The Slow Flowers Podcast is the award-winning show known as the “Voice of the Slow Flowers Movement.” Launched in 2013 as the original flower podcast, we’ve devoted more than 10 years to covering the business of flower farming, floral design, and the Slow Flowers sustainability ethos. Listen to a new episode each Wednesday, available for free download here at slowflowerspodcast.com or on iTunes, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.
June 25th, 2010
Here is my trio of vases inspired by my "Leaf it up" story in the June issue of Better Homes & Gardens. Each tiny arrangement features at least one cut succulent paired with foliage from a similarly-colored perennial.
Sometimes all you need are a few pretty leaves to conjure up a gorgeous tabletop arrangement or centerpiece. I have my talented friend Susan Appleget-Hurst, former senior associate garden editor for Better Homes & Gardens, to thank for producing a story that illustrates this idea (with several cool designs).
Susan, who now blogs at Cake in the Garden (check it out!) designed the lovely, leafy bouquets and co-produced the story with art director Scott Johnson. Then I was lucky enough to be asked to create the accompanying text. Pick up this month’s BH&G or click here for a peek at the story.
A turquoise vase gets the cool touch from lemon-lime and chartreuse ingredients.
The idea of using leaves as cut flower ingredients is nothing new. But it’s always nice to see someone else’s twist on the technique. One of the things I love about Susan’s designs is her use of white vases in several different sizes. The white really offsets the leaves and focuses the viewer’s interest on the form, texture and scale of the various cut foliage. I also loved the monochromatic and contrasting combinations of leaves.
After writing the text, I kind of forgot about this story until I opened up the June issue and saw how beautifully it turned out. I decided to try my own version of this floral design project (I can’t get more “seasonal, local and sustainable” than my own backyard!).
Looking around my landscape, I realized how many awesome succulent plants grow here. Even when a sedum, aeonium or crassula stem breaks off of the plant or gets bumped when someone pushes a chair out from the patio table, I try to “rescue” the severed piece and put it in water. Inevitably, a few roots will emerge and I can plant that cutting. So clipping a few succulent pieces for the designs you see above didn’t kill me. Once these pieces root, in water, they will be returned to the potting soil or garden bed.
My idea: To showcase the amazing color diversity of succulents. For each of three color schemes – silver-blue, maroon, and lime green – I looked for perennial foliage to match with the companion succulent. Unlike Susan’s white vases, I tried to pair the foliage hues with my slender colored-glass bud vases. I have owned this trio in green, tangerine and turquoise glass for several years. I think they came from IKEA.
These designs look sweet displayed on my block-printed cotton table cloth (it’s nice that each picks up on the botanical pattern and palette).
Here is what I included in each:
Orange vase with silver-blue ingredients.
Deep purple-maroon ingredients look dramatic against the vibrant green vase.
The Orange Glass contrasts beautifully with three silvery-blue ingredients. The succulent element is called Senecio mandraliscae. Here in Southern California, people grow this shrubby, South African succulent as a groundcover. I actually have some in a pot and I love its slightly curved blue-gray leaves. Softer textures come from my other fave silvery garden plants. First is Artemisia ‘Powis Castle’, which has lacy foliage. I clipped the taller stems from Westringia fruticosa, also called coast rosemary. It’s from Australia, has a rosemary-like texture, and looks just gorgeous growing at the base of my fruitless olive tree.
The Green Glass is a perfect foil for the deep purple-maroon ingredients. My succulent starting point was to add two small Aeonium rosettes. Not sure of the cultivar because I inherited this plant when we moved here in 2006. Almost like a touch of embroidery, the dark plum version of sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas) spills from the neck of the slender vase.
The Turquoise Glass gets a fresh accent from lime green and chartreuse stems. I started with an un-named lemon-lime sempervivum that has pretty pointed leaves. These bold forms have a fluffy collar of chartreuse dead nettle (Lamium galeobdolon).
My challenge to you is to walk outside, clippers in hand, and create a foliage bouquet with what you have growing in your garden. Don’t overlook the unexpected ingredients. Hey – maybe that awesome artichoke leaf in the vegetable patch is worthy of a starring role in a vase. Or perhaps the conifers could stand in for my succulent ingredients. Have some fun! The best part? It means you have a lovely centerpiece for free!
Posted in Creativity, floral design, Gardening, Plants, Writing | 3 Comments »
June 23rd, 2010
A pretty stunning aloe-as-sculpture in one of Joseph Marek's gardens.
