Where do we start? How does this work? These are questions often asked by folks interested in a professionally designed landscape that will stand out in beauty and performance. Landscape design, like any creative work, is rarely a linear process, but there are points along the way that are important in every design. Greenscape Landscaping and Barbara Safranek Landscape Design successfully collaborated to garner the Overall Best in Show award for the 2013 Spokane Home & Yard Show. Our creative journey for the display ‘Into the Woods’ is a good illustration of the design process.

The Wish List

Every client has hopes and requirements for their landscape. Listening carefully, reviewing pictures (worth a thousand words) and developing a ‘Wish List’ of goals and objectives for each design is the foundation for the process. For the Home Show display client Aaron Farr, owner of Greenscape Landscaping wished to showcase patio, water and fire features. Aaron provided me generous creative latitude, but the overarching and compelling objective was clear: to ignite imaginations with an inspired and captivating landscape.

The Site

Sun, shade, existing plants, wind, views, architecture, soil – these are some of the qualities and features that define a site. As a designer, taking stock of the site is an important step in understanding and working with the physical realities and character of the place. Inside the Fairgrounds building our ‘site’ was a 30’ x 30’ concrete square framed by four 17’ pillars – a gray, lifeless cavern. Creating a garden with warmth and beauty required truckloads of soil, stone, wood, and carefully collected living plants, days contouring, laying pavers, and wielding stone. My challenge was directing the arrangement of all these elements into nature-modelled communities that would create a woodland experience that invites, flows, and delights.

The Spark

What will inspire or breathe life into a design may be revealed at any stage of the design. In the case of our show display, three majestic charred cedar snags provided inspiration with their size, dramatic history and sculptural beauty. The display design would grow organically from these elegant giants, like a forest from a nurse log – saplings and ferns nestled in the understory, water flowing and a rustic fire place warming the deep woods. Our entry arbor pillars made from industrial culverts splayed and planted, echo the cedar snags.

History & Culture

There’s an underlying context to every design, perhaps rooted in a place or surrounding community, often imported with residents in their dreams and memories. In our past Home Shows, we’ve created a signature detailing in each display repurposing industrial materials. We’ve employed rebar and concrete mesh in fences and metal culverts as planters. This year we incorporated the gabion into our design – a wire box designed to fill with rock and used to retain and stabilize slopes and banks. The gabions continue an urban-industrial thread in our home show history.

Playfulness

Play is a lighthearted, friendly interaction between the players: site, designer, client, construction team and materials. Aaron, his craftsmen and I played with gabions to see what interesting features might evolve. Rock was stacked, moss and burlap stitched, and wooden benches crafted to create our built elements, a double sided fireplace, gabion benches and vertical gardens. Our display is also accessorized with a sense of playfulness with glass floats bouncing in the fountain, stone mushrooms pushing through forest plantings, frogs, cranes and dragonflies populating the woods.

Execution

The final phase of the design process, plan in hand, is the beginning of construction. Your choice of contractor sets the tone for the project. Look for a steady manager with a collaborative spirit and a respect for design who will work to bring your vision to life. For achieving a finely tuned, exceptional landscape, owners and designers who stay involved in construction have a distinct advantage.

I hope that Into the Woods provided show-goers a memorable garden experience that speaks to compelling design, creative designer-contractor collaboration, and joy in crafting beautiful landscapes. Thank you to the undaunted and good-spirited craftsmen at Greenscape who worked with me to bring this design to life.

Some reasons to re-think your front yard:

- Enjoy the fruits of your mowing, weeding, watering and fertilizing.

- Take advantage of the best sun on your lot for growing flowers and food.

- Take advantage of shade or cool breezes for a comfortable place to relax or dine.

- Capture the sunset or sunrise.

- Get to know your neighbors.

- Create a walled garden-retreat.

- Enhance your entry with a patio or deck.

- Make a children’s garden with ‘rooms’ for imaginations to unfold.

- Reclaim an underutilized part of your outdoor space and make it work for you!

Here are three front yard transformations that have provided inviting, useful outdoor living spaces:

Mark & Maryann Lester

The Lester’s front yard garden patio and seat-wall:

A sliver of a backyard, dropping to a lovely, but unusable ravine, led the Lesters to consider a front yard living/dining patio for their newly remodeled retirement home. The circular paver patio was situated in the ‘L’ of the house and garage for convenience and for shelter from the driveway and street. A deep, billowing shrub and perennial border and an 18” concrete block seat wall partially wrap the patio creating friendly boundaries.

Old friends love sharing a glass of wine on the new garden patio and the Lesters have made some new friends with their front yard living room as well.

Uninspired straight shot to the street.

