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letters
From the Editors
I
n this issue, each story intersects with others to create a reflection of our society as a manifestation of how we live today. Outdoor style is influenced by these visual and cultural shifts just like any other design discipline. Young designers (all under 40) who are coming up through the ranks and shaking things up are profiled in Fresh Take: Young Designers. In Features, the new classic gardens of the north and south reflect a growing interest in purely American design traditions. In furniture and fashion, grey is an emerging color trend, and Mood demonstrates how it can be interpreted for high style in any outdoor living space. It’s our one-year anniversary, and the excitement of sharing great design outside with you in Leaf hasn’t diminished. I hope you savor the issue, as well as the season.
SUSAN COHAN
H
appy Anniversary! This month is big for me and anniversaries. Leaf turns one, my own Studio ‘g’ blog turned four, and (somewhat unfathomably), I will be married for 15 years! In all honesty, I‘ve never seriously considered what it would feel like to make it to these milestones. But now that they are all here, I’m pleased to be able to look back with pride and pleasure. These adventures, with their twists and turns, have been the best I could have hoped for. Leaf continues to enjoy the excitement of newness (and experimentation), whereas Studio ‘g’ has reached that semi-mature phase where a complete makeover recently seemed in order. I’m hoping that they both get to 15, where everything feels a little more settled, yet solid enough to upend once in a while—just for the fun of it.
ROCHELLE GREAYER
ON THE COVER Photography and garden design by Brendan Moar
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contributors
Christine Best
has spent many years in product development, buying, and management for Martha Stewart Living, Bloomingdale’s, Barnes and Noble Home, Nook accessories, and OpenSky. Outside of work, she pursues her passion in product, interior, and garden design.
Naomi Slade
is a horticultural journalist, graduate biologist, and occasional photographer. Her interests include plants, people, botany, environment, and design. She is a regular contributor to many national horticultural and lifestyle magazines in the UK and the RHS online.
Kelly Fitzsimmons
has been photographing children and families for nearly 20 years. She currently has photos on exhibit entitled “Hall of Hope” in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center where she also works.
P. Allen Smith
is an awardwinning designer, gardening, and lifestyle expert. He is the host of two public television programs, P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home, P. Allen Smith’s Garden to Table and the syndicated 30-minute show, P. Allen Smith Gardens.
Elizabeth Licata
Brendan Moar
Jen Sundeen
James Yoch
is the editor of Buffalo Spree magazine and the author of Garden Walk Buffalo. She blogs at gardenrant.com. She spends snowy winters in Buffalo forcing almost as many bulbs inside as she has plants in her garden outside!
Founder of The Durga Yoga Studio, The Harvard Farmers’ Market, Clara’s Canning Club, 108Gifts, and The Scott Road Commune. Smoky red wine is her perfect complement to camping, tree climbing, all manner of rituals, festivals, fabulous local food, live music, bonfires,
works as TV host, landscape architect, author, photographer, and sometime actor/performer. He is the star of Dry Spell Gardening, Moar Gardening, and The Renovators in Australia. He loves creating gardens that push boundaries, buttons, and heartstrings.
teaches Shakespeare at the University of Oklahoma, writes about Renaissance landscape and literature, and consults on historical gardens. His Landscaping the American Dream won the Merit Award for Communication from the American Society of Landscape Architects.
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dirt
TRAVELING LIGHT
Cultivation is Key to Conservation in Plant Hunter’s Welsh Nursery BY NAOMI SLADE
H
idden in a valley in west Wales, Shipton Bulbs is a very unusual nursery—a stone cottage caught between hanging woodland, tumbling water, and a lackadaisical vegetable patch. It features stock beds filled
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with thriving native and unusual perennials. In spring, the bank above the cottage is brilliant with bluebells. It is as if John Shipton and his daughters, Astra and Aelfwyn, have carved the place from wilderness.
Photography by Naomi Slade
Left: Aelfwyn Shipton harvesting bluebell bulbs. Above: Bulbs ready for dispatch.
As nurseries go, Shipton Bulbs is the ultimate low-impact system. The plants are simply settled in their preferred conditions and, with relaxed seasonality, left to grow freely until they are ready for sale. The native bluebells, Hyacinthoides non-scripta, grow as cultivated stock; the larger bulbs are handgraded for sale and the smaller bulbs are carefully replanted. Cultivating desirable plants helps to protect wild stock depletion by unrestricted collection (as has happened with bulbs and cyclamen in Continental Europe). In contrast to seeds—which are usually produced, and wasted, in liberal quantities—bulbs take a long time to reach flowering size. This makes them vulnerable to overexploitation. In a complete ecosystem, species are interlinked, depending on one another for survival. If an element is removed, or the symbioses disrupted, the entire system can suffer.