Scott Shrader turned an ancient millstone into a succulent planter
Garden Scouting: It sounds so luxurious, doesn’t it?
Spending four days scouting some of the most beautiful and unique residential landscapes in and around Los Angeles!
I do it all the time – visit and tour gardens that might just make it onto the pages of the magazines and newspapers to which I contribute. And yet, achieving the “get” is not always that luxurious. It’s fun and rewarding. But also hard work.
Successful garden scouting requires lots of telephone calls to set up appointments. It means I have to lean on my personal connections to cajole invitations from reclusive garden owners or rock star designers. And it demands that I put way too many miles on my Volvo odometer. A lot! (Thank goodness for NPR.)
Most of all, this job means being extremely open to everything I see, while also keeping out a discerning eye for that magical glimpse of a perfect story.
It’s alot like being on a treasure hunt when you don’t know the ending, but I wouldn’t have it any other way!
Jenny Andrews, executive editor for Garden Design, one of the magazines for which I am contributing editor, was in Los Angeles a few weeks ago for a four-day scouting marathon. As she put it, it felt like we were college roommates for four days . . . probably because Jenny ended up staying with me for most of the time. She got to experience the craziness of the Prinzing-Brooks household with kids, dog, schedules, and more. And, we put 700 miles on my car in four days. We were both exhausted by the end.
READ MORE…
Posted in Architecture, Furniture design, Gardening, General, interior design, Landscape Design, Plants, Writing | 4 Comments »
June 20th, 2010
The back story
The cake says it all. Good-bye again.
My nearly four years in Los Angeles have been quite amazing. We arrived here in late August, 2006, not really excited about leaving our beloved Seattle, but trying hard to embrace our “new” life here in SoCal.
The mood around our household has changed dramatically in 2010. The boy who was entering high school when we moved here has just graduated and is college-bound. The child who came here as a 4th grader is now a teenager, ready for 8th grade. The husband who came here for a pretty great job lost it during the financial meltdown. But in the interim, he earned an MBA from UCLA and joined an amazing new company NOT in financial services – one that uses his combination of legal and business talents for a compelling new business strategy.
Happy in LA
As for me, well, this four-year California chapter has been quite an adventure. I have grown professionally, honed my design sensibilities and in many ways gained more confidence (guess that comes with turn 50 anyway, right?). I have met and interviewed incredible people – designers of homes and gardens, artists, actors, directors, producers, animators – famous people and unusual characters alike, all of whom embody this beautiful spot on the planet. Writing about the homes and gardens they possess has been a privilege. Seeing those stories appear in some of the most well-respected publications has been quite satisfying.
So now, we are moving again. And while I have alluded for months to our plans to relocate to Pittsburgh, the surprise ending of our California chapter is that we are actually returning to Seattle.
Bruce’s company – at what feels like the eleventh hour – has shifted strategy and is moving its corporate HQ to Seattle. Manna from heaven, I say. A small part of me thought the Pittsburgh thing would be a fun adventure (actually, after what we’ve been through on the unemployment front, I would have willingly moved to Siberia). I have a few acquaintances in Pittsburgh – through Garden Writers Association – and I was interested in spending more time there getting to know them better. That optimism was combined with anxiety about having to garden in Zone 4 or 5; whatever low temperatures Pittsburgh experiences in the winter, at the very least I know it has snow – lots of it.
So here we are, on the threshold of yet another move. But one that brings us full-circle back to the city where Bruce and I first met, lived as were newlyweds, gave birth to and raised two wonderful sons, became first-time homeowners, and even built our dream house, living a life surrounded by so many cherished family and friends.
READ MORE…
Posted in Creativity, General, Spiritual Practices, Writing | 11 Comments »
June 19th, 2010
Tempest holds a stainless-steel Mesh orb in its arms. The piece measures 70 inches tall.
As a follow-up to my last post about round objects in the landscape, I thought I’d show off a few more of my spherical works of art, from my backyard. You can see how appealing it is to start with a shape and then repeat it often. Some of the orbs in my garden are more obvious than others. One of the round forms is quite subtle. It is part of a sculpture called “Tempest” by my friend Jennifer Asher and her collaborator-fabricator Mario Lopez.
Jennifer owns TerraSculpture with Karen Neill Tarnowski and the two women never cease to amaze me at their innovation and talent. These pieces fill a void in the outdoor sculpture world – bringing contemporary sculpture to the residential setting at far below the huge price tags you usually see.
