerate low light better, such as Japanese maples.

Urban Paradise

Admin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:30:11 +0000

Although this roof garden is located in the busy Hell’s Kitchen area of Manhattan, you’d never know it. Seven floors above the hustle and bustle of street traffic below, this garden resonates with the peaceful sounds of nature.

The custom-built cedar planters are built with serpentine curves to maximize space and enhance the sculptural feel of the garden, which houses several pieces of contemporary sculpture.

The garden is also home to a beautiful blue-eyed husky named Sasha, a small bonsai garden, a fountain, a hammock, dining furniture for 8, a jacuzzi, a bar, a couple of chaise lounge chairs, and a comfy seating area with couches and chairs around a gas fire-pit.

Upon completing the installation of this amazing 1200-square foot garden, I returned to my office to find this email waiting in my inbox:

“I just want to say I LOVE EVERYTHING YOU’VE DONE!!!! The garden looks amazing – I was completely blown away when I got home late last night … One of my favorite things is listening to the wind blow through the trees – I’d thought about how the garden would look, and even smell, but never considered how it might sound!” -Arabella

Landscape Design Store Open for Business

Admin — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:30:23 +0000

Design plans, irrigation, lighting, planters all for sale online at http://www.amberfreda.com

Custom Planters by Victor Stabin

Admin — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 03:30:06 +0000

These wonderful handmade planters are created by celebrated artist Victor Stabin.

The planter shown to the right (with close-up detail) contains a built-in trellis, ideal for growing vines and adding a sculptural point of conversation to your garden.

The trellis is welded together out of iron with whimsical animal details, including dragonflies, turtles, seahorses, and lizards. The plantings for the trellis planter were designed by none other than moi.

The planter below is comprised of metal bars attached to a wood top and base and lined with coconut fiber. Here it has been planted with a gorgeous red cut-leaf Japanese maple.

Victor Stabin is a representational painter whose narrative paintings capture intersections of natural and human history. His commissions include a series of stamps for the U.S. postal service and illustrations for Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times.

His works are currently on display at the CCCP Building in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Composting for Urbanites

Admin — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:30:11 +0000

Compost has often been referred to by garden enthusiasts as “black gold,” but for some reason it still tends to be a somewhat elusive item in city gardens. Certainly, it could be assumed that the primary reason for this is a lack of space for a large compost pit in most urban dwellings. This problem is easily remedied by smaller compost bins now made commonly available by vendors like http://www.gardeners.com, which carries the compact kitchen compost bin shown in the photo.

Container plants could certainly benefit from a 1-2″ addition of compost each year, since valuable nutrients are quickly leached from the soil and out the drainage holes with frequent watering. You could gently mix the compost into the existing soil with a small spade or even just layer it on top of the soil. I would then follow that with a 1″ layer of mulch over the compost to help keep the compost moist and well-insulated as it continues to break down and mix with the existing soil over time.

In addition, just about any type of urban yard, lawn, garden, or flower bed could benefit from an annual top-dressing of compost. Most city soil is poor, often of a heavy clay nature, and tends to have been depleted of nutrients from years of planting and erosion, with little to no nutrients being replaced or allowed to build-up as normally would happen in nature.

These mini-composters make it easy to recycle kitchen items like fruit and vegetable waste and coffee grounds that would normally not be put to good use. A little bit of compost each year will go a long way to boosting growth, blooms, overall health and disease resistance, and vegetable or fruit production in your plants.

Sunroom Gardens

Admin — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:30:10 +0000

Sunroom gardens are an interesting approach to urban gardening. It’s not something I see all that often, but I hope that will change in time. It makes perfect sense in cold climates like NYC to have an indoor garden room that can be enjoyed year-round.

This sunroom addition was part of a renovated apartment plan for a residence in the West Village. It features large windows that allow plenty of sunlight in for the plants to grow and thrive and an automated drip irrigation system for instant watering and low-maintenance plants. The floor is comprised of large slabs of blue stone that feel much like the stone used in many outdoor patios.

Drainage for the irrigation system is funneled through a channel cut into the stone along one wall. Each planter in the sunroom contains its own hidden faucet in cabinets built into the planters from below, where an irrigation timer and hoses are also discreetly connected and run through each of the planters.

Another benefit to having an indoor garden room is that it opens up a world of tropical plants that normally wouldn’t survive in a cold climate like New York. The planters in this room contain Mexican feather grass, citrus trees, passionflower and jasmine vines, rosemary, zizi zamias, snake plants, and bromeliads.

Anytime is a Good Time for Evergreens

Admin — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:30:05 +0000

Evergreens can be planted in pots any time of year, even in winter, for that touch of green that brings life to winter-ravaged gardens. I like to plan all of the gardens I design with at least a few spots of evergreen color to keep the garden from looking so bleak in the winter months. The best evergreen for containers is the alberta spruce because it stays small (rarely exceeding 6′ tall in pots), grows slowly, and tolerates neglect and city conditions.

Other beauties in the garden during the winter months are plants with berries, such as hollies, plants with interesting foliage, such as dormant ornamental grasses that rustle their leaves in the wind, and trees with beautiful bark, such as the peeling bark of crape myrtles, the white bark of birch trees, or even the beautiful red tones of a coral-bark Japanese maple.

With a little planning, your garden can be a sight to behold even in the middle of winter!

Earth Sculptures

Admin — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:51:53 +0000

I have always thought of the garden as art, and so imagine how excited I was to discover earth sculptures, such as this one of a woman in repose. “The Mudmaid,” as she’s known, is on display at Heligan Gardens in the UK.

I’m planning to start offering earth sculptures to clients beginning this year. Please let me know if you would be interested in something like this for your garden. I’m also very fond of the more abstract designs, such as spirals.

If earth sculptures interest you and you would like to learn more, I recommend checking out Heligan Gardens, The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, and Andy Goldsworthy. There are also some interesting things be done with living walls, which are a vertical form of earth sculpting, by Patrick Blanc. My firm also offers indoor and outdoor living wall design and installation.

Ceramic Pots

Admin — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:31:47 +0000

I’m a big fan of Asian ceramic pots in the landscape and on roof gardens. These pots are made with an outdoor-ready clay and fired to a high enough temperature in the glazing process that they won’t crack or break as readily as terra cotta.

Few things make as impressive a focal point as a beautifully glazed container, with or without plants in it. You will just want to make sure that the pots you buy are made to go outdoors in whatever area you live in.

The second thing to look for are drainage holes. If the pots don’t have them already and you are planning to put plants in them, then you will need to either ask your supplier to drill them for you, or be prepared to do it yourself using a large drill bit of at least 1/2 to 1-inch diameter. Smaller holes will tend to clog up with dirt later on. It’s a good idea to put at least 1-inch of pebbles or broken pottery pieces in the bottom of the container to keep too much soil from leaking out.