A Garden for a Serial Plant Fetishist

A Visit to Keela Meadows' Garden

2010-08-09T08:22:00.001-07:00

This past Sunday I visited Keela Meadow's garden. She is just north of me in the Eastbay, across the bay from San Francisco. She is an artist, garden designer, writer and colorist supreme. She goes places with color that few would dare go, and pulls it off with incredible results. The art pieces are all her designs, as are the pots, plant choices and paint. I first met Keela when she gave a demonstration on putting together plant choices for pots you paint yourself, when I got her to sign my copy of her newest book: Fearless Color Gardens: The Creative Gardener's Guide to Jumping Off the Color Wheel.This is a really, really small lot but there are at least six areas that feel separate unto themselves without feeling cramped.

You can find the biography Timber Press did for her latest book here:www.timberpress.com/author/keeyla_meadows/1477 and her own website is here:www.KeeylaMeadows.net

The most noteworthy aspect of her garden, among many, is her bold use of color

... in her choice of plants:

... in her use of paint:

especially on her house

but also on her pots

and other structures

... in her choice of paving materials:

such as the tiled area beside the house

or this glass near the studio

or this serpent near the dining area

... in her choice of outdoor furnishings and architectural details:

such as this bench

or this dining table

such as this outdoor shower and roof top seating

and this gate

... in the creation and use of her sculptures:

But I couldn't help also noticing some very nice textural elements in the garden as well:

July 2010

2010-08-07T12:21:00.000-07:00

THE HAPPENINGS IN MY GARDEN

There were plenty of blooms in July. My favorite clover, a variegated one with lavender flowers has been in bloom all month and continues to be on into August.

The Verbena bonariensis had at least one fan in this Red Admiral.

The Meadow Rue is in bloom too.

So too did the Aloe distans bloom.

Other plants put on plenty of show through foliage alone, like this combination of the Ceonothus 'Diamond Heights' and Echeverias.

More splendid foliage: the really large bromeliad, __ imperialis shown here in front of the garden bed.

The garden has done well in our thus far cool summer. Here is the center arch at the broken concrete courtyard, in the center of the back garden.

OUR WHIRLWIND TOUR OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GARDENS
With Lia, I visited four Southern California gardens in three days and two nights. We drove down to the Huntington in San Marino very early the first day.
After we finished there we continued south where we stayed the night in a motel in Laguna Beach. The next morning at 10 a.m. we followed our guide up the hill to tour the Hortense Miller garden.
For lunch we ate at the restaurant of the Sherman Gardens and Library just up highway 1, in Corona Del Mar.
Finally we drove up to Santa Barbara where we stayed at the Montecito Inn. The next morning we checked out and headed up the hill to Lotusland where we were assigned to a tour guide who had formerly worked there as a gardener.
After a quick tour of the Contemporary Art museum in Santa Barbara we headed home.

THE U.C. BERKELEY BOTANICAL GARDEN

Later in July the Titan Lily, Maladora bloomed at the Berkeley Botanical Garden.

While I was there I couldn't help noticing how nice a place this garden really is.

Still later in the month, the Garden Conservancy opened 5 private gardens to tour in my area. Sherry's garden and Zumba's garden in the hills above San Leandro were a pleasure to revisit. My balky camera prevented me from getting as many shots as I would have liked. At Sherry's there was lots new to see. This is the view you get upon reaching the top of the driveway. It was fun to see these gardens with Cal Hort buddies Ellen and Beryl. As usual Sherry had incorporated many exotic plants, interesting combinations and loads of art in her garden.

My camera died midway through touring Raul Zumba's garden, which just around the block from Sherry's garden. It looked even better than I remembered it.

I also visited Keela Meadows' garden in Albany but my camera wasn't available to me there.

Gardening Beginnings

2010-05-31T11:40:00.000-07:00

fet·ish·ism: Excessive attachment or regard. (Sorry, no sexual or religious overtones intended but perhaps just a dash of magic, as I have no idea where inspiration comes from.)

