CornerStone Gardens

We drove up to Sonoma today and stopped at CornerStone Gardens--several acres of exhibition space for landscape designers with some fancy shops and galleries. Perhaps most notably, John Greenlee has a meadow installation here, which will get its own post (here). In the meantime, here are some of the other things I liked, and didn't like. If you've seen posts about CornerStone on other garden blogs, you've probably seen most of these pictures before.

But I did not bother with the big blue chair.







I assume these are Marcia Donahue pieces.



She bakes pieces of clay put them sticks to simulate groovy bamboo. It's fine, I like it.



Dramatic, spherical stones? Check.



This seems like a good time to buzz through the shopping area.



I disdain the design impulse to take something functional and make it merely decorative, unless the thing itself has no practical function left in it and is being decoratively re-purposed. What actual birds would ever nest in these? The holes are too large, for one thing.



This, on the other hand, is perfectly decorative, and it would be great in the garden if it still functioned as a light source too.



I am sorry I didn't ask about these large stone penises.



Meditative faces in sculptural repose: fancy garden gnomes of our time?



I can't help wonder.



If there was only one thing I would actually buy in a place like this, it would be a wire sphere.





And maybe a crate or two of blue glass chunks.



Chunks of blue glass enchantingly line the paths at Lotusland.



Back in the garden, there was not much conventional gardening. I could let this one picture represent its extent.



Except that I have to mention this sprawling bed of blue-blooming Salvia uliginosa which positively BUZZED with pollinators. I think the secret to heavy bloom must be regular heat, something I cannot provide in San Francisco.



I also have to mention this South African bed, remarkable for its dusty late season color palette. Too dusty for you?



Green it up with some rosemary.



I like composting walls.



These were filled with eucalyptus debris and exuded the smell of that. There's always a few weeks of the year when eucalyptus trees themselves smell like cat pee, but most of the time I enjoy their fragrance. It's a tree many of us have a difficult relationship with. My grandparents had several on their property so I have a positive association with them in that regard.



But as far as garden screens and fencing go, I think composting walls are totally groovy and I imagine they're far more economical over time than a wooden fence. I'm not sure you would call one this thin a composting wall, but maybe you do, I don't know. I've seen thicker versions in gardens along the coast filled with redwood tree litter.



I particularly liked this turf and turf-alternative demonstration area.



You can walk on the long strips barefoot to see what you like.



I know zero about turf, but there seemed to be many different varieties. Some curatorial notes would have been nice. I noticed right away the skipper butterflies and bees lingering over only the weediest-looking strip of oxalis and clover...



There was a lot of gimmicky, wackadoo sculpture stuff that I didn't care for.



I guess you could write that you love people and want world peace on these shiny strips.



I'm not entirely unsentimental. I liked this metal heart fencing in the juncus.



But I would not allow it in my garden, personally.



(That white vapor floating in the back came from a misting apparatus.)

I found the food areas most interesting, especially all the grape growing models. This being wine country, that was no surprise.



You can have quite a productive vine staked on a metal trellis 2-3 feet wide and less than 1 food deep. And grow strawberries underneath it.



Also lots of tomatoes, corn and basil.



Totally at the end of the tomato season. It's funny how they get smaller and smaller as summer grinds into fall.



I got rid of all my squash a few weeks ago. Moldy leaves.



The corn beds looked full and fabulous and provoked those familiar pangs of garden envy.



Sigh...



Sunflowers and corn, a tall grass, formed a fine border between the food garden and John Greenlee's meadow garden.

P-house, the first disc

I ended up buying the Penelope Hobhouse DVD, The Art and Practice of Gardening. I blogged my notes about the second disc in the 2-disc set here and here. Now I have the first disc and I've probably watched it two, maybe three, dozen times in the last two months.

I'm not even remotely tired of it. As soon as the disc is done, I reach for the remote and press the 'play' button. Thank goodness I have other things going on in my life that demand my attention. Otherwise I don't know how or when I would ever peel myself away. It's driving Guy nuts.

She starts the first disc talking about roses. She wants you to know that you can grow roses in different ways--as shrubs, climbers, and hedges. "You don't have to grow them massed in beds all by themselves." I think we're all on board with that.

She takes us to Graham Stuart Thomas' garden of of old roses at Mottisfont Abbey in Hampshire. Old roses are uniformly pale whites, pinks, mauves--all with a touch of blue. Harsh notes of orange or yellow in a rose are strictly modern.

Climb roses up old apple trees. Keep them nearby for fragrance.

Old roses typically bloom once per season in the spring (but the season of bloom can be long). P-house's docent, writer and historian Patrick Taylor, tries to spin the non-repeating season by invoking the pleasures of seasonal variation. He tries to explain that having constant blooming could get tedious, but P-house cuts him off sharply. (I love it when she does that.)