Tempest, closer up
TerraSculpture originally created Tempest in a powder-coated bright orange finish. My husband Bruce was interested in the piece but suggested that we have Jennifer and Mario make the base in weathered steel, which somehow fits our style better.
I love the shape of the base – three “arms” join together and then gradually open to cradle a stainless steel mesh ball. The weathered steel (some might call it “rust”) echoes the dark burgundy-rust blades of my garden’s New Zealand flax and Cordyline plants. There’s something really wonderful about the piece’s see-through quality, too. Upon seeing “Tempest” standing in our garden, visitors are likely to utter a gasp of delight, followed by the immediate question: Where did you find that awesome piece?
My weathered steel orb - a pretty object in the garden.
More steel – also rusted – appears in the 24-inch orb I purchased from my friends Annette Gutierrez and Mary Gray of Pot-ted in Los Angeles. I’ve shown earlier pics of their tangerine and aqua-finished objects.
For me, the weathered steel works well with everything else in my garden. See how pretty this piece looks on the “California Gold” crushed gravel? On the other hand, if Annette and Mary ever decide to make their metal orb series in lime green, I will be the first in line to snag a small-medium-large trio!
The perennial bed is dotted with orbs, from Bauer Pottery
And what about those awesome Bauer balls? I think I have six of them (it’s an ever-changing number). Here are two of them, looking nice and settled-in at the base of a New Zealand flax. These Bauer glazes are called Lime Green (15 inch size) and French Blue (8-inch size).
The glossy finish and classic round forms add up to nothing short of stunning, especially when surrounded by foliage, flowers and ornamental grass plumes.
Colorful glass floats add a lot of character to this fountain.
I have a thing for floating glass balls, too. Here is a little cluster of them, floating in the fountain on our entry porch. There are several glass artists who make these decorative balls. You can usually find the artists and their wares at major flower shows.
One of my favorite sources is Glass Gardens NW. Owner-artist Barbara Sanderson makes a rainbow of glass floats and orbs, as well as larger sculpture pieces for the garden. Check her out!
Finally, the garden has curves of a more organic nature – and that is in the outline of two crescent-shaped perennial beds. With so much linear geometry in my backyard (the horizontal lines of the house, patio, pergola, wall and pathways) it’s nice to visually break up these forms with sinuous curves.
Posted in Creativity, Landscape Design | 4 Comments »
June 16th, 2010
ATTENTION Better Homes & Gardens readers! Thank you for visiting! Click here to see my gallery of circles, orbs, spheres, and globes in the garden.
The Summer 2010 issue of Nature’s Garden (a Better Homes & Gardens title edited by the very talented Jane Austin McKeon) features two articles by me. Here’s a sneak peek at those stories.
The fist one, titled “Got Nectar?”, is about naturalists and nursery owners Steve and Donna Brigham.
The story, produced by Andrea Caughey and photographed by Ed Gohlich, describes how the Brighams created a 1/4-acre Hummingbird and Butterfly Garden at their former nursery in the San Diego area.
Buena Creek Gardens is now owned by Steve and Shari Matteson, and you can visit year-round for a great selection of native and wildlife-friendly plants. You can read the full article, here.
If you’re inspired to attract more hummingbirds and butterflies to your backyard, take a gander down these two lists, shared by Steve Brigham.
You can meet Steve and hear him lecture in Pasadena on Septemer 25th, as part of Pacific Horticulture’s symposium, “Style and Whimsy in the Sustainable Garden.” Steve will speak on “Attracting Birds & Butterflies to Your Garden and Keeping Them There.”
