A welcome to our newest members!

Garden Designers Roundtable is growing! We are happy to welcome four new members this month, but first we bid farewell to two of our longtime members. Laura Livengood Shaub of Interleafings, and Tara Dillard of Vanishing Threshold: Garden Life Home, have moved on to the next chapters of their professional lives. Best wishes to you Laura and Tara, we will miss your contributions!

We are proud to announce that the following four designers have joined us here on the Roundtable, and we are very excited about the new perspectives they bring to our group. Please join us in saying welcome to our newest members!

David Cristiani – David is founder and landscape architect at Quercus in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who blogs at The Desert Edge.

Deborah Silver – Deborah is principal of  Deborah Silver & Co., a firm offering landscape and garden design and installation, who blogs at Dirt Simple

Thomas Rainer – Thomas is a landscape architect from Washington, D.C., and blogger at Grounded Design.

Mary Gallagher Gray –  Mary is a garden designer and coach at Mary Gray, Garden Design and Problem Solving in the Washington, D.C. area who blogs at Black Walnut Dispatch.

You can read their full bios on our Bio page. We’re thrilled to have their regional perspectives, knowledge, and, yes, humor added to our group!

Contemplative Spaces

In this multitasking era, when few places exist without Internet access and we obsessively check our email and thumb Facebook updates on our phones, we need, more than ever, a refuge from the hive mind – a place of retreat, solitude, and reflection. Nature has always offered this; mystics and other seekers have historically retreated from society into the wilderness to contemplate the universe. Today, however, more of us than ever live in cities, and we must create our own contemplative public spaces and private gardens. We may look to those cultures with a rich history of creating meditative gardens, like the Japanese, or branch out in entirely new directions.

This month the members of Garden Designers Roundtable explore the idea of Contemplative Spaces/Zen. Whether it’s a hidden bench tucked away in a corner of the garden, a labyrinth for strolling meditation, a deck for a morning yoga routine, or a garden of remembrance, a contemplative garden is a place set apart from the bustle of everyday life, a place where you feel closer to nature, your inner self, or a higher power.

Follow the links below, and start your contemplative journey!

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Jenny Peterson : J Petersen Garden Design : Austin, TX

Genevieve Schmidt : North Coast Gardening : Arcata, CA

First Impressions!

Everyone likes to make a good first impression. We play up our positive attributes and control our annoying quirks in order to impress others in that crucial first three seconds of meeting.  According to an article in Psychology Today, “Our brains form first impressions by creating a composite of all the signals given off by a new experience.”

From a real estate perspective, a good first impression – or “curb appeal” – is all about using your landscape to enhance the appearance of your home. Does the landscape echo the style of your home’s architecture?  Does it meet or exceed the standards set by the neighborhood? Is it well maintained? The landscape is like the neatly pressed suit and polished shoes that are among the basic signals given off at  a first meeting.

More important, however, is not what the landscape says about your house, but what it says about you.  Is it welcoming? Is it engaging? Is it quiet and elegant, or colorful and gregarious?  Expressing yourself in the publicly viewed part of your landscape is like offering a heart-felt smile at a first meeting; the signal that we look for specifically because (it) “… lets us know that we’re likely to get a positive reception.”

Creating a great first impression from the front curb (or kerb as our British friends prefer) can set the tone for your entire landscape.

Please join the Roundtable bloggers today as we explore the best of First Impressions:

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Jocelyn Chilvers : The Art Garden : Denver, CO

Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT

Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA

Christina Salwitz : Personal Garden Coach : Renton, WA

Shirley Bovshow : Eden Makers : Los Angeles, CA

Garden Designers Rountable: Reality Check / Don’t Do This…

This month on the Roundtable, we take a break from perusing seed catalogs and planning for spring planting for a garden design reality check. Our topic, Reality Check/Don’t Do This… is sure to illicit a wide range of thoughts from our group of Roundtablers..

Joining us this month is our guest, noted landscape architect David Cristiani, author of the blog The Desert Edge.

Here is a little more about David -

David has over 20 years of experience designing outdoor environments in the Southwest. His projects include a variety of resource-conservative commercial, institutional, and residential designs.
David has merged the practice of landscape design with his knowledge of climate and the study of arid-region plant geography and species composition. This unique insight has proved valuable for both site-specific design work and for assisting regional growers, by collecting seed and cuttings for large-scale production of promising high desert plant introductions.

And now, for a look at Reality Check / Don’t Do This…

Simply follow the links below to each of the blogs. Enjoy!