When I first coined my cyber name, "serialplantfetishist", it was a pretty accurate description. My yard was huge and largely barren while my awakening appetite for new and amazing plants was voracious bordering on obsessive.

The urge to acquire special plants is no longer my strongest motivation in the garden. Now I'm more tuned into the way the whole space feels to move through,

the balance of mass and emptiness,

light and shadow,

texture and color.

In the beginning, I started making a garden as a result of having kept small birds in outdoor aviaries.

I had three outdoor aviaries stocked with finches, weavers and softbills. While researching plants to grow in the aviaries I became interested in plants which would enhance the habitat value of our yard for birds and insects.

Deciding where and how to place those plants led to my interest in gardening. The practical considerations of compatible cultural requirements was something I've learned (to the extent that I have) by trial and error. The same goes for finding out about the cold and heat tolerance of the plants I've sought out. (I've mulched more than a few.)

From the start I've favored gardens which feel plausibly natural. Formal geometry in a garden is something I can enjoy in other peoples gardens but is not anything I'm drawn to create in my own. My biggest influence was the Harland Hand garden in El Cerrito, California. What I like about that garden is how sculptural the whole place is as well as how natural it felt despite the inclusion of many exceptional plants which obviously could never cohabitate without human intervention. His garden was inspired by trips to the Sierras but it wasn't intended as a faithful recreation of any particular place he'd seen. Instead, his garden shows how his experience of those places inspired his sense of the beauty of nature which then informed the aesthetic choices which shaped his garden.

In my own garden, I'm more interested in the quality of my relationship to the garden than I am in it as an object. I don't want to figure out a grand design and then work to shape the garden accordingly. To me, the process of making the garden is more interactive. You are given inspiration.

You act on it. You step back and see more possibilities.

You act on some of those, and so on.

I'm far more interested in the journey than the destination.

Garden projects currently in progress.

2010-04-11T22:24:00.000-07:00

This is a working list of areas needing and/or getting work this year (2010):

Project A: Big rocks and a bench in the Southeast corner.

Status: Mostly finished. Lots of plants added on either side. More needed.

ProjectB: Create a separate garden entrance in the Northwest corner.

Status: A wooden door has been bought but still needs to be prepped, painted and hung.

Sub-project B-1: Clean up the front hedge and plantings.

Status: The pyrocantha and 'Kiftsgate rose' has been pruned back for 2010.

The bed under the hedge has been weeded and cleaned up.

The front fence has been beefed up but is not yet finished.

Two dozen iceplant starts planted under the hedge north of the driveway.

Sub-project B-2: The driveway gate needs repair.

Status: Temporarily stabilized.

Sub-project B-3: White garden established immediately inside the site of the new gate.

Status: A trellis supporting the well established climbing 'Iceberg' rose is built.

A blue wire design under the trellis frames the view to the house and garden.

The bed directly on the other side of the blue wire design has been planted with

many white flowering plants, with some pink and a little blue too.

Sub-project B-4: Pavers for a courtyard and pathway from the site of the new gate.

Status: Pathways are finished from the driveway, along the front fence to the wood shed.

Pavers are in place from the end of the woodshed to what will become a large

raised planter. The planter itself is roughed in only temporarily.

Project C: Create a pathway, gardens and a bench out along the creek, from gate to gate.

Status: The path is done for now. Enough plants are in place for now. Refine over time. No recent photos but this one from last winter shows the edge of the creek where I've planted Puyas and Fascicular bicolor.

Project D: Create a wildflower garden in the side 'lawn'.

Status: Last year was successful but the weeds were just too much. Probably will need to grade it, put down a barrier of newspaper or cardboard, and then add a growing layer before trying again. Here' what it looked like last year (2009):

Project E: Make the old vegetable garden into more socializing area, mostly hardscape.

Status: Really need to bring in a mini grader/digger. The tree stump too needs to go. Not much to show here yet but here are pictures from back in the day when it was still a vegetable garden.

Here are the screen tiles I've mounted in the fence at the back of this area. The pathway out along the creek terminates at a gateway at the end of this fence.