“All plants rely on soil organisms to a huge extent,” explains John. “You can put NPK fertilizer on a plant and just let it rip, but it is more complex than that. I’m not into fertilizing bulbs and other plants. I don’t need to; the ground does it anyway. Plus, the cost of producing nitrogen and phosphorous for fertilizer
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dirt is not very sustainable.” Wherever they originate, garden plants will do best in situations that resemble their natural habitat. Indeed, John feels that native species are underrated as ornamentals. “I think gardening has been changed hugely by Beth Chatto and her maxim of ‘right plant, right place’. Awareness has increased, yet many Bluebells, people still buy plants that Hyacinthoides are totally unsuitable for their non-scripta, in a climate. Native plants are perWelsh hedgerow fectly adapted to the local area. Some, like bluebells, snowderlust and, following in his footsteps drops, and colchicums, are very showy to remote corners of the world, he leads but are often overlooked in favour of plant-hunting expeditions to China, the exotica. Gardening traditions vary in Himalayas, and South America. different countries but wherever people “If you know where a plant comes live, they should look around and see from, you get a feel for how it grows in what there is. Northwest America, for your garden. Look at an alpine plant example, has Trilliums, Camassias and and you will know that it will thrive in Erythroniums that make great garden well-drained rocky scree. In mountainplants.” ous China you can see a huge range of John’s father, Eric Shipton, was an Primulas, Rhododendrons, and Asiatic explorer and Everest mountaineer. In lilies growing wild as they were origithe 1920s and 1930s, most explorers nally found. had a huge entourage, but Eric Shipton I love wandering about the planet preferred to set out with just one or and when there is a connection between two companions, travel light, and live travel and plants, it’s brilliant that I can off the land. do both!” John has inherited his father’s wan10
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flavor
CORN WHISKEY
AMERICA’S POLITICAL COCKTAIL STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY SUSAN COHAN
Test bottles of sustainable varietand ies (like Wapsie Val- whiskey bourbon at ley Corn) yield only Kings County Distillery in 60% of genetically modified, chemically Brooklyn, NY dependent corn. For farmers, growing corn is a bulk business, and there isn’t enough profit or predictability in small-batch organic growing. Genetically modified corn is plentiful, cheap, and profitable for farmers large and small. And the makers of GMO seed and chemicals have a powerful voice in a federal government intent on maintaining the status quo. Some distillers are beginning to grow their own open-pollinated corn, and others are paying a premium to have local farmers grow organic corn for them. We asked some of the country’s artisanal distillers to create recipes for Leaf readers using un-aged corn whiskey. Perhaps our love of a good cocktail will inspire open-pollination among large, traditional corn producers. LEAF MAGAZINE
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Photo courtesy of Kings County Distillery
C
orn whiskey holds a special place in American folklore and economic and political history. The spirit conjures up images of tax avoiding, gun-toting distillers making moonshine deep in the woods, or cars careening down dark, country roads filled with contraband during Prohibition. As early as 1791, during the Whiskey Rebellion, small distillers throughout the country rose up and violently protested a tax on their products. That politics, economics, and whiskey are strange bedfellows is no different today. White whiskey made from corn is now fashionable. It is made legally and with care and imagination in artisanal distilleries north and south of the Mason-Dixon line, and east and west of the Mississippi. Corn is the top cash crop in the United States, and according to the Center for Food Safety, more than 85% of it is genetically engineered. Specialty, smallbatch distillers who are trying to create full-flavored, complex whiskies as well as bourbon—corn whiskey’s aged sibling—have tried to convince farmers to grow organic, heirloom, open-pollinated corn. According to Brian Lee of Tuthilltown Spirits, organic, heirloom corn creates more complex flavors. Heirloom varieties (non-GMO and
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Margarita
Manhattan
LEAF’S MOONSHINE ICED TEA Appletini
1 ½ oz corn whiskey ½ oz simple syrup or agave syrup (more if you like it sweeter) 1 cup fruit-infused ice tea (we used peaches, but anything will work) Fruit for garnish
Combine whiskey, simple syrup, and tea in a mixing glass. Stir well. Alternate fruit and ice cubes in a highball glass, pour cocktail. Strain and pour mixed ingredients over ice and fruit. MoreCorn Whiskey Recipes LEAF MAGAZINE
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style
WILD BEAUTY
Nature’s Tinctures, Tonics, and Creams BY ROCHELLE GREAYER PHOTOGRAPHY BY KELLY FITZSIMMONS
EVENING PRIMROSE Evening primrose seed oil contains significant amounts of gammalinoleic acid (GLA). GLA is used to treat a wide variety of topical and internal illnesses, and specifically to treat eczema and psoriasis.
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EUCALYPTUS The distinctive aroma of eucalyptus is useful in clearing sinus congestion (and associated puffiness). Boil in water and inhale the vapors. Additionally, the warming qualities of the oil help treat muscle aches.
ROSES Both Romans and 16th-century monks steeped roses in wine for a hangover cure, and throughout history women have rubbed petals on their faces to reduce wrinkles and preserve youth.
LAVENDER
YARROW
WILD BLUEBERRY
Lavender is both an antiseptic and an antiinflammatory. Infusions can soothe insect bites, burns, and headaches. For a topical acne treatment, mix lavender extract with rose water and witchhazel and dilute 1:10 with water.
Yarrow oil is useful for hair and skin care. It is an astringent that is helpful in balancing oily skin and scalps, and it stimulates new hair growth. Add yarrow to shampoo to promote a healthy scalp, strengthen your hair shaft, and treat split ends.
