Garden Field Trip: Descanso Gardens, Los Angeles

January 3rd, 2010

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.

Posted in Gardening, General, Landscape Design, Plants | 4 Comments »

Keeyla Meadows colors her garden world

December 20th, 2009

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:

Posted in Book reviews, Creativity, Furniture design, Gardening, General, Landscape Design, Plants, Playfulness, Sheds & Havens, Writing | 8 Comments »

Better Homes & Gardens and me

December 17th, 2009

Don't you love this giant red trowel, called "Plantois"?

On Nov. 30th, I took one of the only direct flights from LAX to Des Moines, Iowa (on Allegiant Air), arriving in the Midwest around 8 p.m.

Susan picked me up at the airport and whisked me off to her cozy home where we sipped wine and reminisced about being in Tuscany together only four weeks earlier.

We indulged in sentimental memories, of course. The week in Italy – in a village called Montisi – was life-affirming, especially because it was to celebrate my big Five-Oh.

Susan on a sunny Tuscan afternoon at La Foce

The 10 women who joined me, including Susan, are some of my dearest friends. I would do anything to recapture that week we had together. We’d all love to return as quickly as possible!

The Italy week was an amazing “new beginning” for Susan as she dreamed about her next venture, a culinary destination she plans to open in rural Iowa. Stay tuned for news on “Applehurst Farm,” the project Susan is developing as I write this.

Doug Jimerson and Eric Liskey, BH&G's garden guys

On Tuesday morning, Susan dropped me off at the world headquarters for Meredith Corporation, publisher of Better Homes & Gardens and a million other home, garden, food and lifestyle titles.

I was to spend the day as guest of Doug Jimerson, group editor of all Meredith’s “outdoor” content (books, mags, online) and Eric Liskey, deputy garden editor of Better Homes & Gardens magazine.

It was hard to be businesslike when I kept running into the friends I’ve made and worked with over the years:

They included James Baggett, editor of Country Gardens; Nick Crow, art director of Country Gardens; Jane Austin McKeon, editor of Nature’s Garden magazine and her art director Jarrett Einck; Denny Schrock, a talented editor and past fellow Garden Writers Association board member; Justin Hancock, BH&G web garden editor;  and David Speer, editorial manager. Hugs and high-fives ensued. These are people I would rather be friends with than spend my time hustling for assignments.

Doug and Eric and I brainstormed about possible ways I can get more involved in BH&G’s editorial pages. Then we met up with Gayle Goodson Butler, editor-in-chief of the mothership!

Wow – what a great experience. Gayle, Doug, Eric and I had a delicious lunch during which we tossed around story ideas and discussed outdoor living trends. It looks like I will join the BH&G family as a contributing editor for gardening and outdoor content in 2010. I couldn’t be more excited!!!

I'm posing with BH&G garden editor Eric Liskey

I also posed with Doug Jimerson, Meredith's Group Editor for Garden & Outdoor Living

After lunch, we took a tour of the Meredith “campus,” which includes an incredible, larger-than-life sculpture of a trowel called “PLANTOIS.” The pop-art style of this sculpture reminded me of the 19-foot eraser at the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle, called “Typewriter Eraser, Scale X.”  Turns out, BH&G’s trowel was also designed by Claes Oldenborg .

A site plan of BH&G's gorgeous test garden

Doug and Eric also showed me Better Homes & Gardens’  Test Garden, a beautiful walled oasis in the heart of the corporate campus. Here’s a plan of the garden (right) and a company description of how it is used:

It is an outdoor studio for our photographers, a venue for corporate entertaining, and a meeting and lunch spot for employees. While inner-city, the garden is landscaped in the style of someone’s backyard. Or, actually, several someones’ backyard. Because anywhere you take a look in our garden, if you turn ever so slightly, you will have a whole new vista. Because anywhere you take a look in our garden, if you turn ever so slightly, you will have a whole new vista. And so will our cameras, as we set about photographing how-to sequences and plant portraits, and documenting the performance of new plants. In all, there are 22 distinct areas in the Test Garden.

Yes, a rose was still in bloom on Dec. 1st

Mind you, this was on Dec. 1st in Des Moines, USDA Zone 5 or something like that. But several roses were still in bloom and the garden looked almost ready for its dormant winter phase, with lots of fresh mulch spread around, grasses and perennials cut back and everything tidy.