The Behring-McBride’s terraced arrival garden:

A long, straight descent to the street dominated this front yard. A ramped concrete walk, treacherous in winter and uninspired in any season, was replaced with a series of stone steps and paver terraces winding through the impressive arboretum-like collection of mature trees.The addition of handsome, custom made steel railings and shade-loving shrubs and perennials embellish the landscape with sculpture and blossoms.

Visitors and owners alike now move through the front yard with discovery and delight, lingering to experience the many vistas and resting places on their way to the front door.

The Wilson’s front door forest deck:

On an 8 x 12’ entry deck, anchored by a stately Ponderosa Pine, the Wilson’s have enjoyed the pleasures of social afternoons in their front yard for several years. Looking for ways to simplify mowing and edging their lawn-dominated yard led to plans for a woodland retreat with colorful understory trees and shrubs that will envelop the deck with leafy curtains, buffer street views, and screen the neighbor’s driveway.

A flagstone path winding through hardy Rozanne geranium, peonies and flowering dogwood will provide no-mow access to the sideyard. A new recirculating fountain made from a ceramic pot located off the corner of the deck will add to the retreat atmosphere and provide another level of sound and visual separation from the surroundings. A smaller, simpler lawn flanking the front path will welcome visitors and keep views open to the neighborhood.

The Wilson’s are maximizing the benefits of front yard living with enhanced beauty and comfort and lower-mower investment.

pots integrated along entry

Keys to stunning pots; Siting, filling and watering your year-round pots.

1)

Take time in placing and evaluating the location of your pots. Is the effect what you imagined? Is the color and sheen of the pot shown off to best advantage? Is there visual balance with other features of your house and landscape? Is there adequate circulation space around your pots at entries, driveways and paths?

metallic patio arrangement

2)

Before you forget, make sure your container has been drilled for drainage. Larger containers and those with high centers may need more than one drainage hole. Freeze-resistant pots can withstand the expansion of freezing soil, but not the expansion of freezing water! Good drainage is also fundamental to healthy plants.

3)

Provide a solid, level base that allows for unimpeded drainage.

Use a paver, bricks or ceramic pot feet to create a platform to elevate your pots off decks and patios. Take care to ensure that your pot is solid on its base, supported equally at all points. Also, my pet peeve, make sure your pot is level! Nothing detracts from the feeling of permanence and quality like a cock-eyed container.

4)

Plumb your pot for invisible automatic irrigation by threading a length of 1/4” spaghetti tubing two or three times the height of the pot up through the drainage hole. You are now plumbed to connect to emitters and a supply line at any time.

rustic unglazed trio in garden bed

5)

For pots with narrow, tapered mouths, line with several lengths of foam pipe insulation for added freeze insurance. The logic is that the spongy pipe insulation will reduce pressure on pot walls from lateral soil expansion.

6)

Place a few shards or stones over drainage holes and you are ready to fill your pot will growing medium. Pots are unique growing environments and soil-less potting mixes are best for maintaining proper air and moisture levels. I like Miracle Grow with added moisture control and a 3 month supply of time release fertilizer.

7)

Pour or scoop potting soil into pot and water thoroughly to moisten and settle to within an inch or two of the rim. Don’t pack or compress.

8)

Now for the fun part – you’re ready to plant!

In my residential Spokane landscape architecture practice, the design process starts with the client. I’ve been asked many times ‘What is your garden style?’ or “What is your favorite plant?”. Of course I have my favorites, but ascertaining the wishes and dreams of my clients is the foundation for each design I prepare. I strive to create a landscape that reflects the uniqueness and personality of its owners. The raw materials of site, including topography, structures, sun and wind, soil, established plants, water availability – are equally important factors, and in combination with owner’s wishes make for infinite creative outcomes.

I believe the design process at its best is a collaborative exploration of ideas and possibilities. A good design is less a product and more a distillation and focusing of all the environmental and human directives for each project. In the most successful landscapes this process continues after the plans are drawn and is refined by designer, owner and

contractor during construction. The design intent, safe and well-functioning circulation and activity areas, quality workmanship, beautiful details all influence the finished landscape. An up-front investment in design is usually a fraction of total project cost and helps ensure a tailored, functional and sustainable end result.

One key perspective I bring to my practice is my passion for gardens. I love the outdoor theater – the variation of plant life, the changing seasons, the growth and maturing of a garden -

and I spend most of my free time in my own garden. I encourage my design clients to become involved in their gardens, whether in choosing plants, growing food, composting or just spending time reveling in their gardens. Spokane is an ideal climate for enjoying the outdoors. Our dry, warm summers are hospitable and our long summer days luxurious. We are able to grow an immense variety of plants – exquisite evergreens, flowering trees, endless perennials, succulents and desert plants and even coastal-loving rhododendrons and ferns. One of my favorite books written by Lauren Springer and her husband David Ogden Plant Driven Design echoes my feelings about the importance of plants in creating a meaningful garden. Plants are central to an evocative landscape and are carefully chosen and featured in my garden designs.