The high levels of Vitamin C, E, and antioxidants in blueberries make an excellent exfoliating and nourishing facial mask.
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style L
et’s face it—being able PLANTAIN Soothe skin, to identify plants is particularly from more than plant-nerd bee stings and cool. It’s real world cool beother insect bites, with plantain. cause it means that you can These strappyforage. And isn’t foraging leafed weeds grow just about the trendiest thing everywhere, and a nature lover can do these the tannins from a macerated leaf will days? With wild, gathered take the sting away food featured on the menus and calm the skin. of the finest restaurants in the world, foraging has moved past its pauper roots and into the realm of real-world consideration, and not only for sustenance, but for beauty products, as well. There is a special kind of joy that comes from foraging that gets right to the heart of what makes it a wonderful pastime. It is a treasure hunt; it is beautiful way to get in touch with your surroundings and the cycles of the seasons; and it nurtures your soul to move through the landscape and see it with a different set of eyes. Is putting something in your body all that different that putting it on your body? The skin is the body’s largest organ, so perhaps it is worth considering the ingredients in our beauty products as much as we consider those in our food. It is said that beauty is a state of mind (we agree!), but certainly products help, too. Some of the most attainable (and common) plants around have a wonderful way of making our skin and hair look their best. So why not enjoy the purity of nature, and start foraging for beauty?
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DISCLAIMER:
When foraging, be sure that you follow foragers’ guidelines. Know what you are picking, do not pick an area clean (leave plants to grow for the next person and the next season), and use with caution. Many plants have powerful medicinal qualities, and should be treated with care when ingesting or using on your body. Be sure to consider allergies.
More Recipes for tonics, tinctures, creams and masks
GOLDEN ROD Golden rod is a prolific plant that can be harvested while in bloom (look for fields of yellow in late summer and autumn). Infuse the flowers with water for use as a facial tonic to control oily skin, or add them to a bath to firm skin and muscles. LEAF MAGAZINE
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found
CLOUD PRUNING
In Western cultures, we plant with abandon; we cultivate abundance and work from a more-is-better mantra. Japanese gardens, conversely, embrace a limited palette and strive to create atmosphere and mood through careful and extreme manipulation of a small set of resources. Niwaki is the art of training trees into interesting forms and unique structures that grace Japanese gardens. Modern, eclectic garden styles provide beautiful spaces for these works of art, and learning to create your own is getting easier. Jake Hobson’s new book, The Art of Creative Pruning (Timber Press, 2011), an increase in aesthetic pruning courses throughout the United States, and the sale of beautiful Niwaki tools support this growing trend. Join us in the gallery for beautiful examples of Niwaki. More
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GARDEN SNIPS
Photos from Jake Hobson's The Art of Creative Pruning
Small garden snips are often disposable and not very good-looking. Beautiful, handmade tools feel special when you have them in your hands. These traditional, hand-forged Ikebana scissors (Okatsune Ikenobo) from Niwaki are beautiful, perfectly weighted, and have blades strong enough to cut small branches. They will last a lifetime.
TREND ALERT!
Zip lines are popping up everywhere. In addition to backyards and adventure travel companies, we saw zip lines during the last year at the Indy 500, the Super Bowl, and the Summer Olympics. Zip lines are increasingly being installed as a form of landscape entertainment, where riders enjoy a thrill, a bit of exercise, a great view, and interesting transportation. The trend appears to be expanding, as numerous local governments are considering zip lines in public parks, to increase revenue and tourism, and even for mass transportation. LEAF MAGAZINE
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found
HOSEWARES
It’s not easy to take something that is usually hidden from view and showcase it in a way that suggests a new use. Chase DeForest Furniture creates witty and functional furniture and objects using everyday items. Her Hosewares series transforms utilitarian garden hoses into colorful baskets and garden chairs.
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GREEN FINGERS, FREE FINGERS
Is there any truth to the adage, cold hands and warm heart? Having cold hands just makes me grumpy. However, I still hate to don gloves in autumn. They feel like too much clothing, and with a lack of snow and other coldmagnifying elements, they are simply cumbersome. I like to keep my fingers free, so I love free-fingered gloves. I’m enthusiastic about Wristies, an inexpensive line of fingerless fleece gloves that are 100% Americanmade from 98% recycled products. I like the idea of combining them with Wonder Warmers. Unlike throwaway hand-warmers, Wonder Warmers can be used hundreds of times; they are recharged by popping them in boiling water.
GRILL-TO-GO
Bodum’s new Fyrkat grill is good–to-go on any picnic or outdoor adventure. The mini-picnic, nearly 12-inch-diameter grill, is small enough to fit on a bike, yet big enough to cook for two. Choose from traditional black or several fun colors. It also comes in a gas version. LEAF MAGAZINE
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found KISS MY ASTER . . . THE BOOK!
