I am craving a little change up in the garden.  It’s late summer and my garden has some great spots, but at the moment, more than a few lame spots.   I was thinking I need some color and a little bit of a change up — perhaps not of the botanical variety – inspired by my dilemma, I rounded-up this quick collection of fairly cheap, but bright and cheery outdoor furniture and accessories to tie me over until I put some colorful fall plantings in.

Top image Clockwise: Stools from Crate and Barrel. Bend Seating Farmhouse Chair from Design Public. Modern Console Table from Blu Dot.  DLM Side Tables from Shop Horne.  Sparkling Chair from Museum Store.

Hanging chair from Anthropologie.

Turquoise America Chair from Conran USA. Chartreuse Book case (for plants?) from CB2. Brazilian Hammock from uncommon Goods. Havana Woven Stools from Serena and Lily.  Reclaimed Wood Bench from uncommon goods.  Blue Ginger Side Table from CB2.

Acapulco Chair from Innit Designs

Are you ready to continue to the Latin series?  B is going to go quickly — unless you can spark me with another Latin ‘B’ — Buchananii is the only one I can come up with.

Buchananii is one of the Latin naming conventions for a person — namely the person who discovered the plants.   John Buchananii was a Scottish pattern designer who sailed to New Zealand in 1852, bought a farm near Dunedin and  began collecting and recording the unfamiliar native flora.   His pattern making skills served him well as a botanist and he spent many years on expeditions around New Zealand collecting, drawing and documenting plants.

There are hundreds of plants — many of which are garden worthy favorites that bear the Buchananii name — one of my favorites is Carex Buchananii.   I set up a pinterest board with a bunch of ‘buchananii’ plants for you to see — but you really must click on Brachystelma buchananii - it is one of the coolest plants I have seen in a while.

It should be noted however that not all plants with the name buchananii are for John Buchanan — there were other notable Buchanan’s in the botanical world.  Charles Buchanan is the namesake for Salvia Buchananii because he raised the rare plant from seed he collected in Mexico City.

Both images of Newtonia buchananii (a tree I would die to grow!) from from zimbabweflora.co.zw.

Oh Gasp,  another Brit named Kate has taken my breath away on her wedding day.  Yes, the bride is beautiful but once again (for the second time this year) I am completely in awe of the garden-y bridal aisle.   This time Kate Moss choose white delphinium, scabiosa, daisies and ferns to create a simple but breath taking planted path to the alter.   Surely, with these two style icons (Kate Middleton and Kate Moss) both making choices to go green and garden-like  for their wedding decor we will start to see a lot more of this!

images from vogue.

I can spot a garden designer’s garden a mile off.   It’s the experiments that generally give it away.  Designer’s gardens (in my experience) don’t tend to be the perfect havens that we create for our clients.  Rather they are the try out zones for the latest of ideas.  My own garden is mish mash of things that are in various proving stages of scientific theory – postulation doesn’t always cut it.

Last year, I set out to prove that I could have a soft mossy look in a high sun area.   Miniature stonecrop (Sedum requieni) was planted between the cobblestones of a new path and I have been awaiting fresh green mounds mixed with stone ever since.   But it’s not happening….turns out the Stonecrop doesn’t spread very fast and more importantly it doesn’t choke out weeds. Crab grass and clover are having their way with it.  It’s pretty if perfect, but good luck with that.

Scratch another hypothesis from the list.

On to something else – which brings me to today’s Garden Designers Roundtable Topic:   Lawn Alternatives.   Last summer I spent a beautiful couple of evenings at an inn in northern Vermont.  Looking out the upstairs bedroom window you wouldn’t immediately notice that the lawn that rolled right up to the forest edge wasn’t grass.  But when we headed over it on the way to the swimming hole, a wonderful smell arose, and on closer inspection, I realized the whole thing had a purplish hue and was, in fact, a massive field of creeping thyme.

In awe I peppered the hostess with questions.  She was far more casual about her 2+ acres of perfect, ‘lawn-like’, mow-less field than I was.   How did you plant it?  Plugs, seeds? She shrugged … “it’s just always been there” (she, in her 70′s was the 5th generation of her family who had lived their whole lives on this land).  What variety is it? I pressed on (confounded by her harsh zone 3 climate).  Another Shrug.  Ultimately, the conversation went no where and she went back to preparing breakfast.

But coming back to my cobblestones,  I have decided to find a better home for the stonecrop — I am thinking that maybe if I plant it closer to itself, I will survive the excruciatingly long time it will take to get it to grow to a solid mat.  I just need to find the right place….

But taking inspiration from the inn in Vermont,  I am starting a new experiment.   I am acquiring large bags of Mother-of-thyme (Thymus serphyllum) seed.  I am on the hunt for  Thymus ‘Coccineus’, and woolly thyme (Thymus psuedolanuginosus) seeds too.   These aren’t great edible thyme varieties (for that, I have my beloved Lemon Thyme for seasoning my famous Beef Bourguignon). My new theroy is that together, they will make an aromatic, drought tolerant ground covering for between my cobbles that I can stretch into the lawn for a nice transition.  My new scientific experiment is to see who, in a plant on plant throw down, will choke the other to death.  The fledgling grass, the thyme, or the persistant other weeds – not sure where to put my money – but I will let you know.   I am a lazy overwhelmed gardener so I am always curious to see how things work with the least amount of physical input.  I want to determine the natural hierarchical order.  I am also curious to see how the seeds stack up against planting plugs or tiny plants for achieving coverage, fast.  But one thing is proven – Thyme makes for a fantastic grass like ground cover – even in zone 3.

