When doing a planting plan many garden designers, landscape designers, landscape architects design for the winter landscape first, then orchestrate their plant palette for the remaining three seasons afterwords.
Here are five favorite shrubs for zone 7 New York City gardens. Do you agree? Which shrubs would you add to this list?
Read MoreHortus conclusus is an enclosed garden or walled garden. It protected the private from public intrusion, creating a barrier, that brought nature within its walls.
Read MoreThe beauty of fall color surpasses all other seasonal highlights. It's a joy to create a colorful nyc garden design among the grey buildings and early winter skies. Here are my five favorite shrubs for fall, whether I've planted them on a roof garden, brownstone yard, residential property or college campus landscape. A late-season garden is best described by a landscape designer friend.. "with all the plants flopping over, somewhat disheveled from their perfect summer form, it's as if we're at a party where everyone stayed a bit too long!"
Read MoreI have marigolds from Kew Gardens, wisteria from Dumbarton Oaks. Two days ago, I was at Wave Hill, in front of a border where I saw a spent flower head that dried up, fallen to the ground with a capsule of seeds. My daughter watched me look left, then right. No one was watching (nor there to ask) so I bent down and nonchalantly picked it up and put it in my pocket.
Years ago I wanted to taste a pawpaw fruit (Assimina triloba). I read it was one of the largest fruit in North America, the fruit was custardy, tasted like a pear/apple/banana, somewhat tropical. Early in the year I noticed a couple of these trees at a public botanical garden and planned to return later in the year after the plant had fruited. I arrived a little later than I had planned and found a couple of these pawpaw fruit had fallen to the ground. At that point I figured (or rationalized) it was either me or the rodents that are eating this. “Survival of the fittest” set in.
If you liked the above anecdote, you may also enjoy my related blog post.
“The greatest service which can be rendered to any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.” –Thomas Jefferson
The Darwinian approach of Natural Selection asserts that species adapt to various environments. Selection is the process by which the organisms that are best adapted to their environment tend to be the ones that survive to reproduce and pass on their genes to the next generation, hence the term ‘survival of the fittest.’ The environment is the ‘genetic sculptor’ which can, over time, change the characteristics of the organisms within a population.
Read MoreA simple design solution. Great urban sculpture. Witty and inventive. Possibly low cost.
The median strip is the reserved area separating opposing lanes of traffic. In many municipalities they function as green belts, a landscape design with trees, beautiful plantings, lawn grasses, etc. In locations such as New York City's Park Avenue there is a mixture of garden art, landscape sculpture, seasonal plantings. But this site specific landscape installation works with the grit of the city. The humor of the twin yellow lines somewhat symbolic of the bumpy ride on city streets, the stoping and starting of city traffic.
Read MorePerhaps the perfect site to create a garden design for a jardin potager?
As precedent research for a college campus commission (public space landscape design) I've been studying Beatrix Farrand's college campus landscape design work. Farrand's landscape design work at public institutions included Yale, University of Chicago, Oberlin, Vassar, Hamilton and Princeton. My understanding is that the Graduate College of Princeton is the site where her work is best preserved.
A few of Beatrix Farrand's classical landscape design principles were applied at the courtyard..
Read MoreA landscape designer can design a low maintenance garden, but there is no such situation where it could be a...
Read MoreImpervious surfaces (such as driveways) limit the amount of stormwater capture and retention. During rain storms these surfaces...
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