Amanda Thomsen’s new book, Kiss My Aster: A Graphic Guide to Creating a Fantastic Yard Totally Tailored to You (Storey Publishing, January 2013) shakes up traditional garden book publishing. Steeped in rock and roll irreverence and sound horticultural knowledge, Amanda takes us on a journey that is practical, active, and full of energy. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m a bit of an aged punk rocker,” Amanda says. “I still want a little anarchy in the back yard, and I want other people to know that they can have that too. Landscaping is just as much fun and a pain in the ass as any other home renovation project, except you get a tan out of it.” When asked for her top five choices of albums to garden by, Amanda picked Loco Live by The Ramones, Paul's Boutique from the Beastie Boys, the Cocteau Twins’ Treasure Hiding, She & Him Volume 1, and The Roches.
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mood Monochrome Design Outdoor rooms with a focused palette by christine best
G
ardens and exterior spaces designed with unified hues create a timeless environment for yearround consistency. Simple, unified tones enable an eclectic mixing of form, surface, and heritage and period pieces that contrast against severe and organic modern designs. All finish with a flavorful configuration that is perfectly balanced and appeals to many tastes. A singular palette also provides at-whim opportunities for playful injections of color, providing instant variation. Monochrome gardens take their cues from nature. Grey foliage combines with faux bois furniture and accent pieces with a weathered patinas. Rusted iron, oil-rubbed bronze, concrete, natural wood, and rustic glazes blend seamlessly. The overall styling speaks primarily to a modern craft with a few traditional pieces pulled in to complete the look.
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The Council Garden blends imported and native trees, shrubs, grasses, and often dogs
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Courtesy of Star Roses
root
FLORENCE YOCH The Pleasures of Small Gardens BY JAMES J. YOCH
A
t the end of her more than fifty-year career designing gardens and movie sets in California, Florence Yoch (18901972) typed quotations that confirmed her long experience, including the philosophical hope that a garden should be “appealing always to the imagination without ever failing to satisfy reason.� Combining the
root A complex parterre of harmonic yet unmatched pieces and varied plantings shows “what may be accomplished on a narrow city lot,” as Yoch wrote.
Her grandest gardens invited owners to enjoy the sm romantic and the practical, her landscapes for America’s merchant princes and movie moguls oscillated between these poles. Her most widely seen set, Tara in Gone With The Wind, combines dramatic oppositions, including elegant noisette roses (Maréchal de Niel) and dogwoods overlooking a rugged farm drive. Her smallest projects featured a statue, pond, or other artifact with echoes from a distant epoch. Her grandest gardens invited owners to enjoy the smallscale convenience of shaded benches, 30
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arbors, accessible potting sheds, and tool houses. She saw these as fulfilling real human needs. When Florence Yoch spoke to the California chapter of the American Institute of Architecture (AIA) in 1931, she discounted the repetitive style of fancy gardens, and praised instead the individual character that peasants in England, Spain, Italy, and France brought into their outdoor spaces. Reserved in habits, she lived mostly in cottages and often designed gardens for small-scale courtyards and
mall-scale convenience of shaded benches and arbors. the enclaves of women’s clubs. Inspired as a child by her family’s visit to Arden—the forested estate of the famous Polish émigré Shakespearean actress Madame Modjeska and her practical agriculturalist husband Count Chlapowski—Florence Yoch came to appreciate the pleasures of a country outpost with a large library and a garden rich in native and imported flora. For even the smallest sites throughout her career, she combined designs, ornaments, and plants laden with historical associations and personal memories.
Travelling, sketching, photography, and reading made her adept in interpreting aristocratic European gardens to suit her sophisticated American clients who wanted waterfalls, fountains, allées, forests, and parterres of flowers. For her, affection dominated display. At a South Pasadena bungalow—her first home together with life-long partner Lucile Council and her parents—Yoch translated onto a small suburban lot Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll’s published design for a fashionable Chelsea townhouse garden (1911). Yoch and Council LEAF MAGAZINE
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root Dramatizing the foreground of views to the mountains, the long-blooming border maximized a colorful display on a narrow lot
eliminated the classical colonnade and statues, doubled the flower border, and welcomed guests to informal teas with dogs on a bench placed on a relaxed angle. Later in their 1940s semi-retirement, the couple built on a Pasadena hillside a midwestern farmhouse alongside a Monterey-style apartment and garage. When they retired again and moved books and plants north to Lazycroft Cottage on two wooded lots overlooking the ocean in Carmel, Yoch and Council created comfortable spots for reading and dining amongst giant lilies and treasured antiques. Here they reveled in a place in the sun, another in the shade, for daily rituals and playful musings. 32
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Copyright © James J. Yoch 2012. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission. An excerpt from the forthcoming revision of Landscaping the American Dream, no part of this text or its images may be reproduced without James J. Yoch’s written consent.
What’s Out There WEEKEND OCTOBER 6-7 · NEW YORK CITY
Explore and Discover NYC’s landscape marvels with FREE tours in all five boroughs, featuring some of the nation’s most innovative landscapes spanning two centuries of design. Experience the great civic spaces of Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza and Prospect Park; Bob Zion’s original “vest pocket park” at Manhattan’s Paley Park; Wave Hill’s majestic views of the Hudson River from the Bronx, and the unique urban design of Sunnyside Gardens in Queens. Many are places people pass daily, but do we know their background stories?