I was particularly drawn to the green shed, of course. I found out from David Speer that the plans for this potting shed are a free benefit of joining BH&G’s new Garden Club.

I do love this green potting shed with gabled roofline

For $9.95, you get the shed plans and other cool resources. Check out how to sign up here.  

If you find yourself in Des Moines, you can schedule a tour with garden manager Sandra Gerdes on Fridays from noon to 2 p.m., May through October. The garden is located at 1716 Locust Street, Des Moines, IA 50312. The phone number is 515-284-3994.

Here are more pics of the beautiful Test Garden:

By the way, the original test garden is on Doug Jimerson’s farm outside Des Moines. I got to visit that evening and join him and Karen Weir Jimerson, his writer-wife, for a delicious dinner.

Okay, doesn’t it make you feel better to know that the guy who heads up all of Meredith’s garden/outdoor living content is basically a gentleman farmer? In addition to their lovely farm and century-old farmhouse, Doug and Karen tend to six dogs, at least six cats (I lost count), a flock of sheep, a huge family of chickens and roosters, donkeys and horses. Before dinner, Doug gave me a tour of the Jimerson Farm in the waning daylight. I thought about how much I could love living on a farm in Iowa. Never mind. I’m just going to visit Susan and Jerry when Applehurst Farm gets up and running.

As for BH&G, my first contributions won’t appear until May 2010, but you can be assured that lots of creative storytelling will occur between now and then.

I’m excited – and grateful – for this cool opportunity!

Let’s see what 2010 brings!!!

A Post Script. I flew home from Des Moines on Dec. 2nd. While I was there, the weather was beautiful, with brilliant blue skies, sunshine and balmy (for Iowa) low 50-degree temperatures. One week later. . . yes, only one week later, my friends were buried in 16 inches of snowfall that practically shut down Des Moines. I heard that something like only 17 out of 60 flights were allowed to depart from the Des Moines Airport.

Whew. I totally lucked out. Thank you to the weather gods!

Posted in Creativity, General, Writing | 6 Comments »

Rolling Greens nursery and garden emporium comes to Hollywood

December 16th, 2009

Gourmet food, exotic tea blends and a library of design books fill the new Rolling Greens in Hollywood

Last Thursday, a vintage tire shop in the heart of Hollywood was the setting for a festive pre-opening bash thrown by Rolling Greens, its new tenant.

Designers, landscapers and horticulture fans gathered to sip, graze, explore (and shop!) at the hottest new garden emporium in Los Angeles. My editors at Garden Design magazine asked me to attend and check out the happenin’s.

Rolling Greens’ second location is the brainchild of owner Greg Salmeri and his colleague and creative director Angela Hicks. The original store in L.A.’s Culver City is a distinctive nursery, home and garden destination, formerly only for the trade, that opened to the public in 2004.

Tire dealer-turned-garden emporium, in a historic, weathered building that's full of character

For his new outlet, Salmeri snagged the lease on Town Tire Company, a weathered brick building that has been a Hollywood landmark at the corner of Beverly Blvd. and Gardner Ave. Built in 1930, the iconic structure was originally a food market and then in 1963 became a tire store.

“I’ve had my eye on the Town Tire Co. building for years and dreamed of opening Rolling Greens in this incredible space,” Salmeri says. “In this new location, we’ve expanded our offerings into home categories beyond what we offer at our Culver City location.”

Greg Salmeri

Salmeri and Hicks turned the tire shop’s unpolished attributes into appealing design elements for Rolling Greens. There are big metal garage doors that roll up to connect the indoor spaces with the fresh-air ones. The original concrete floor has been cleaned up and the exposed brick walls sandblasted. Once covered over, several huge glass doorways topped with half-circle transom windows have been exposed to invite sunshine into the 1,000-square-foot bed and bath department. The cash-wrap counters are clad in 19^th century pressed-tin ceiling tiles. The “color greenhouse” is a glass-and-steel dividing wall that encloses an area for indoor plants, including orchids and ferns. Panes of amethyst and bottle green glass replaced broken sections, creating a vintage greenhouse backdrop at the center of the store.

