An unlabeled dark pink Camellia in winter at Descanso Gardens

Camellias are oh-so-beautiful, delicate and almost porcelain-like in their perfection.

Deb and Anita (Mom) in Japanese garden

On the day after Christmas, my parents and I visited Los Angeles’s most established camellia collection at Descanso Gardens. 

The mature camellia shrubs (many of which are tree-like in their proportions) are protected from Southern California’s harsh heat and sunlight because they’re planted in the understory of even more mature sycamore and live oak trees. They are happiest in the cooler months of the year.

Here, you really do feel like the paths lead through an established woodland. It’s actually an urban woodland, just off of the junction of two freeways. But that’s LA for you.

When we moved to Los Angeles in August, 2006, we got off the plane at Burbank Airport and while waiting for luggage, I noticed a huge DESCANSO GARDENS billboard above the luggage claim area. I remember thinking, “what kind of garden could exist among all this concrete?” 

Anita (Mom) and Fred (Dad) at entrance to Oak-and-Camellia Forest

Later, I was lucky enough to visit. Descanso Gardens is a 160-acre natural woodland and botanical garden located just north of Burbank in a community called La Canada-Flintridge. It’s about a one-hour drive east of where I live in Thousand Oaks and about 20 minutes west of Pasadena. If you plan a visit to the Huntington Botanical Garden, you can easily add a side trip to Descanso. 

I was invited to give a talk at Descanso a few summers ago and was blown away by its immense scale, as urban gardens go. But until last week, I had never visited during the winter Camellia season.

Descanso’s founder, E. Manchester Boddy, publisher and owner of the Los Angeles Daily News, preserved the land (gardens, woodland and chaparral) to share Southern California’s natural beauty with future generations. This is where he lived, building a home in 1938 with views of the San Gabriel mountains. The Boddy family left the house in 1953 when they sold Descanso to Los Angeles County.   

A beautiful pink camellia display

About the Camellia Forest:

Here are some more of the flowers and garden features that we enjoyed on our winter visit. I especially love the glossy red container plantings of Camellia sasanqua ‘Setsugekka’ because they remind me of the same ones growing in my former Seattle garden, espaliered against the fence for a beautiful winter floral display.

Note: A version of this Q&A appeared earlier this week in “LA At Home,” the Los Angeles Times’ daily home and garden blog.

Mary Ann caught one glimpse of the awesome coat and matching socks . . . and said - Hey, that's Keeyla Meadows!

Los Angeles native Keeyla Meadows lives in Berkeley where she makes art and designs gardens. Her cheerful, 50-by-100 foot city lot is a living canvas packed with life-sized female figures and not-so-perfect vessels, hand-built in clay and glazed in a palette of turquoise, apricot and lavender.

An exuberant color palette that few would dare to use - here's Keeyla's Berkeley bungalow and street-side "sunset" garden

No surface here is left unadorned. Whether it’s her swirly ceramic paving, custom metal benches or sculpted walls, Keeyla artistically places favorite objects and plants with a carefree confidence that few of us can master.

Fans of Keeyla have long admired her award-winning gardens, including a ‘Best in Show’ at the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show a few years back. Her beautiful first book, Making Gardens a Work of Art, was published in 2004 by Sasquatch Books, a Seattle imprint that also published my first book, The Northwest Gardener’s Resource Directory.

Lorene and me ~ gal pals in Keeyla's garden

In 2008, I lucked into an impromptu visit to Keeyla’s personal wonderland when my girlfriend Mary Ann Newcomer boldly followed her into Café Fanny’s in Berkeley, an Alice Waters bistro, and snagged an invite for our group of breakfasting garden writers.

Lorene Edwards Forkner, Mary Ann and I hopped in the car and followed Keeyla to her bungalow, a few blocks away. It is fair to say we were hyperventilating!

“You can take photos, but don’t publish them until my book is out,” Keeyla requested. It was the least we could do, having feasted our eyes on her botanical paint box, imagining how we might try her playful ideas in our own backyards.

Her new book, Fearless Color Gardens: The creative gardener’s guide to jumping off the color wheel (Timber Press, $27.95), has just been published. Filled with Keeyla’s photography of design projects, as well as her doodles and sketches, it reads like a colorist’s memoir, complete with a muse named Emerald.