Register today
tclf.org/ WOTW
Photo: Paley Park
Sponsored by
flower BRINGING NATURE IN Vacation Snapshots BY ROANNE ROBBINS
S
tone cairn landscapes in the hallway, apothecary jars filled with ferns on the dining table, a bowl of duckweed and water hyacinth in the kitchen. These are the relics from our vacation— snapshots of the places we visited, reminders of discoveries we made,
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A bowl of duckweed and water hyacinth
memories of our summer. With summer over, these mini-landscapes transport us back to vacation—to the high trails where my daughter hiked her first mountain, or to the morning at the pond where we gazed at water flower
blooms, and left with wet sneakers and stories of frogs that got away. These arrangements give our imaginations a place to play. And even though it’s autumn and our family is back in the school routine, summer lingers on. LEAF MAGAZINE
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plant
Diospyros virginiana
Botanical Name Diospyros virginiana Common Name American persimmon, Possumwood
Plant Family Ebenacae Native Habitat/Origin Eastern United States,
west to Texas
Seasonal Interest Fragrant blooms in spring
yield yellow-orange fruit in autumn that may persist after leaf drop, giving it a festive appearance. Mature trees have beautiful, dark grey “alligator skin” bark.
Height and Width 35-60’ H x 20-35’ W Soil and Moisture Fertile, well-drained, loamy soil. PH-tolerant.
Aspect
Full sun. Shelter from cold, drying winds and late frosts.
Maintenance
Prune every 1 to 2 years. Remove damaged or diseased branches and any rapidly growing upright branches in the center of the tree. Difficult to transplant..
Problems and Diseases Relatively disease-free Hardiness USDA 4-9 Notes Fruit is highly attractive to wildlife, which
often get to it before harvest. Hard and closegrained wood from the plant is used to make billiard cues and golf club heads. Fruits are used as a dye.
Design Uses A large landscape tree that is
adaptable to urban sites and poor conditions. Can be naturalized and will form thickets.
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Photography by Saxon Holt LEAF MAGAZINE
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shop TO MARKET, TO MARKET Must-Have Items for Shopping at an Outdoor Market BY JEN SUNDEEN
I
adore everything about a farmers’ market —the magnificent array of earth’s colors, scents, textures, flavors and sounds. I’ll admit, my first visit to a farmers’ market a decade ago left me sunburned and parched. Tired, sticky children clung to my legs, and I was overloaded with heavy paper bags full of wilting produce. When I got home, the milk had curdled from the heat, the chocolate cookies had melted, and one of the kids left half a strawberry popsicle at A cooler the bottom of a soggy growith class for the glass cery bag. Still, I loved it. milk jug, the Fortunately, a decade of homemade cheese, the shopping farmers’ markets hand-cut has taught me well. These pasta, and are perfect Must-Haves for the pheasant eggs. maneuvering a local outdoor market.
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Produce “Feed Bags”. Buy several; they are worth it in more ways than one. This great company helps to feed hungry communities all over the world.
A wagon to carry the pumpkin, the mums, the cooler, the bags of produce, the kids. If you want to be guaranteed a photograph in the local paper, put the dog in it too.
Watch out for that sun! I’m partial to cowboy hats. They make me feel kind of farmerish, a bit like I might have grown all that corn myself.
You just never know. The market can always be greeted by unexpected thunderstorms and you can easily find yourself in a dusty parking lot or a muddy field. Have a plan! Buy at least one dinner that is 100% local. Half the fun is researching what is in season and experimenting with new recipes. LEAF MAGAZINE
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shop ARTFUL FORCING Easy as One, Two, Bloom BY ELIZABETH LICATA
F
orced hyacinths and Narcissus tazettas—in vintage or contemporary glass—provide elegant décor while growing, as well as delicate blooms in January and February. Time it properly, and you can have flowering bulbs through April. All that is needed are bulbs, containers, stones, water, and confidence. The custom of forcing hyacinths was popular from at least the seventeenth century through the Victorian era, but over the twentieth century, the practice declined, especially in the United States. Forcing is now mainly conducted by
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HOW TO DO IT YOURSELF
Vintage hyacinth vases can be found on eBay. Set search parameters to “worldwide,” as most come from UK sellers. Contemporary vases can sometimes be found in garden centers. Thrift stores have interesting glass vases that work well for tazettas, while chain stores have fairly inexpensive contemporary vases. Tall vases will provide support for often-lanky narcissus.
