Announcing my new book...

Last year I blogged about finding a set of half-circle shutters at a vintage sale. I wanted to emulate my friend Baylor Chapman’s succulent-planted shutters that grace her outdoor terrace in San Francisco. Since then, a few folks have emailed to ask if I EVER finished that project? Much to my embarrassment, those dusty shutters sat in the garage, untouched for nearly a year!

But finally, now that we’ve settled into a permanent residence, I’ve been able to work on this project. The shutters have been cleaned and given three coats of exterior paint. To turn them into vertical succulent planters I mounted both pieces with wood screws outside my office windows and then stuffed the openings betweeen each slat with sedums and sempervivums. Let’s see how they look:

Step one: Paint the shutters. I used semigloss acrylic berry-red, the paint used for my home's exterior trim

Step Two: Staple landscaping cloth to the back of both shutters.

Step Three: Mount shutter and fill the "slots" with potting soil.

Step Four: Plant with hardy sedums and other succulents.

Here’s a photo of my dining room wall, where I’ve organized a medley of rounded objects, mostly plates and one vintage mirror that I inherited as a girl in the 1960s:

1. Round gold-framed mirror, given to my parents and migrated to my possession since the 1960s.
2. Dark purple pottery plate, a gift from my college roommate and her former girlfriend.
3. Celadon plate, imprinted with a real lotus leaf, gift from same college roommate, who purchased it for me when we visited Lotusland.
4. Red-and-teal platter, a gift from the owner of Fireworks Gallery, years ago, as a thank you after I wrote a story about her Pioneer Square shop.
5. Another wonderful celadon plate, a gift from my friends Kathleen Brown and Sara Anderson when they visited us from DC years ago.
6. Teal, white and purple platter, hand-formed and painted by the Berkeley artist Keeyla Meadows. I purchased it from her on a visit to her garden in 2008.
7. Tiny vintage Majolica plate, purchased from an antique shop in Madison Park.

Let’s just say the men in my household were less than excited to see this installation. The day after I created my plate-platter vignette, my spouse left for work, saying: Please do NOT hammer any more nails into the wall today!

So the following weekend, we were in Chicago visiting our college-aged son for family weekend. We had breakfast at a cool neighborhood spot and what do you think I noticed on the wall there?! Check it out: 

A stand of cape rush adds a semitransparent layer of privacy between sidewalk and front garden.

Joel Lichtenwalter and Ryan Gates of Grow Outdoor Design, based in Los Angeles, have introduced me to some really creative gardens they have designed. And what strikes me when seeing these mostly small, urban landscapes, is how well plants are used as architectural elements within the spaces they reside.

Designers Joel and his client Scott can be seen in the distance, conferring on some of the planting designs.

You won’t see fluffy cottage gardens with English-inspired perennial choices in Ryan and Joel’s gardens. Yet even when they design for bungalow-scaled residences, some of the same intimate, cottage garden experience occurs for the humans who occupy them. That emotional sense of being surrounded by plants, layers of textures – and even color in a tonal, modern sense –happens in their gardens.

I wrote about one such place recently and you can follow the links to the Los Angeles Times story here, including an extensive web gallery.

For those who ask: What plants are appropriate for a lush, low-water landscape? I think you’ll appreciate Ryan and Joel’s plant list for their clients’ lawn-free front yard now filled with native and Mediterranean grasses, shrubs, ground covers and trees, many of which display multi-season beauty:

A shopping list of California native plants and their Mediterranean companions
Natives:
Ceanothus griseus horizontalis Yankee Point
Cercis occidentalis
Arctostaphylos ‘Howard McMinn’

Arctostaphylos ‘Emerald Carpet’
Leymus condensatus ‘Canyon Prince’

Muhlenbergia rigens
Platanus racemosa
Carpenteria californica
Eschscholzia californica
Juncus patens
Sisyrinchium montanum (Blue Eyed Grass)

Non-Natives:
Arbutus ‘Marina’
Agave bracteosa
Leucadendron ‘Safari Sunset’

Agave vilmroniana
Olea europaea
Chondropetalum tectorum

Materials:
Composite decking (raised deck and boardwalk)
Square pre-cast concrete pavers
Poured-in-place concrete bench
‘Del Rio’ gravel
Decomposed granite (DG)
Shredded tree mulch