Rosa complicata, Rosa mundi, 'Alba maxima', 'Constance Spry' (an Austin rose), some others, get discussed. Rosa mundi is one of the oldest garden roses. Passion and dedication saved the old roses which would otherwise be lost to us now.

By the end of the 19th century, people were tired of the "old" roses and wanted long-blooming roses of uniform height and proportion. Interest in the old roses was revived after WWII. During that time, the modern shrub rose was introduced; its key features are repeat blooming, graceful form, and fragrance.

We meet David Austin in central England. He wanted to cross old roses to get the fragrance and shape of old roses, but with repeat-flowering. He says no flower varies as much as a rose, no flower is more difficult to photograph, or paint. Hmm.

'Constance Spry' and 'Chianti' were Austin's first crosses, but they did not repeat-flower. So he back-crossed with repeat-flowering types until finally he produced 'Wife of Bath'. It was 'Graham Thomas' and 'Mary Rose' however which signified the breakthroughs that made him famous.

In the next garden we get a lesson on the unique feel and attitude of ramblers. Where climbing roses are formal and architectural, English gardeners in the 1920s enjoyed using wild, romantic ramblers to "destroy" their otherwise formal, geometric garden patterns.

Think nothing of pruning wayward rambler stems that obscure the flowers. Ramblers are pruned immediately after flowering. Pliable rambler stems can be used to achieve diverse effects. Any free-standing shrub rose that grows to 5-feet will grow to 8 or 10 feet while trained against a wall. Ramblers make strong companions for other plants, especially evergreens. Examples are shown that combine different textures and feels.

P-house shows us some of the roses she grows. She praises 'Irene Watts' most of all. She concludes by reinforcing the idea that roses have diverse habits that you can use in different ways to make your garden "as beautiful as possible". There's that tyranny of the beautiful again. I'm against that, but I get it.

That's the end of the unit on roses.

The next unit is landscape gardening. The 18th-century English landscape garden, she says, is the greatest art form England has ever produced, having been copied all over the world. These gardens banished intimate flower gardens from near the house in favor of oneness with nature. Sheep and cattle grazed on the grass while trees grew into natural shapes. By the Victorian era, people were tired of this and revived the old intimacy. Ye Olde Intamacie. William Robinson is much discussed and soon we're off to Henry DuPont's garden at Winterthur.

While I love the subject matter, I have a hard time bonding with this unit. I think it's the plants. For a natural garden, may I recommend my Aug-06 visit to the Bloedel Reserve in Washington state, or better, go visit Outside Clyde.

I do like the discussion about growing plants in layers to let them show in succession. I appreciate the admonition to always ask where a plant comes from so that you can benefit from that knowledge when building your garden. P-house gets philosophical when she says that natural gardens move all parts of one's soul, whereas a formal garden appeals to logic and intellect which affects us too, but in a different way.

The discussion of Gertrude Jeckyll could be more. P-house sums up her philosophy on natural gardening by saying she's editing nature, not dictating to nature. Okay, we're good with the natural garden.

Next: Structural Elements. We're talking about the bones now.

P-house includes the color of paint you use in your garden as a structural element. She uses black. Her garden gates and garden furniture are all painted black. The walls are red brick. The paths are a gray, clayey gravel local to Dorset.

She hides her car under a pergola hidden by a hornbeam hedge. You should always think about your car when you lay out your garden because cars reflect light and spoil a view.

Rosemary Verrey's garden is next. What a charming, lovely lady she is. Her house dates to 1697. She calls it a humble country manor garden. Well, it has a Grecian temple. Gardening began in 1954. Your garden should always curtsy to your house according to Rosemary Verey citing Gertrude Jeckyll. In summer, a garden should be full of careless rapture. Terribly important to have verticals as well as horizontals. It's very important to copy ideas from other people. Verey copied a French garden's linden trees under-planted at the base with ivy and pruned into little balls...


Oops...okay, time for an abrupt halt. One of those other things going on in my life is calling me away from the Art of Gardening. Turns out it's bedtime now.

More P-house later.

A collection of old skeleton keys

hanging from a tree is a cool idea for a mysterious garden feature.

Keys mentioned in the slideshow at the link.

I see you can buy collections of old keys on Ebay for USD$20...


ADDED: What else would you find in a Mystery Garden?

Obscure, mysterious plants, perhaps? Or maybe you'd have familiar plants loaded with symbolism and meaning, but used in mysterious ways.

I'm sure you'd want to have some odd flowers or unexpected colors. Dragon arum certainly belongs in the mystery garden.

Surely the ideal mystery garden would be designed around an old specimen of some kind, like an oak, or maybe a very old rose.

I think broken statues would be very cool in the Mystery Garden--especially headless or armless statues.

Mirrors!

Of course, you'd have a cairn--or an old chimney. Some tombstones off in the corner would be very cool. In fact, old cemeteries (link, link) would be loaded with ideas for the mystery garden.

What else???