Artist’s Lakeside Woodland
I met this homeowner while shopping for plants at a nursery a few years ago. One of the nursery workers and I did an impromptu design for her on the spot for a new garden area she was telling us about. The client asked if I would please come to her house and help implement the ideas for this new section. I usually don’t drop everything and run over on the same day, but for some reason I did. A wonderful friendship and garden partnership came out of this chance meeting. The client, an artist, already had a pretty great layout in place. She had some fabulous trees and shrubs. The beds had some great plants, though not arranged in any sort of organized fashion. Every perennial plant the homeowner had previously chosen was wild and billowy, which can be a great cottage garden look. I could see right away what the drawbacks here were. A garden containing all one type of plant can look messy, especially after blooms have faded. Everything was running together, with no particular plant standing out and no focal points. Separating the wildness and adding in some neater, mounding plants next to the tall billowy plants shows off each one in in its best light. Most of my work here in the beginning involved moving around a lot of the existing plants. Most every perennial has been moved! Trees and shrubs are in their original spots and more shrubs have been added. Thousands of bulbs have been added.
A new shade garden was installed on one side of the house in a previously messy, undeveloped area. We found the blue pot for a focal point here and this garden gets appreciated from the living room windows. Its hard to compete with the water view though, it’s spectacular.
Every year we improve something. Recently I have changed the arrangement of some of the stone walls to create a more obvious entrance from the parking area. Always a joy to work here.