Blog

Landscape Design & Maintenance

I was musing the other day about planting a dogwood tree out front this spring, debating about where I should put it. Rather than suggesting a spot, my husband asked me which one I was going to plant. For a second, the question threw me  --  especially since I hadn’t bought any yet. Then it hit me; he wasn’t asking which one but which type I was intending to plant. Because it was April I had flowering dogwoods on my mind, but the truth is, there are several other types of dogwoods that would have also been beautiful choices. Here’s a run down on four of my favorites.

If the term RAIN GARDEN brings an image of a weedy bog teeming with scores of mosquitoes and other unpleasant flying insects to your mind, then it’s time to update and edit that picture! 

To bring both vitality and tranquility to a garden, motion has to be an intentional element of the design.

If you stop and think about it, movement is inherent in nature. Every motion, no matter how big or how small, adds its thread to the tapestry that is our environment. 

Early spring is a great time to turn a hum-drum landscape into the masterpiece of your dreams. Often, adding a few well-chosen and well-placed shrubs to the existing plant palette can make all the difference in the world. 

Typically,  the  first considerations for adding plants to the landscape are whether their peak season characteristics will mesh well with the rest of the existing design. There is however, another question  to ask before choosing new additions : What do they offer for winter?  

One of the aspects of the season that I have especially come to love is winter’s light and shadow. The quality of light is different in the winter. It’s less intense, softer and more diffused. 

What started as a mild season, almost a non-winter winter, has turned into a “Snow-mageddon” here. It’s been snowstorm after snowstorm, temperatures so frigid that it’s dangerous to go outside and depressingly grey skies. Even winter-lovers were having a hard time defending this weather. I must admit that the slight enthusiasm I had mustered for the season was rapidly disappearing.

And then I got an unexpected gift -- a collection of emailed pictures from a friend’s treks in the woods. (Followers of this blog will probably guess that it was Sandy Defoe who sent the pictures; unlike so many of us, she lives for the winter months.) She had stumbled upon a field of hoar frost and she was euphoric over her rare find.