How to choose boulders for any garden

Choosing and placing boulders for your landscape job is an art.  The Japanese have several years of study on just rock placement.  But you can do a great job with just some sensitivity and a good eye.  Here are the basic tips. I usually suggest choosing local or fairly local boulders.  This keeps your costs [...]

Into the fold–working with Mother Nature’s garden

I’ve got big planting plans–at least for me, up here.  When I moved here, I was happy to NOT have a garden.  Don’t get me wrong, I love plants, designing with them and caring for them, but you know, it is work.  I grew hundreds of species of plants in my California yard for pleasure [...]

More great, reliable plants for California landscapes

Here are a few more of my favorite plants, easy, reliable, and striking, and different than the usuals out there. Tree Dahlias grow 10′ tall in one season and bloom late in the fall.  Sometimes an October storm will knock off the blossoms.  But you don’t have to grow this Dahlia for the flowers.  The [...]

A few great (and reliable) plants for California landscapes

I’m done with my California winter installations and hoping for some spring Wyoming weather.  But right now it’s the last vestiges of planting time in California before the summer heat so get going and order up some of these fantastic plants.  These are a few of the reliable, unusual, and color interesting plants I love [...]

A Sense of Place or A Sensibility of Place

In my work I can always tell where a person is from. No, not from their accent but from what kind of landscape they desire.  Usually, this is a memory deep in their subconscious from their childhood–their initial Sense of Place. Most city people will tell you they have no idea what a ‘Sense of [...]

Squirrels, Bears, and birds: What’s the connection?

The Clark’s Nutcrackers have been very busy over the last month.  So have the squirrels.  They’re both competing for the Limber Pine seeds that grow around here.  The birds extract and stash seeds.  The squirrels create middens with stored seeds and cones.  The bears let these animals do their work, then rob the middens. It [...]

Botanizing

I found a great place to botanize to my heart’s content–a burned area from the ’88 fires with a stream running through it.  I’m working hard on learning as many new flowers and plants in my area as I can.  There are, though, quite a lot of plants that aren’t in my selection of books. [...]

A Rare Treat

Early this morning I noticed the cow moose I saw a few days ago lying by the meadow/forest interface.  I glassed her and saw, to my surprise, she had a little calf with her.  I watched them both for about 45 minutes.  What a treat! And the last treat:  Yesterday on a hike I stumbled [...]

More Patio Notes

I recently visited some old clients and got a chance to see how their gardens had filled in.  I want to comment on just two gardens with interesting patios. The first was an idea I cooked up.  It involved using pavers set in concrete around the edges of the patio.  Executing it was a contractors’ [...]

Limber Pine and Doug Fir seedling trees–reforesting my property

I finally got my tree seedling order.  I almost didn’t get my Limber Pines, but at the last minute the CCD found at least 1/2 my order.  Today was a frigid day, hovering around 35 degrees with a chilling wind–perfect for planting.  I gathered up my pick, several containers of left-over chippings from splitting wood [...]