The concern for environmental health is mainstream stuff these days and is often expressed in a somewhat vague, one word expression ‘GREEN’. Designing and building a landscape provides a spectacular opportunity to deconstruct the concept of ‘GREEN’ and rebuild it into an interactive, living, one-of-a-kind place. These are some of the questions that need to be asked in creating an environmentally conscious landscape;

What is our understanding and desire for personal and environmental health?

Is there potential for growth and new vision in the design process?

What site resources can be integrated into the design?

What materials will use minimum resources and provide maximum durability?

What plant communities will thrive on this site, and provide enjoyment with minimum care?

This new approach to landscape design I’d summarize as life enhancing. Its about more than adding an outdoor kitchen to your backyard or ‘shrubbing-up’ the spaces around the lawn. A well designed landscape adds quality of life – comfort, beauty, respite, creative inspiration, health and connection – for people and the environment.

Are you ready for a new kind of landscape design?

Finishing touches to planted gutter

Our Spokane area is rich in natural and man-made resources. ‘Keeping It Real’ is about grounding ourselves – and our gardens – in practices that create lasting health for our lives and for our environment. As a Spokane Landscape Designer in collaboration with the craftsmen at Greenscape Landscaping, Barbara created a sustainable display landscape for the Spokane Home and Yard Show that features re-purposed materials alongside durable, industrial materials.

Our theme:

Creating Sustainable Gardens – illustrates four key principles of sustainability.

One:

Create a place for nature. In our display garden we’ve included water in a beautiful recirculating feature for the benefit of humans and wildlife. We’ve also demonstrated a mixed shrub-tree-perennial planting that provides refuge, food and seasonal beauty. Landscapes that keep lawn to a functional minimum and opt for diversity not only save water, but create habitats for rich communities of life.

Two:

Re-purpose materials available to you. This not only reduces landfill waste, but adds character, warmth and charm to your garden. Our garden shed is made from barn wood, old corrugated metal siding and old gutters. The 6×6 posts are milled from discarded telephone poles.

Three:

Use materials that will last. We’ve chosen concrete architectural slabs for our patio floor – they are durable, versatile and easy to maintain.The raised bed is made from an industrial culvert and fencing from welded wire mesh designed to reinforce concrete.

Four:

Design for beauty and comfort. A well designed garden is one that will be loved and used for the lives of its owners. We used a brick red color to unite the variety of materials – red paint on posts, a bold beautiful red pot and red accessories. We included furnishings that welcome and provide rest and recreation including an antique wicker chair and modern fire pit constructed from a restaurant wok. Handsome light fixtures carry through our rustic urban style and illuminate the landscape.

If you missed the show you have another chance to visit us at the convention center  Spokane Home & Garden Show, March 16 – 18. and at the fairgrounds Home Improvement Show, April 13 – 15. We’d love to see you!

Pots In The Garden: Container Gardening in the Inland Northwest

Spring is coming in a few months and if you’re like me you are feverishly anticipating pots of billowing summer color. I would like to suggest that this spring you take a long view on containers and think about adding enduring, freeze-resistant pottery that will grace the garden all year long.

My goal as a Spokane landscape and garden designer is to create landscapes that are compelling in each of our four seasons and of sustainable and lasting beauty. Garden containers should meet the same objectives.

Finding the perfect pots requires an investment in careful selection and quality containers. The garden containers you see here are year-round residents that add to the flow, the function, the visual excitement of the garden and complement their sites in scale and character.

Start by analyzing your landscape’s attributes: What is the style of your house, office or garden – what personality do you want to project? Where will containers be most appreciated as accessories or focal points – the entry? the patio? adding structure to a perennial border? How will the shape and color of your container provide contrast and punctuation? Keep your list of requirements general and be open to the unexpected.

Think Big

If you can move it easily it’s not big enough! Exteriors – buildings, trees and sky – demand a larger-than-indoor scale for accessories. I recommend that the smallest garden pots you consider are 18” or so in one or more dimensions.

Budget for Durability

Now that you’ve opened your mind to large containers, there will be no more moving, emptying or covering of pots. Your new, scale appropriate containers must be made of freeze-resistant high-fired clay or flexible materials such as metal, plastic and rubber. With proper drainage and siting, freeze-resistant pots can beautify the garden planted or empty all year long.

Aim for Art

Handmade pots with organic glazes, bold steel planters with custom texture and patina, vessels carved from stone – choose your year-round containers to double as garden sculpture and to furnish your garden in style.

Make a lasting investment this spring – think about a design consultation for an underutilized garden space or for help choosing year-round pots to accessorize your home!