I’m taking every opportunity to play with it, mix it up, and get to know it better.

images: Checkerboard thyme from guim. Thymus serphyllum from desert tropicals. Thymus pseudolanuginosus (THYME, WOOLY) from  Thienemans.com, Thymus praecox coccineus -  degentiaan., Thyme Lawn from gardens co.  creeping thyme from hume seeds.

Today is a big day of garden designers and writers posting about lawn reform and lawn alternatives.  I hope you can take some time and make the rounds to my colleague’s sites and see what they have to say on the subject.

Susan Harris : Garden Rant : Takoma Park, MD

Susan Harris : Gardener Susan’s Blog : Takoma Park, MD

Billy Goodnick : Cool Green Gardens : Santa Barbara, CA

Evelyn Hadden : Lawn Reform.Org : Saint Paul, MN

Saxon Holt : Gardening Gone Wild : Novato, CA

Ginny Stibolt : Florida Native Plant Society : Green Cove Springs, FL

Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA

Shirley Bovshow : Eden Makers : Los Angeles, CA

Scott Hokunson : Blue Heron Landscapes : Granby, CT

Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In The Garden : Los Altos, CA

Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Laura Livengood Schaub : Interleafings : San Jose, CA

Jocelyn Chilvers : The Art Garden : Denver, CO

Ivette Soler : The Germinatrix : Los Angeles, CA

Genevieve Schmidt : North Coast Gardening : Arcata, CA

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT

I had few revelations over the weekend. Not the least of which was that I need to settle down and get back to a sense of routine and normalcy. The summer (with kids out of school, travel, lots of distractions and outside projects, and heat) has this way of upending everything. Add to that a new venture (Leaf magazine) and I have simply been totally topsy turvy.
Part of the revelation came when I had the pleasure of lunching with a group of bloggers, writers, artists and designers that all have the singular connection of Holly Becker. Holly was Boston on her book tour and this group was largely made up of women who she was friends with from her own Boston days, alumni from classes, and close colleagues. It was great to meet, in person, so many people I have known only online for so long.

Chatting with Holly I realized that she has gone through so many similar evolutions and has seemingly effortlessly moved from one success to the next. But her version of how it all happened is not so effortless…as she took time to write a beautiful book (in just 8 months) she kept her blog going daily, she moved to another county, and kept her blog going daily….she has taught classes and kept her blog going daily. Admittedly, she points out, she often works 100+ hours per week, but she has kept all the balls in the air and I found inspiration in that. She is going for it (her dreams) and that is hard work.   Now I am not saying I don’t work hard….I do, but I have let myself dither a few times too many in the last month and my brief chat with Holly made me realize that I just need to keep doing, moving….and getting to that new place where I want to be.

Launching Leaf is a huge shift for me – but one that I have been plotting for quite some time, and now that I am actually leaping into it, (as I said) I have been very discombobulated. Holly snapped me out of that with a quiet and to-myself  ‘get it together Rochelle’ moment.

The pieces are settling, kids go back to school next week, the farmers market is officially up and running and in full swing,  my last design project has all but wound up, and I am getting my head around the fact that instead of over-thinking what I write here, I need to just let studio ‘g’ be the place that I continue to share what inspires me. Even if it evolves. We all evolve and the fact is, I have chosen to become the founder of an online magazine about Outdoor Design and leave the day to day of running a landscape design business. I will be choosing (in time) to head off in other new directions too and all of those are part of an evolution.  Studio ‘g’ can’t not evolve with me.

So what has been on my mind lately? Magazine Covers, Fonts, Layouts, Photographers, Graphic Designers, Networking, Trends, Products, Stories, and reaching out to people.  I met a writer named Laura Gaskill this weekend.  She writes the lovely blog Lolalina. A visit there, sent me mentally back on photographer and layout tangents, particularly when I read about Petra Bindel (who took all these photographs).

I love the Swedish light and particularly the styling of these shots, and am interested in learning from this inspiration, so I can apply it to Leaf.

Also — these shots are feeding an unhealthy obsession I have recently developed — it involves building an old-school shed style glass green house (just like my grandmother had when I was a kid) off the backside of my dining room.   I dream it will bring in Swedish-like light.

all images from Petra Bindel

I have a patch of weeds that I have tried to pull twice now.  Each time I have tried to weed, the local fire ant hill swarms over my feet before I finish, causing me to run to the hose and spray myself off to stop the stinging biters.

I read on a local (New England based) landscapers newsgroup this morning that one member is using the feces and urine of her two pet boa constrictors to great effect against marauding rabbits.   And then another guy chimed in that his friend in New Jersey is using Lion manure (procured from the local zoo) to ward off everything from deer to woodchucks to rabbits.   No one seems to know how the Jersey based deer know to avoid the lion poo.  Perhaps they heard through the family grape vine of a gazelle cousins bloody murder and have decided to lay low?

Anyway, all this got me thinking that I really could use some anteater spit, so that maybe I could get that patch of weeds pulled.

image from just animal pic.