READ MORE…

Posted in Architecture, Creativity, Entertainment, floral design, General, interior design, Landscape Design, Plants, Playfulness | 4 Comments »

A visit to Sharon Lovejoy’s garden shed

November 25th, 2009

Sharon Lovejoy and me

In the middle of last week, when I really didn’t have the time to do it, I drove northbound, to central California, where I spent 24 hours with talented writer-illustrator-naturalist Sharon Lovejoy and her smart and kind husband Jeff Prostovich. I met Sharon a little over two years ago when Nan Sterman and I drove to the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show with our friend Joan Bolton of Santa Barbara Garden Design. It was our Garden Writer Caravan and Road Trip. First, Nan took the train/bus from San Diego to my neck of the woods (Ventura Co.); then, the next morning, we drove to Santa Barbara to pick up Joan. Another 90 minutes north of Joan, up Hwy. 101, and we arrived to visit Sharon and Jeff. They fed us, feted us, and hopped in their car to follow the caravan.

A collection of Sharon's charming and inspiring books

Sharon is a total rock star in the Garden Writing Galaxy and I was so excited to have a chance to spend time with her and Jeff.

She has had a huge following ever since she started writing “Heart’s Ease,” a monthly naturalist’s column for the former Country Living Gardener magazine. Sharon’s blog is fun and highly personal – it’s read by friends and fans around the globe.

Her illustrated books about gardening, gardening with children, gardening for wildlife, gardening with food — oh, there are so many and they are like little love letters — have sold hundreds of thousands of copies over the years. In our world, that is unparalleled, I tell you.

If, like me, you love the way Sharon involves children and their grownups with the natural world, be on the lookout for her next book – out in January 2010! It’s called Toad Cottages & Shooting Stars (and it features her sweet artist-granddaughter, Sara, on the cover).

Sharon and Jeff and I had a magical 24 hours in which we basically talked, ate, drank, cooked, went to see the Lone Pine Arboretum and the plant nursery at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, admired nature, and compared notes about our industry (?) and the “new media” platforms we’re all learning to navigate.

We had to force ourselves to go to bed last Tuesday night . . . the fire was burning in the fireplace and we had so much to say to one another. But we drifted off to sleep and rose on Wednesday morning in time for me to join Sharon at her writers’ group, during which yet another sparkling facet of this talented writer was revealed to me (hint: she is writing a wonderful young adult novel and I can’t wait for it to be completed AND published!).

A sweet retreat in the heart of Sharon's garden

It was nice to do something very spontaneous (and very nice that my own husband Bruce held down the fort at home so I could take the trip). I’ve been anxious to see Sharon’s new garden shed.

I had a sneaking suspicion I would be able to persuade Sharon to let me interview her on camera, so I asked – and lucky for you – she said yes. (And there was Jeff, the smart marketer, egging us on and actually directing us at one point.)

We made this totally rough-and-rugged video with my little Flip camera and gave the footage to Shirley Bovshow of Garden World Report. Shirley cleaned it up and used a portion of my tour with Sharon on today’s show. You can watch it here, along with contributions from Ken Druse and Ellen Zachos, two of my favorite garden writer-designers on the east coast.

Sharon promised me a personal tour, and here it is:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv4OT8NukZ8

This entire experience reminded me of why I love what I do and the people with whom I share this journey.

Since this is Thanksgiving week, I’m thinking about gratitude:

1. I’m thankful that Nan introduced me to Sharon. Nan’s heart is big enough to share her blessings with her friends. I love that about Nan. It’s not the first time she’s opened a door for me, and I hope I can reciprocate.

2. I’m thankful that Sharon and Jeff have adopted me as a friend, and for their generous gift of time, ideas, support, encouragement, shelter (hey, I didn’t mention getting to sleep in the cozy loft at the top of a spiral staircase in Sharon’s art studio!!!) and food (oh, time around the table in their farmhouse kitchen was delicious – in more ways than one).

3. I’m thankful that there are so many kindred spirits in the gardening world, especially for innovators like Shirley Bovshow who just make things happen in new ways, pioneering the path that we all wish to follow (but when we don’t have a road map….she’s bound to!)

4. I’m thankful for my long-suffering spouse and partner, Bruce. He always encourages me to take these trips and excursions, even though it usually means more work for him. I can’t wait for the time when he’ll be freer to join me (and vice-versa).

That’s it for now.

Posted in Book reviews, Creativity, General, Playfulness, Sheds & Havens, Writing | 11 Comments »