Photography by Elizabeth Licata
Tazettas are easy. Pile stones in the bottom third of a glass container (at least 12” high; taller is better), place bulbs, and fill with water to just under the bulbs. Leave in a chilly, dimly lit room for a week or so, then move them into a sunny room. Blooms can take three to five weeks.
the flower trade for cut flowers and gift plants. Oddly enough, home gardeners who work wonders in their outdoor gardens are often afraid to experiment inside. But the learning curve is not as high as one may think. A refrigerator now stands in for the cold basements, attics, and root cellars of the past. Place a bag of hyacinths in the fridge in late September, take them out in late December, and set them in a forcing vase over water. Flowers will arrive in February or March, depending on the variety. Old House Gardens provides detailed instructions on forcing, as well as a beautiful selection of heirloom
bulbs—many of which cannot be found anywhere else. Brent and Becky’s and John Scheepers are also reliable bulb providers. Tazettas belong to Division 8 of the Narcissus genus; they include the common paperwhites sold in chains, but there are many other interesting varieties to try. It is possible to find tazettas that lack the sharp paperwhite scent and that feature a softer fragrance instead. Old House Gardens offers the double ‘Erlicheer’ variety, as well as pretty single varieties, while Brent and Becky’s has a gorgeous yellow and orange ‘Grand Soleil d’Or’ and several others. LEAF MAGAZINE
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build Corten trellis
BRENDAN MOAR’S CONTEMPORARY DESIGN WITH
SUSTAINABLE MATERIALS
W
hen Australian garden designer Brendan Moar was charged with designing a contemporary and sustainable garden on a steep slope, the materials he chose became just as important as the plants in the overall scheme. Moar describes below how he used gabions, composite railroad ties (sleepers), and corten steel to achieve a modern look. GABIONS Gabions are traditionally constructed from galvanised mesh cages that are filled with rocks or stones. They are 42
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Corten steppers
used frequently along freeways to retain embankments. Gabions make very effective and relatively inexpensive retaining walls, as they allow water to pass through them freely. Our gabions are a variation on the traditional approach. They were con-
Brendan Moar’s book, Green, is based on his popular Australian television show, Dry Spell Gardening
Gabions
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build structed from a treated pine timber frame that was clad with perforated stainless steel panels. The panels are in fact a waste
product— leftovers from the manufacture of metal tiles. Once the timber frame was clad with metal panels, the gabions were partly filled with large river stones. Gabions don’t naturally hold soil, so in order to plant in ours, a geo-textile fabric ‘sack’ was laid in the centre of the gabions and filled with soil. The remaining stones were pressed between the sack and the metal panels, giving the impression that the gabions are full of stone.
PLASTIC SLEEPERS (Railroad Ties)
The very thought of plastic sleepers might be enough to send a shiver down your spine. It certainly did mine. I was envisaging faux timber grain, but when they turned up I could not have more delighted or surprised. These sleek black sleepers are made from 98% recycled plastic, including milk and juice containers, cling wrap, plastic bags, and old plastic rainwater tanks. They will outlast regular timber sleepers, and won’t warp, split, or crack.
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CORTEN STEPPERS Corten is an exciting material to work with in the garden. Its beautiful, rusty patina can be enjoyed knowing that it is not going to rust away in a few years. I had never seen corten used as a paving material, but I cannot see any reason why it wouldn’t work. The shapes here were cut with an oxy torch from a large sheet of 6mm-thick corten. The steppers were set onto pads of mortar. Some of the steppers have had to be re-adhered to the mortar pads with liquid nails. The sheets from which the steppers were cut were fixed to timber posts and became a trellis to support climbers.
pick The Eco Egg from Rosso’s International is a sustainable option made from bamboo, and will decompose in four to five years.
Attic—a contemporary twist on a traditional birdhouse—is designed and handmade by San Francisco designer Chad Wright.
OPTIONS FOR THE
MODERN BIRD
The Sunscreen Sunflower Bird Feeder is crafted by sculptor, Joe Papendick. His feeders are featured in his Etsy store.
Streamlined and updated, functional and contemporary, designers are creating stylish options for birds just in time for cool weather roosting and feeding.
The Café Bird Feeder has an urban apartment feel, and is designed by Teddy Luong and Dennis Cheng for Umbra.
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F R E S H TA K E
YOUNG DES
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SIGNERS THESE SIX DESIGNERS HAVE FRESH IDEAS FOR DESIGN OUTSIDE. CLICK MORE -> TO READ THEIR ANSWERS TO LEAF’S QUESTIONS ABOUT THEIR WORK.
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ECOWALLS
Mike Coraggio & Ryan Burrows
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We think there is no better teacher than nature. Nature has perfected balancing textures and color palettes and showcasing what plant combinations work well together in masses and as specimens.� MORE
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LAND + ROOM
An oversized cedar hot tub was added as a place to soak on summer days, and it doubles as an emergency water source.