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Top Nectar Plants for Hummers
Brazilian verbena (Verbena bonariensis); 3-6 ft., summer
*Butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii and hybrids); 3-10 ft., spring and summer
Bottlebrush (Callistemon citrinus and hybrids); 10-15 ft., spring and summer
Coral bell (Heuchera sp.); 1-2 ft., spring to fall
Firecracker flower or cigar plant (Cuphea ignea or C. llavea); 1-3 ft., spring and summer
*Flowering sage (Salvia sp.); countless varieties in perennial (1-3 ft.) and shrub (2-5 ft.) forms, spring to fall
Fuchsia (Fuchsia x hybrida), 3-6 ft. or trailing type for hanging basket, summer
Grevillea (Grevillea sp.), shrub form (3-8 ft.), summer
*Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), 3 ft., summer
Penstemon (Penstemon sp. and hybrids), 1-2 ft., spring to fall
Peruvian lily (Alstroemeria hybrids), 1-2 ft., summer
Torch lily (Kniphofia hybrids), 2-5 ft., summer to fall
Butterflies and lavender - a scene from Epcot's International Flower & Garden Festival
Top Nectar Plants for Butterflies
Butterfly flower (Gaura lindheimeri), 2-4 ft, spring to fall
Gloriosa daisy (Rudbeckia hirta), 3-4 ft., summer
Heliotrope (Heliotropium arborescens), 3-4 ft., summer
Jupiter’s beard (Centranthus ruber), 3 ft., summer and fall
Lantana (Lantana hybrids), 2-5 ft., summer
Marigold (Tagetescultivars), 2-4 ft., spring and summer
Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia), 2-3 ft., summer
Pincushion flower (Scabiosa columbaria), 2 ft., summer
Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), 3-4 ft., summer
Shasta daisy (Chrysanthemum maximum), 2-4 ft., summer and fall
Tickseed (Coreopsis grandiflora and cultivars), 1-2 ft., summer
Yarrow (Achillea millefolium and hybrids), 2 ft., summer
Here’s how to find Buena Creek Gardens: 418 Buena Creek Rd., San Marcos, California, 760-744-2810; www.buenacreekgardens.com
Three native plants + one terra cotta pot to satisfy hummingbirds
My second story is part of the magazine’s “Weekend Project” – an easy-to-accomplish design idea created by Patty Roess of the Tree of Life Nursery in San Juan Capistrano, California.
“Sweeten the Pot” includes all the steps you need to attract hummingbirds to your patio or deck with a container full of nectar-rich native plants.
Here are the ingredients:
- a decorative container, at least 18 inches in diameter, to accomodate three plants
- broken pottery shards
- good-quality (organic) potting soil
- native plants with features hummingbirds appreciate (tubular blooms, hot or bright colors, lots of nectar); Tree of Life suggests Dudleya edulis, Mimulus aurantiacus and Salvia clevelandii.
- natural accents, such as stones and branches
1. Use one or more pieces of broken pottery to cover the drainage hole.
2. Fill approximately 1/4 to 1/3 of the container with high-quality potting soil. Tree of Life Nursery uses a special fast-draining mix developed for native plants. To make your own mix, combine equal parts regular potting soil and commercial potting mix formulated for desert or cactus plants.
3. Arrange plants in the container, placing the tallest plant toward the back. Add soil until it reaches 1/2- to 1-inch below the pot’s rim. Add decorative accents, such as mementos you have gathered in nature. Water thoroughly. In warm climates, you can transplant these California natives to a sunny garden as soon as they finish blooming.
Enjoy!
Posted in Gardening, General, Landscape Design, Plants | 2 Comments »
June 14th, 2010
In the July 2010 issue of Better Homes & Gardens, I wrote a short item for my “Debra’s Garden” column called “Curves Ahead.” It could also have been titled “Three Cheers for the Circle.”
I am obsessed with round shapes — balls, spheres and orbs — and I love to dot the garden with these forms. This design trick relates to one of those basic lessons anyone who studies the art of landscape design is taught: Choose an idea and repeat it frequently.
My eye is naturally drawn to orbs and globes. They are so pleasing to me – in fact, I wrote about this passion previously – in an earlier blog post, “Zen of the Circle.”
Ornamental globes, obelisks and balls have taken up residence here in my Southern California backyard — check out the photograph below.
And it’s not just the three-dimensional geometry that puts a smile on my face. Curved outlines, such as the edge of a perennial border, patch of lawn or a turn in the path echo the orbs and reappear as arcs or crescents in the garden.
My interest in the sexy, organic globe shape has come “full circle” (pun intended) from a single idea to a cohesive design theme and a nice way to use ornamentation. Look around your own garden. Wherever you see a bare spot, perhaps it’s calling out for an orb or two.
I included a post-script note in my BH&G piece, promising to share my gallery of rounded and curved design ideas with our readers. Here it is – enjoy! Please send me your own photos and I’ll include the best ideas here, too. Check the bottom of this post for some of my favorite shopping resources.
My cluster of orbs in a dreamy palette of green, blue, and teal - with a wonderful mosaic orb by Vashon Island, Wash., artist Clare Dohna
A stunning, cool blue ceramic globe in a Yakima, Wash., garden. You can tell it is mounted on a pedestal to elevate it above the foliage.