Strong on fantasy, it’s also a useful workbook for garden owners who need a nudge toward the more vibrant end of the color spectrum. I recently asked Keeyla about the book.

Q: How do you teach students to feel confident as garden designers?

Keeyla's color sensibility is in her DNA as evidenced by the orange side of her house punctuated by a tree-inspird sculpture

A: A lot of people have this mantra that says, “I’m not a creative person. I’m not an artist.” Our lives are built around the practicality of what we have to do everyday so many people shut those doors to creativity a long time ago. I suggest you treat garden design like something you do all the time. The physical activity of placing plants in a space can be as easy as folding laundry and putting it away, or setting the table, or baking a cake.

Q. How can I make a landscape project feel less overwhelming?

Mary Anne Newcomer, Keeyla Meadows and Lorene Edwards Forkner

A. I suggest you divide your space up like a series of photographs or like windows.

Decide what “picture” you’re working with, where it starts and ends. Start with looking out the kitchen window and use plants and art to fill the frame.

Q. Where does your color inspiration come from?

A. A lot of my color sense comes from growing up in Los Angeles and living with its “colorfulness” – the light, tile work and Catalina Island all inspired me. Right now, I’m designing a new garden for the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show in March. It’s a habitat garden and the colors I’m using come from the red-headed garter snake, an endangered snake from the San Mateo coastline. It has a read head with a turquoise and red stripe down the back, so it’s providing my design motif, my imagery and my color combination.

Jump off the conventional Color Wheel and play with Keeyla's Color Triangle

Q. How do you suggest people “jump off” the color wheel?

A. The traditional color wheel makes my head spin. I use a color triangle, which is so stabilizing. I put blue at the top of the pyramid – it represents the sky. The other two points are red and yellow. Between the three primary colors are the secondary colors. On either side of any point is a harmonic chord of color. You’ll never go wrong if you take one of the points – red, yellow or blue – and use one of those chords of color on either side of it.

 Q. How do you balance artwork with the plants in your garden? 

A checkerboard of color in a patio installation

A. Art gives me a constant relationship to plant against, a very stable feature to move through the seasons with.

Art creates so much focus and orients the whole space so one is not always reinventing. It is like a stage setting.

The artwork and hardscape set the stage for your plants to really become the stars.

Here’s a quote from Keeyla’s book that seems apropos:

“In my gardens, color refers to everything – absolutely everything. I don’t just make a bland holder, a neutral vase, for colorful plants. Color includes the rocks, the pavings, and the artwork. It also connects up with the color of the house and the sky above. So it’s really like bringing the camera to your eye. When you take a photo, you are looking at everything in the frame. In creating color gardens we will look at everything that is part of the garden picture. . . “

More photos to share from our visit to Keeyla’s magical garden:

Italian cypresses are so companionable with Italian stone pines

I did a lot of driving in Tuscany. More than I would have liked, just ask my girlfriends. Lots of to-ing and fro-ing between our remote villa and the train station in Chiusi about 45 minutes away. But there was one scene on the road between Trequanda and Sinalunga that caught my breath every time I drove past it and made the driving worth while.

Someone planted two lovely rows of trees on either side of a long driveway that ran perpendicular into the strada. And as I approached it, the classic, Renaissance-inspired pattern emerged, filling my line of vision with its elegance and storybook perfection.

When backlit, the tree shapes are even more distinctive

Silhouetted against the Tuscan sky, or back-lit by the sun, stood the contrasting shapes of tall, slender Italian cypress trees (Cupressus sempervirens) and upward-sweeping, umbrella-like forms of Italian stone pines (Pinus pinea).  The iconic forms alternate up one side of the drive and back down the other, ensuring a perfect display of two quintessentially Italian trees.

Thanks to the genius plantsman or woman who decided that these two trees – one, a spire; the other, a classic ovoid — should be grown together.

If ever I have enough land and live in the right climate, I’m going to replicate this gorgeous, satisfying, perfectly ordered pattern of trees. For now, I will share more photos. I stopped one morning and snapped oh-so-many views.