Kathryn Prideaux
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Eva Zeisel is my design icon—for her fluid and sensual design sensibility . . . for her amazing life story of triumph . . . for blazing the way for female industrial designers . . . and for continuing to work well into her 90s.” MORE
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SAND & FIBERGLASS FURNITURE
Zachary A. Bitner
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I like the juxtaposition of something that looks old but is modern, things that look so heavy but are light. I guess I like surprising people with the unexpected.” MORE LEAF MAGAZINE
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Jessica Carnevale
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My studio is inside a woodshop in London. One wall is completely covered in experimental swatches and images. I usually start my day looking it over with a cup of coffee in my hand.” MORE
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STRETCH-WOVEN DINING CHAIRS
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LIQUID LANDSCAPE DESIGNS
Jay Bearfield
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The “Modern Zen” spaces I’ve been creating lately have been inspired by nothing but texture, forcing me to limit my color selections in order to give the space the rhythm that I feel it needs.” MORE
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WINDSORRONDACK ROCKERS
Brad Reed Nelson
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The auto industry inspires me. Their vast budgets allow for incredible and opulent solutions. I feel some of the best designers have gone that route.” MORE
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Classic
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p h o t o g r a p h y b y E r i c a D e z i t t e r a n d J oyc e K . W i l l i a m s LEAF MAGAZINE summer 2012
Designer Joyce K. Williams uses clean lines and classic details to create an award -winning garden on Cape Cod
Cape
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by Susan Cohan
ome gardens have an innate sense of place. Landscape designer Joyce K. Williams created a residential garden that is so much about time and place that it won a 2012 Merit Award for Residential Design from the Association of Professional Landscape Designers. Williams’s clients wanted an outdoor space for their two-acre property with timeless appeal that reminded them of gardens they had seen in England. They also wanted their garden to function as a place to entertain and invite discovery and contemplative reflection. Additionally, it was important to protect the property’s mature trees with their moss-filled collars. The end design achieves that through a series of terraces and winding paths that fuse naturalistic areas with those that are more formal.
Grey stone walls echo New England’s landscape traditions
Williams’s clients wanted an outdoor space with timeless appeal that reminded them of gardens they had seen in England. LEAF MAGAZINE
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The foursquare garden is on an axis from the front door to a large boulder in the distance
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By combining plants and garden elements commonly associated with gardens on Cape Cod (as well as on neighboring Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket) with contemporary sculpture and stonework, the garden avoids being enslaved by tradition. The focal point of the foursquare garden is a contemporary bronze sculpture by Sara Jane Porter named “Buitenverwachting” after a favorite restaurant of the clients. It translates to “Beyond Expectations.” The soaring bronze piece adds winter interest when little else is hap52
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pening in the garden, yet in other seasons is an equal visual partner with the exuberant plantings that surround it. Down a series of turf and stone steps from the garden is a pond that was built as part of the client’s brief. “I designed a pond that supports a micro-ecosystem and is client-friendly and interactive. Around the pond I created a beach and a bog, one sunny and one shady patio, a summerhouse, and included loads of plants that are native, sustainable, beautiful, and of benefit to wildlife,” Williams
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Paths and steps throughout the garden create a sense of discovery
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it looks as if it’s been there a hundred years. it’s likely that it will still be there a hundred years from now!
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explains. At the rear of the property, the neglected woodland became a new destination when Williams created a meandering path with a concealed space that was a counterpoint to the bold cottage plantings adjacent to it. Stone walls and gray, weathered shingles are quintessential elements of any garden in New England, not just those on Cape Cod. The walls in this garden are used in a graphic way, yet have their roots in the grayed granite of the rest of New England. The clean lines of the summerhouse echo those of the main residence, and add to the timeless yet contemporary feel of the gardens. Williams says of the finished project: “The best part, for me as a designer, is that it looks as if it’s been there a hundred years, and it’s likely that it will still be there a hundred years from now!”
“I designed a pond that supports a micro-ecosystem and is clientfriendly and interactive.”
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Broad stone and turf steps create a transition between formal and natural areas
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Southern JUST WHAT IS SOUTHERN
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Comfort
REGIONAL GARDEN STYLE?
A long double mixed border at Moss Mountain Farm
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B Y P. A L L E N S M I T H
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Southern regional gardening style is really an approach to life and a state of mind. It is romantic and beautiful, yet simple and traditional. Southern gardening leans toward the cool and the calm. It incorporates architectural elements that enhance the effects of cooling breezes. Southerners can’t talk about the outdoors without considering the indoors, since our climates are temperate to sub-tropical, allowing for in and outdoor activities nearly year-round. Every design element encourages large gatherings and entertaining. There are always a lot of sitting areas, keeping hospitality and comfort in mind. Features like wide breezeways, expansive and deep wrap-around porches with traditional sky-blue-painted ceilings, and ceiling fans held up by Neo-Classical columns.