David Cristiani : The Desert Edge : Albuquerque, NM

Jocelyn Chilvers : The Art Garden : Denver, CO

Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : Easy Bay, CA

Andrew Keys : Garden Smackdown : Boston, MA

Susan Cohan : Miss Rumphius’ Rules : Chatham, NJ

Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In The Garden : Los Altos, CA

Christina Salwitz : Personal Garden Coach : Renton, WA

Shirley Bovshow : Eden Makers : Los Angeles, CA

Genevieve Schmidt : North Coast Gardening : Arcata, CA

Yikes! Garden Design Don’ts

This month on the Garden Designers Roundtable, it’s time for a quick reality check. You don’t have to be a professional landscape designer to have literally been stopped in your tracks by some major garden design ‘Don’t’ you’ve seen somewhere in your travels. It could be across the world, across town, or even across the street.

We’ve all had moments when we’ve scratched our heads and wondered, ’What were they thinking…’

Take the ‘What Were They Thinking’ Reality Check Challenge

♦ Do you live in New England but continue to try to grow cactus as a foundation plant (or do you live in the desert southwest and try to grow rhododendrons)?

♦ Do you sometimes forget that plants grow and get bigger and bigger and BIGGER?

♦ Do you believe that if one garden gnome adds a touch of whimsy, then ten garden gnomes must be ten times more whimsical?

♦ Has anyone ever told you to drop the pruning shears and leave that poor shrub alone?

If you can answer yes to even one of those questions, you may need a garden design reality check.

Our Guest This Month

What was David thinking.... sending us his high school ID?

This month on the Roundtable we are joined by none other than David Cristiani, principal of Quercus, a landscape architecture firm located in Albuquerque, NM.

Long before sustainable and eco-friendly design were buzzwords, David was designing residential and commercial outdoor spaces that capture the essence of the high desert region of the southwest that he loves.

David is also the author of the blog The Desert Edge. On his blog, David explores the landscape, plants, people and weather at the ‘edge of the vast Chihuahuan Desert + Great American SW’.

Join us on Tuesday, January 24th as we take a reality check and explore ‘Don’t Do This…’. Oh, and we’ll also have a current photo of David!

Gardening with Deer

Quite a few years ago at a conference for the Connecticut Nurserymen’s Association, I sat in on a talk by a local landscape architect who’s topic was “Deer-Proof plants”. Slide after slide he would tell the audience “this particular plant has shown great resistance to deer” or “deer won’t eat this because…”, and slide after slide some member of the audience would raise their hand and say “the deer eat that in my garden”. The poor guy never stood a chance.

Deer have become a major problem in the landscape, and the reasons for the increase in deer damage range from development encroaching on their territory to populations thriving on the lush banquet our gardens provide for them. Whatever the reason, choosing the right plant for the right place no longer guarantees success in the garden, you must also ask “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”

This month on the Roundtable, our designers discuss, “Gardening with Deer”. Follow the links below and find out how they deal with their uninvited “guests”!

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Genevieve Schmidt : North Coast Gardening : Arcata, CA

Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Christina Salwitz : Personal Garden Coach : Renton, WA

Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA

Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT

Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In The Garden : Los Altos, CA

Tara Dilliard : Vanishing Threshold: Garden, Life, Home : Atlanta, GA

Horticulture and Design Idols!

This month on the Roundtable, we would like to introduce you, our readers, to those individuals who have inspired us and shaped our visions. We are very happy to welcome Thomas Rainer as a guest this month. Thomas writes a very thought provoking blog called Grounded Design, and we know you’ll like what Thomas has to say.

Here is a little more about Thomas -

Thomas Rainer

Thomas Rainer is a landscape architect by profession and a gardener by obsession. Thomas has worked on projects such as the U.S. Capitol grounds, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, and The New York Botanical Garden, but is happiest puttering in his small garden in Washington, D.C. Thomas thinks you should use more natives, plant in humongous masses, and loosen up that landscape, for crying out loud.

And now without further ado, may we present, our Idols! Please follow the links below to each of the blogs, and Enjoy!

Thomas Rainer : Grounded Design : Arlington, Virginia

Susan Cohan : Miss Rumphius’ Rules : Chatham, NJ

Scott Hokunson : Blue Heron Landscapes : Granby, CT

Rochelle Greayer : Studio G : Boston, MA

Jenny Peterson : J Petersen Garden Design : Austin, TX

Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT

Andrew Keys : Garden Smackdown : Boston, MA