Yes, these awesome orbs are actually vintage bowling balls. Each one rests on a painted flowerpot and is stair-stepped outside the porch of Berkeley, Calif., artist Marcia Donohue.
A finely-carved spiral woodworking detail appears at the end of a beam that forms the roof of a dining pavilion in our book, Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways.
The open circle - a "moon window" or "dreamcatcher" - provides a beautiful perspective in my friend Mary-Kate Mackey's Eugene, Ore., garden. It is mounted beneath an arbor where a hard kiwi grows.
My friend Kathy Fries designed a square-in-a-circle knot garden in her Seattle area landscape.
Plants like these golden barrel cactuses are naturally orb-like. You can see these at Lotusland, an estate garden in the Santa Barbara area.
This graduated set of concrete orbs just knocked me out when I first saw it in Sun Valley, Idaho a few summer's back. Thanks to my friend Mary Ann Newcomer, I got to visit some pretty amazing landscapes there.
A visit to any well-stocked garden center is likely to showcase the myriad choices of balls. I spotted a rainbow of gazing balls at Green Thumb Nursery in Ventura, Calif.
Restful, zen-like. Three types of moss are sculpted into a gravel garden display designed by Southern California landscape architect Graham Stanley.
Look for circular forms in public gardens - you'll find them. The arches of a lovely stone bridge are reflected in this pond to create an almost perfect circle. This bridge is at the classical Chinese Garden, recently opened at the Huntington Library, Art Collection and Botanical Garden in San Marino, Calif.
Artist Robert Irwin sculpted flowering azalea shrubs into a circular maze at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. The clipped, concentric circles bloom in white, pink and magenta flowers.
The pebbles in a path detail, arranged on edge and curved into an eye-pleasing pattern.
A round "carpet" laid with sand-set concrete cobble-style pavers. Designed for my Seattle friends Rand Babcock and Tony Nahra by Daniel Lowery of Queen Anne Gardens.
If stone isn't your thing, try turf. This tiny grass "throw-rug" appears in the Seattle backyard of landscape architect Erik Wood and designer Carina Langstraat
Wow! Metal obelisks - powdercoated in orange (or turquoise), designed by Annette Guttierez and Mary Gray from Potted, in Los Angeles (see ordering details below)
Best resources for spherical garden ornamentation:
Pot-ted Store: Three graduated sizes of balls made from steel strapping will lend a lovely moment of architecture to the landscape. I have the medium-sized one in weathered steel (my preferred material). Annette and Mary, owners of Los Angeles-based Pot-ted, now sell a series finished with bright orange and turquoise powder-coating – their fav hues. Oops – I mean “aqua” and “tangerine.” Inquire about custom colors! Prices: $98 (18-inches); $139 (24-inches); and $169 (30 inches). Shipping available.
Bauer Pottery Garden Orbs: My friend Janek Boniecki has revived the classic California earthenware known as Bauer Pottery. In addition to making reproduction urns, dishes and serving pieces (in that awesome, sun-drenched palette), Janek and crew also create ceramic garden orbs glazed in Bauer colors. Yellow, dove gray, French blue, Federal blue, chartreuse, lime green, midnight blue, parrot green, turquoise, white, black and aqua (for some reason, the Bauer orange pieces are slightly more expensive, perhaps because of the glazing involved).
I am a bit addicted to these “globally admired” orbs, thanks to the company’s occasional factory outlet sales in Los Angeles. I have five or six of these gumball-shaped objects, which look tres-bien in and among foliage, flowers, blades and stems. Prices: $75-$82 (8-inch); $100-$110 (12-inch); and $150-$165 (15-inch). If you think you’ll be in the Los Angeles area sometime, make sure to check the Bauer web site to see the warehouse sale schedule. You will definitely find great prices and maybe even an orb or two (if I don’t get there first!).
Clare Dohna, Mosaic Artist: Based on Vashon Island, Wash., artist Clare Dohna makes vibrant mosaic tiles in dazzling botanical shapes (flowers, bugs, leaves and more). She uses these tiles to adorn the surfaces of all sorts of wonderful garden sculpture and art, such as bird baths, bird houses, egg shapes and — my favorite – mosaic spheres. You can see one of her pieces at the top of this page; it plays nicely with the solid-colored Bauer orbs. Contact Clare directly (from her web site) to inquire about color schemes and prices.
Posted in Creativity, General, Landscape Design, Playfulness, Writing | 14 Comments »
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