Another view of my favorite tree scene

Beautiful and orderly, an intentional planting scheme

Each time that I approached the pine-and-cypress-edged drive, a smile covered my face

P.S., this is the pine tree from which those delicious pine nuts come from.

Uncle Wilco, as he is depicted on his web site, We *Heart* Sheds (well, this was a holiday version from 2007)

Here’s some background about SHED OF THE YEAR and its creator Uncle Wilco, a cyber friend who lives in the UK in South Wales, and is the creator of We (Heart) Sheds and several other projects.  I was thrilled to discover that I was not alone on this quest for finding and documenting awesome backyard structures, that many kindred spirits existed on this globe to share my journey. Here is the original story I wrote about Uncle Wilco nearly two years ago. A memorable quote about his Shed of the Year contest:

. . . the British have a love affair with the shed, so really it’s just snowballed. I was lucky to do a few radio interviews. I got the impression they thought I was a nutter . . . ! But at least people realise that I have a passion for sheds, so that’s all that matters.

Imagine my surprise when Wilco asked me to join his illustrious team of judges to represent as the International Judge for the 2010 Shed of the Year competition! The event culminates with an announcement in early July, during National Shed Week, and I’m eager to participate. I’m hoping to get over to the UK to join the others, but at the very least, I will do my part on this end. I encourage any of my readers to submit photos and enter. That is all it takes!

Thought I’d kick things off by telling you a little more about the competition. In the words of Mr. Wilco himself:

Q. You started Shed of the Year in 2007, right? So you’ve had 3 winners!
What has surprised you most about the scope and diversity of sheds
around the globe?

Tony's Roman Temple took honors in the 2007 Shed of the Year contest

A. I have run readersheds since 2001  and thought it was time I should celebrate all these great sheds. So I started Shed of the Year. The last three winners have been very different: 1) A Roman Temple,  2) A Pub Shed, and 3) a Cabin. I look forward to shed of the year 2010 — it could be a workshop or studio or even a hut. That’s the thing — we don’t know until the public have voted and the judges have made their decisions for Shed Week 2010.

Q. Who does Sheds better, the UK shed aficionados or the North American ones?

A. Well, I am biased. UK sheds Rock- or should I say UK Sheddies rock. But you US sheddies have a different view on sheds. The UK history with sheds as mainly a man thing is very long and it’s the sheddies that make readersheds.co.uk

Q. Can you please describe “wossname” and how I can explain it to US readers?

A. I am not great with words , so I tend to fill in things I can’t think about with “wossname.” So it’s a term in the UK, like a thing or a “wotsit,” when you can’t think of the real word!

Here's where Uncle Wilco hangs out and enjoys his home brew

Q. If you had to spend your final days inside your own shed, what three essential items would you need to bring with you?

A. That’s very difficult. I would say family and friends and  my dog, but as for items it would have to be some home brew (beer).

Q. What kind of swag can I expect for being a Shed of the Year judge?

A. What, the glory of being a judge in the World’s most favourite Shed competition is not enough?

Q. How many entries have you had from North American shed owners (in past years)?

A. Well, it’s not just North American sheds. It’s International, too. We love sheddies from the Americas, Canada, Europe and Australia and New Zealand. You can view all the international sheds entries (199 of them to join the 1200 UK ones) here.

Q. What else do you want my readers to know?

A. That we are welcoming entries to Shed of the Year 2010 now and would love to have some more  Stylish Sheds added. All I ask is that the sheddies add a few good images — including external/internal shots. The more images the better, so the public can get a  good look.

Thanks so much Uncle Wilco – I will do my best to pump up the entries from the International contingent. See you soon.

A version of this piece originally appeared in my 2005 book, The Abundant Garden (Cool Springs Press), photographed by Barbara J. Denk, a gifted Bainbridge Island-based photographer. 

I recently updated the text as an article that appears in the current Southern California Horticultural Society newsletter.

RHYTHM AND MOTION

In landscape design, you can create a visual flow through the garden with the dynamic element of rhythm.

As a beat is to music, as choreographed steps are to a dance, rhythm animates a garden. Even if the wind doesn’t blow, your garden can look and feel infused with energy.

