Perhaps nothing helps the designer establish a sense of place more than stone. Ancient and timeless, it marks the passing of time as it offers a promise of the future. It serves as support, defines borders, acts as decoration, and honors through memorial. Millenia to form and longer still to return to mineral form, stone simply is… place!
The Roundtable, is pleased to announce two special guests, Deborah Silver and Sunny Wieler join in our discsussion on stone.
Deborah Silver
Deborah Silver, owner and design principal for Deborah Silver and Co Inc, has been a professional landscape and garden designer in the Midwest for the past 25 years. Her shop, Detroit Garden Works, is devoted to fine containers, ornament, furniture and unusual plants for the garden. Opened in 1996, it was ranked as one of the top 25 garden stores in the US by Garden Design magazine, Martha Stewart magazine listed the shop in their top 50 products and places in March of 2011. The Branch Studio manufactures garden ornament from her design in steel, wood and concrete. She writes regularly on topics relating to landscape and garden design via her blog, Dirt Simple.
Sunny Wieler
When Sunny Wieler is not on his blog ‘Stone Art Blog’ sharing his interests in stonework and all things creative in the landscape and garden, you will find him working at his day job creating unique and artistic stonework and gardens for the people of Ireland.
Sunny’s passion for landscaping spans back to his teen years where he would spend his weekends working in his neighbours gardens, which he continued to do up into until his college years. While obtaining his degree in Fine Art & Sculpture in the Crawford College of Art & Design in Cork, he would spend many of his free weekends building garden projects for his friends and family. After graduating from college he worked for several different landscaping companies, where he continued to develop his skills. In 2005 he set up his company, Stone Art. Initially Stone Art provided artistic stonework and garden features, but with increasing demand this quickly developed into full landscaping services.
In 2008 Sunny also spent a year working for a landscaping company in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he got to experience the fantastic wonders of landscaping on the other side of the planet. When he returned to Ireland he set about achieving his diploma in landscape & garden design from Limpert’s Academy of Design in Dublin.
Almost two years ago, Sunny started writing his blog ‘Stone Art Blog’, one of the greatest joys Sunny gets from his blog is meeting very interesting and talented artisans, stonemasons, landscape designers and garden enthusiasts from all over the world and getting and insight into their lives and work.
Now, please follow the links below and join our two special guests and the members of the Roundtable, as we consider stone.
Deborah Silver : Dirt Simple : Detroit, MI
Sunny Wieler : Stone Art Blog : West Cork, Ireland
Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT
Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN
Ivette Soler : The Germinatrix : Los Angeles, CA
Jenny Peterson : J Peterson Garden Design : Austin TX
Rochelle Greayer : Studio G : Boston, MA
Scott Hokunson : Blue Heron Landscapes : Granby, CT
Garden Designers Roundtable 
Large Rocks are the memory keepers of a garden.
Stones can enhance any landscape design as they can be used in a variety of settings, from retaining walls, gardens and mini waterfalls to patios and driveways. Its timelessness (as mentioned in the post) is just one of the benefits of incorporating stone into your landscape design project! Others include its natural appearance, low maintenance and durability.