Surely you have seen Flora around – She has been featured in so many of my favorite magazines and deservedly so.   She has a beautiful store in San Francisco, and impeccable taste in all things plants, pots, and garden related.  Now she has a blog…and though it has scarcely 10 posts, I am totally taken (see link at left).  Here is a bit of what Flora Grubb has been up to lately…

This courtyard garden with the concrete soaking tub and the utterly amazing wall art simply takes my breath away.

Here is a closer look at the wall piece.

The Bardessono Hotel opened recently with tremendous hype of it’s green credentials and LEED platinum certification.  Flora created this vertical tillandsia garden for the property.  It is made of of about 800 air plants and I have to agree with flora’s assessment…it looks like lots of little fireworks.

About a gallon of water is needed to mist the plants and the run off is less than one cup. Amazing.

Having done a brief stint in interior plant design, I know that sometimes, you just have to specify silk plants.  (As much as I hated to do it).   There are some companies that make fake plants so realistic that you have to touch just to know, but now there is meamea who is preserving plants with glycerin so that you can have the real thing in a place with not enough foot-candles of light.    The glycerin (which is 100% biodegradable and very similar to sugar) replaces all the sap in a plant so that it will keep it’s life like qualities for color and texture when placed in the dark corner.  It is a wonderful ‘green’ alternative for commercial properties.

Even more interesting though…meamea is making greenwall components of the same preserved plants.  I love green walls for both their visual appeal and the improved air quality that they can bring to a building, but they are just not an option for so many sites.  With the preserved panel though, the green wall effect can go anywhere.

Spring is coming and wedding season will soon be in full swing.  I am sensing a trend in this era of cost cutting and economizing that garden weddings (perhaps at cherished family home) are a realistic option for brides.  I have had a couple of clients speak with me about developing thier gardens for upcoming events so I thought I would share some ideas for creating a wedding garden.

1. ) Theme your garden with plants that are named with wedding titles like these….

1. Retama monosperma #1,(Bridal veil broom) 2. ~Blushing Bride-Rose of Sharon~, 3. Blushing Bride Hydrangea, 4. Calla Lily ‘Bridal Bliss’, 5. 070108_astilbe, (Astilbe Bridal veil)6. Hosta ‘Bridegroom’ — HostasDirect.com, 7. 052708_3, (Poppy Royal Wedding) 8. WEDDING FEAST, (Daylily) 9. Allison’s Wedding (Daylily)

2.) In the spirit of your grow your own and keeping it local, you can plant and harvest these traditional bouquet flowers.

1. Stylish, formal Stephanotis and pearl, 2. They look and feel like rubber.,(Stephanotis) 3. Pink Peonies bouquet, 4. Shirley Temple Peony, 5. bouquet, 6. Roses – Climbing Don Juan

3.) Create a special place specifically for the wedding.   Hotels, restaurants and resort properties should really think about a permanent outdoor place where the wedding ceremony can be held so that there is no travel to the following reception.   Here is an inspiration for a bridal garden.  This was designed by Julie Moir Messervey and Karen McCoy, one of the principals of MSI Design for the Franklin Park Conservancy.

and another at Hatley Gardens in Canada.

I am running out of time today, so I am going to cut this short….but I am having so much fun with it, I am going to continue a little later…some bridal garden lighting ideas, focal points in the garden for the ceremony…and more.

The second part of part 2  of my garden trends series (on grow your own) is posted over at Landscapedia — go check it out.  I’m talking about Mint and Mushrooms.

1. Field-Mint, 2. Morel Mushroom, 3. Oyster Mushroom, 4. Mint

I read this article in the NY Times today about fireplaces in the garden.  They said that fireplaces are the poor mans swimming pool and that hotelier Andre Balazs and interior designer Johanthan Adler started the trend with designs for hotels that opened in 2007 and 2004 respectively.   I have just a little bone to pick here.  While I wholeheartedly agree that trends for the home garden often build off those started in hospitality properties (I have said that before here) and I think that Johnathan Adler and Andre Balazs are creating really great and interesting destinations (I have said that before here and here)  I think it is wholly unfair to give these two credit for a trend that was actually started not by hoteliers and interior designers but by landscape and garden designers. I designed my first outdoor fireplace for a home garden in 2002 and I can assure you that my clients and I were not some sort of trend setters.  Fire features were at the Chelsea flower show years before.

What gets me here is the regular and consistent placing of landscape and garden designers as second fiddle and not the true design professionals and artists that they are.  Like other design professionals, garden designers and landscape designers can be quite edgy and arty (think Tony Heywood, Martha Schwartz, and Diarmuid Gavin),  glamorous and fashionable (think CZ Guest, Arabella Lennox Boyd, and Gabriela Yariv) and truly forward thinking (think Patrick Blanc and Topher Delaney).  What irks me is that so often roof gardens, terraces and other intimate outdoor places are designed by interior designers or architects (often to great initial visual success) but almost always to disastrous long term effects (plants that won’t survive, materials that won’t hold up, etc.).  The message is anyone can put together a garden just like anyone can put together and room in a house. Yes, anyone can, but if you want to be successful at it you need to do your homework, or hire a professional.   I am tired of other design professionals getting all the kudos for what landscape professionals do better (and first) .   Do you agree?

At least the article featured this lovely fireplace by Jay Griffith – an actual landscape designer.