Raspberry-red spikes of aptly named Persicaria amplexicaulis 'Firetail' erupt in this singular performance of color and form. (Barbara J. Denk photograph)

MOTION:  We experience a physical sensation when something rustles or sways in the garden. We pause to appreciate movements, subtle or dramatic – flowing water, rippling leaves, a billowing banner, or clanging chimes – because they signal life’s evanescent qualities. Such movements resonate as the garden responds to the earth’s vital elements.

By the very act of creating a garden, we embrace the external forces of nature, most of which are out of our control. In addition to rays of sunlight and rain showers, the kinetic presence of wind and breeze in our landscapes is important to channel – as movement – in a planting scheme.

The ball-shaped seed heads of Allium 'Globemaster' are showcased against a rhythmic display of Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster', velvety Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) and Sedum 'Autumn Joy' (Barbara J. Denk photograph)

It’s rewarding to see how climatic changes affect the garden, something we can’t help but notice, whether there are extreme gusts or light flurries flowing through branches and stems. When we intentionally design the garden to capture these movements, we infuse an otherwise commonplace landscape with vitality.

The choices of plants that can catch the airflow, gently dance, or furiously shake are endless. Perennials with tall, slender stems ripple like the fringe on a canopy (think of a vibrant stand of daylilies or a swath of lavender).

Fluffy inflorescences of maiden grass undulate above its finely-textured blades – and the overall effect is a seductive rhythm. The leaves of a California pepper tree shimmer like sequins on an evening gown. Agapanthus seedpods rattle and whisper as autumn arrives. The natural symphony energizes any landscape.

RHYTHM:  Beyond individual plants, the visual suggestion of animation or motion can also be incorporated into the overall template of a garden. The repetition of organic forms, the course of a sinuous path, or the sensual outlines of beds and borders suggest movement. Alternating shapes – the gradual widening or narrowing of a space, the regular spacing of trees – do as well.

Calm white and intense blue join for a duet of gentle movement. A border of creamy white Lysimachia clethroides relates well with a stand of blue-flowering Caryopteris x clandonensis (Barbara J. Denk photograph)

When the tiny stones in a Zen garden are raked into concentric circles, movement appears. When a “stream” of large, smooth, river rocks fills a gully or trench, the sense of running water is implied. The sequence of stepping stones spaced through a cushioned ground cover of fragrant thyme invigorates the scene and helps direct the viewer’s eye through the garden. The scene is emotionally alive and visually pleasing.

Movement in a garden is essential. It’s the organic rhythm, the fluid characteristic that every garden needs in order to come to life for those who enjoy it.

Here are some tips for “animating” your garden:

• Develop a repertoire of plants:

A glass bowl - a modern birdbath - is showcased against a coppery stand of Karl Foerster grass - an exquisite choice for "motion" in the garden (Barbara J. Denk photograph)

Base your plant selection on the scale of your house and the natural setting around it. Once you’ve selected the primary plants – those that provide structure and have multiseason interest, such as ornamental grasses – you can choose a second wave of plants to “star” in specific seasons.

• Create a basic framework for design:

Choose a template and follow it consistently throughout the garden. One method is to mirror dominant lines of your house, such as repeating key architectural shapes in the landscape. Use these as a guide for shaping pathways and planting beds. For example, a home’s arched windows and doorways might be echoed in the contour of a border or patio. Alternately, you can borrow a framework for design from nature, such as the irregular rhythm of distant hills. 

• Consider the vertical dimension:

Hardscape, such as this fabulous pebble "river" running through a flagstone patio, can animate and energize the landscape. This was designed and installed by my Yakima friends Linda Knutson and Ron Sell (Debra Prinzing photograph)

Backlighting is magical, even in my own backyard. I love the morning sun as it illuminates and highlights the various blades, stems and leaves (Debra Prinzing photo).

Select plants that bring height, energy, and motion into the garden, and vary their placement for impact.

Even if surrounded by buildings on every side, your garden will respond to daily and seasonal climate changes. Watch how breezes move through the garden, and capture that energy by placing fluid plants where currents flow. Notice where the sun rises and sets in relation to your landscape, and choose trees, shrubs, grasses, and other perennials that will reflect the morning light or absorb sunset’s glow. Red and purple foliage turns flame-like when backlit. As the sun’s rays shine through fringed tassels of fountain grass or pampas grass, the garden will shimmer in response.