DESIGNED IN THE FERME ORNEE (ORNAMENTAL FARM) STYLE, THE GARDENS ARE BOTH BEAUTIFUL AND USEFUL 74
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A view of the house at dusk, with deep, columned screened-in porches and two garden outbuildings
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THE IDYLLIC SETTING BLURS THE LINES BETWEEN GARDEN AND HOME, HERITAGE AND MODERN. Large front doors adorned with a welcoming wreath, wrought iron fences and balcony railings, and wide windows define the southern design approach. Wooden swings, wicker rocking chairs, metal gliders, and chairs in the grass are common, though they may seem strange until the evening breeze begins to cool things off. Linens and cotton fabrics, shade awnings, and screened-in sleeping porches with huge, cast-iron claw foot tubs are part of southern heritage, too. Southern landscapes include broad green lawns dotted with sprawling shade trees such as oaks dripping with Spanish moss, fragrant magnolias, flowering dogwoods, and crape myrtles. Big rose gardens and flowering shrubs like camellias, heady gardenias, and colorful hydrangeas accentuate the aroma of boxwoods and Leyland cypress. Drifts of aspidistra, cannas, daylilies, colorful annuals laid out in symmetrical landscapes, and meadows of daffodils are all very typical of the southern gardening tradition. Vegetables are also an integral part of any southern garden. Many old southern homes had canning kitchens to store the garden’s bounty during winter. Perfumed wisteria and jasmine
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crawling around arbors and pergolas provide a million reasons not to stay inside, no matter how hot it is. Tropical plants, a tall glass of sweetened iced tea, or a classic mint julep in a silver cup are just the thing on a hundred-degree day. I have tried to respect and interpret my southern heritage in the gardens I have designed. I look to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, where he carved a 1,000-foot-long terrace out of the mountainside and divided the area into 24 plots where he could experiment with new plants and grow food for the house. I took a similar approach at my farm, Moss Mountain, which is perched on top of a plateau with garden areas sloping toward the Arkansas River. As with any garden design project, my method is to divide and conquer. By creating smaller spaces, I can design each room individually rather than tackling a large blank canvas. My goal at Moss Mountain Farm is to create an ongoing project that serves as a working model to teach classes in garden design, sustainable living, and good stewardship all wrapped up in traditional southern garden style.
A simple candelabra decorated with gourds and vines for an autumn al fresco party
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The gardens and Arkansas River in early autumn as seen from the top floor of the house
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OVERLOOKING THE ARKANSAS RIVER VALLEY, MOSS MOUNTAIN FARM DATES BACK TO 1840.
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Overlooking the Arkans River Valley, Moss Mountain Farm encompasses more than 500 acres dating back to 1840. The centerpiece of the property is the cottage, built in the Greek Revival style and constructed in an earthfriendly manner. Directly behind the cottage is the croquet lawn that is framed by a summer kitchen and an art studio. I followed the contours of the old farm fields to establish two terraces. The upper terrace hosts herbaceous borders, and the lower terrace is devoted to vegetables, fruits, and herbs. Although my vegetable garden does not compare in size to Jefferson’s, it is still very large. Designed in the ferme ornee (ornamental farm) style, the gardens are both beautiful and useful. This idyllic setting blurs the lines between garden and home, heritage and modern. The vegetable garden was designed to be pleasing to the eye, as well as a source for food. Flower borders serve a secondary purpose of testing and observing plants before using them in my designs. Beyond the flower gardens are orchards filled with heritage apple trees, stone fruit and blueberries, a bluebird trail, wildflower fields, and a daffodil hill that overflows with more than 225,000 daffodils every spring. Various outbuildings, from barns to mobile chicken homes, dot the grounds and surrounding pastures.
MOSS MOUNTAIN FARM SERVES AS A WORKING MODEL TO TEACH GARDEN DESIGN AND SUSTAINABLE LIVING ALL WRAPPED UP IN SOUTHERN GARDEN STYLE. 26
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Working areas and living areas are side-by-side, creating a holistic experience
Get the Look TO GET A CLASSIC CAPE COD LOOK IN YOUR OWN GARDEN, TRY THESE TIPS, PLANTS, AND FEATURES.
BOXWOODS Create structure with boxwoods. Unlike many of the Buxus cultivars, Buxus x ‘Glenco’ Chicagoland Green™ shows resistance to boxwood blight. TUTEURS Traditional wood tuteurs add vertical structure and interest to a garden. This one, from Walpole Woodworkers, comes in white, but many are available unstained also. Let it weather naturally to add that grayed look so common to Cape Cod. HYDRANGEAS Blue mophead hydrangeas thrive in the salt air and dappled shade of the Cape. At three feet tall and wide, Hydrangea macrophylla Cityline Venice™ from Proven Winners® is perfect for smaller gardens. ROSES Roses and hydrangeas are the ultimate Cape Cod planting combination. Reblooming Rosa ‘Meiggili’ is a relatively new Drift® rose, grows only two feet tall, and blooms all season long. Use it as a groundcover rose as shown in the preceding garden, or in small groups.
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SOUTHERN GARDENS ARE ALL ABOUT THE DETAILS. TRY THESE IN YOUR OWN GARDEN. IRON FOUNTAINS are often part of a southern garden. They can be found in courtyards, greenhouses, or as a garden focal point. Robinson Iron in Alabama makes historically accurate black iron fountains. STATUARY is another element found in many southern gardens. Sometimes formal, sometimes not, these classic garden sculptures often depict children. Elegant Earth creates accurate and affordable reproductions of garden statuary. SOUTHERN MAGNOLIAS (Magnolia grandiflora) are the emblematic flowering trees of the south. Their large and fragrant blooms as well as glossy evergreen leaves make a big statement. Cultivars for smaller gardens, like the ‘Kay Parris’ shown, are readily available. HIBISCUS aren’t solely found in southern gardens; many cultivars are hardy to Z5, but they add a dash of the south to the northern-most cottage gardens. This one, ‘Summer Storm’, is from Heavy Petal Nursery in Washington.
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leaf A U T U M N
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Co-Founder & Editor
Co-Founder & Editor
SUSAN COHAN
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