Sina Pearson relies on regular visits to her island garden in Washington state to inspire her teextile designs.

I met Sina Pearson in 2006 when her publicist Susan Harkavy arranged a visit to the textile designer’s aerie (aka studio, atelier, loft) in SoHo.

I was in New York City with Bill Wright to photograph an amazing glass-and-steel West Village “shed” for Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways, but I took a side trip for an hour to meet Sina and see her work.

She grew up in Washington State and studied art and textiles at the University of Washington. Our common Pacific Northwest roots gave us an easy, mutual language, designer-to-writer, as we talked about her interests, influences and passions.

Recently, Garden Design magazine invited me to profile Sina as “One to Watch,” with a short Q-and-A that appears in the November-December 2009 issue. Due to space, a portion of my interview did not make it into the print edition. So here it is in full, along with some photos that Sina shared from her garden in Washington’s Fidalgo Island (Skagit Valley).

ONE TO WATCH:

Textile designer Sina Pearson may live and work in SoHo but trips outside the city inspire her saturated stripes and vibrant abstracts.

She spends one week each month at a remote island cabin in Washington State, surrounded by a semi-wild garden, just steps away from the 1950s A-frame where she played each summer as a child. Sojourns abroad include idea-gathering places like Scandinavia, France, Mexico and the Caribbean. Collectively, these design “threads” are woven into finished cloth: confident, evocative – and high performance – textiles for residences, hotels, restaurants, offices and outdoor settings.

The designer, manufacturer and entrepreneur trained in fine arts and textiles at the University of Washington before earning a MFA in textiles from Cranbrook and studying at the Royal Academy of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. She launched Sina Pearson Textiles in 1990.

Pearson reinterprets outdoor fabric that looks as if it belongs inside, including terrycloth, chenille and boucle cloth made with Sunbrella® yarns for sunfast, stain-, rain- and mildew resistance. Her newest collection, out next spring, is called Colores de Mexico. Her influence? The orange-striped, hand-woven Mexican curtains that Pearson’s mother hung in the family’s beach cabin. “It has an ethnic, modernist vibe with a serape-like texture,” she says.

 Q. Tell me about your Fidalgo Island garden and how it informs your textiles:

 A. I could not be doing what I’m doing if I didn’t have my garden. It frees my soul and lets me experiment with weaving colors and textures together. The way I work in my garden is very much how I work in textiles. I’ve always maintained that you have to listen to what the fabric wants to be – it’s a wonderfully slow process. Similarly, I have to let my garden design itself. I observe how each plant color works together, how each season is revealed in flower, foliage and blade.  

Q. What influences you as a designer?

A. I can’t separate how I’ve grown up from what I am now. My parents were so visual – my mother was a landscape designer and my father was a photographer. We had Jack Lenor Larson’s textiles in our house. I cannot remember a time when I was not playing with fabric. Family legend recalls me cutting textiles into small pieces and arranging them on the sofa when I was two. At 12, I learned weaving from a Swedish woman and batik design from Ruth Pennington, a very fine metal artist. I created a huge, abstract piece of batik silk with fuchsia pink, bright orange and red colors. We hung it up in the sun and it looked like a stained glass window. Ruth turned to my mom and said: “Sina has a career in textiles.”

Q. How is your Scandinavian heritage reflected in your work?

A. I grew up with Danish modern furniture and I double-majored in Swedish language and literature in college. I also lived and studied in Sweden. When I design, I am looking for “emotion” – the feeling conveyed by yarns, colors and textures in my fabrics. After my last trip to Scandinavia, I created a collection evocative of what my ancestors would have woven to wrap themselves in for warmth: soft, heathery “comfort” fabrics that are hand-crafted, quiet, simple and dignified.

Q. How have you re-imagined outdoor fabric as something more than utilitarian?

A. When I first started in the contract fabric industry in the late 70s and 1980s, everything was rather plain. That all changed when I went to Unika Vaev as president and design director. We introduced the first tapestry for contract interiors. Herman Miller put our tapestries on its new paneling system and broke open the whole concept of patterned fabrics.

The same thing has happened now that I’m designing outdoor fabric with Sunbrella® yarns. I wanted to invigorate outdoor fabrics with modern designs. I’m a big proponent of mixing cool and warm colors together. I also like to use neutrals – sage, taupe, mid-tone brown – with brighter colors to give a reference to nature.

Q. What is the ideal exterior setting for Sina Pearson’s textiles?

A. A space where the interiors blend with nature as occupants move from indoors through a covered area to the outdoors. I love to see complementary fabrics and colors in all three environments. I don’t design my outdoor fabrics separate from my interiors collection. My outdoor fabrics look and feel just like indoor textiles, yet they are made with high-performance fibers for resistance to sun, mold and mildew.

Q. What is on your drafting table right now?

A. I have little piles of yarn sitting on my desk. I’m playing with brighter palettes to create fabrics with clean, crisp colors of summer. I’m also playing with simple shapes, hand-cutting paper into geometric forms – stripes and flowers. I find it very satisfying. I look like a second-grader, sitting on the floor cutting out bits and pieces.

–Debra Prinzing

The stone steps of La Foce's terraced garden draw the eye upward, towards two large Italian cypresses

I’ve barely been home from Italy for 24 hours and despite jet lag, I am still alert enough to post my first report about the two week trip to Tuscany.

One of the most memorable days was our tour of La Foce, a Tuscan estate and garden with influences dating to the 15th century when the property was built as an Inn (“Osteria”) by the Hospital of S. Maria della Scala.  It is located in the town of Chianciano, about 30 minutes southeast of where we stayed in Montisi.

“Foce” (pronounced Foe-CHAY) means “opening” or “meeting place,” and its origins are traced to the Etruscans. The name refers to the osteria’s location as a stopping place where two prominent roads intersect. The roads were traveled by pilgrims, merchants and travelers who sought rest from their journeys at La Foce.

READ MORE…

A charming Southern garden, Raleigh's Rose Cottage

Tuesday/Wednesday:  

Raleigh here I come.  

Greensboro gardener Lynda Waldrep drove me to Raleigh on Tuesday morning where I checked into the Garden Writers Association conference hotel, dropped off my gear and joined the GWA board meeting.

Nice to get Tuesday afternoon’s and Wednesday morning’s business out of the way so I could enjoy the rest of the conference once it began on Wednesday afternoon after lunch.

Wow, I got to meet heirloom seed wunderkind Jere Gettle of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

After some regional meetings and receptions for first-time attendees, the Garden Products Information Exhibit opened – four hours of checking out the new trends in plants, products and programs for the horticultural industry. The exhibit continued on Wednesday for another four hours.

Next, I joined 50 or more very new (and a few old) friends at a private garden cocktail party for garden Twitter participants. Sharon and Jim Bright, our gracious garden hosts, opened the gates to Rose Cottage, their charming place in a historic downtown neighborhood.

The GWA Tweet-up is in full swing

Raleigh hometown gal Helen Yoest of Gardening With Confidence and Elizabeth Licata of Gardening While Intoxicated/Garden Rant, planned the evening with several other volunteer Twitter friends. Proven Winners (thanks Danielle!) was our sponsor, so we had lots to nibble and sip while admiring the garden’s exuberant cottage plantings, semi-formal vegetable beds (outlined in brick) and more.

Laura Schaub, Amy Stewart and Helen Yoest, real-time Twittering

All those women and men with whom I “tweet” came together for an evening where putting a face to a name was part of the fun. Our nametags had our real names and our Twitter names (I’m “@dkprinzing”).

What amused me more than anything was watching people post comments on Twitter during the party.  I call it real-time garden tour commentary at its best.

My gal pal Mary Ann, busy with thumbs and I-phone

Later that night, I walked all the way across town with a friend to an authentic Carolina ribs BBQ dinner hosted by the Garden Media Group. A chance to catch up with some editor and writer friends, meet several of GMG’s clients, shake the hand of famed BBQ chef Ed Mitchell and eat some of his great Southern food.

Long day, but good conversations all around!

This annual gathering of gardeners is something I look forward to from year to year. Raleigh was my 8th Garden Writer Association event and I’m hooked.