Calling the Do-It-Yourself Gardener

If you've been wondering how to start planning your own home garden, or what types of landscaping elements are best for kids, or how to attract butterflies and "good bugs," then please register for the class I'll be leading at Gamble Garden in Palo Alto next month.

In a 3-session series, you'll learn how to analyze your property and assess your needs; how to determine what structural features will be useful, beautiful, and safe for your entire family; and how to determine what plants will be best suited for your family's garden. We'll also explore plants that are toxic for children and pets, review different types of swings and play structures, and lay the foundation for creating your own landscape plan.

Once you're registered for the class, please feel free to contact me with advance questions or topic requests. Whether you're already working with a landscape designer or contractor, or thinking of planning and installing the garden yourself, I guarantee you'll learn something useful (and have fun in the process!). There are only 25 seats per session, so sign up now! I hope I'll see you there...

You Say Feijoa, I Say... Acca?!

I recently learned that the pineapple guava tree, formerly known as Feijoa sellowiana, is now going by Acca sellowiana.

This sort of re-naming, while confusing, isn't uncommon: Stipa tenuissima is now Nassella, Diosma pulchrum is now Coleonema, Atriplex spinosa is now Grayia, Laurentia fluviatilis is synonymous with Isotoma fluviatilis is synonymous with Pratia pedunculata, and so on. Which begs the question, if these supposedly sacrosanct botanical names can be so fluid, why do they matter?

It helps to understand the difference between botanical, or "scientific," names and common, or "vernacular," ones. While common names such as "pineapple guava," "breath of heaven," and "blue star creeper" roll easily off the tongue (and offer ample opportunity for seductive descriptions in mail-order catalogs) they are imprecise, usually relying on associations not obvious to everyone. What is a "lily of the valley" to you? An herbaceous perennial, or an evergreen shrub? For some real entertainment, peruse Wikipedia's list of plants by common name: not only can you see why ordering a "white birch" could get you into trouble, but you'll also see that a brown daisy, yellow daisy, black-eyed Susan, and brown-eyed Susan are all the same plant, depending somewhat arbitrarily on where in the U.S. you live.

Botanical names, on the other hand, are determined systematically rather than arbitrarily, and are consistent throughout the world. Every species has one, and only one, botanical name; and that name describes not only its unique characteristics but also its relation to other species. This system was developed by the premier 18th-century naturalist Carl Linnaeus, who classified all living things hierarchically by their common characteristics rather than, say, geographic origin. In botany, we are usually most concerned with the genus and species names; less frequently with the larger family or the smaller subspecies and/or varietal names. So our old favorite the black-eyed Susan can most accurately be described as Rudbeckia hirta — that's genus Rudbeckia, species hirta, which tells us it's related to yet different from Rudbeckia fulgida and Rudbeckia laciniata. (Now we only need to decide whether we mean the variety R. hirta var. angustifolia, or R. hirta var. pulcherrima.)

Seems pretty straightforward, right? Well, not quite. In a future post, I'll talk a bit about the "Deep Green" project spearheaded by Brent Mishler at Berkeley, which aims to trace plants' evolutionary paths and reclassify them in a cladistic, not Linnaean, manner — meaning that the venerable Zea mays would be renamed Mays Zea Gramineae Monocots Angiosperms Eukaryota Life. Not quite as poetic, perhaps, but technically more accurate… and definitely more precise than "corn."

The Designer's Best Skill

I recently had a couple of experiences, wholly unrelated to landscaping, that reminded me of the most important skill any landscape designer can possess.

In the first instance, I phoned a large chain retailer (whose name rhymes with Blarget) to see whether they had a certain item in stock. Naturally, my call was intercepted by a computerized menu of options: "Press 1 for store hours, press 2 for directions," etc. etc. Unfortunately, this is exactly what I expected from a large chain retailer. But when I finally rang through to customer service, something wonderful happened: the human at the other end of the line cheerfully answered, "Thank you for calling, may I help you find something?"

I was elated. Her question couldn't have been more precise or appropriate. After all, why else do we bother calling large chain retailers? (Unless we need store hours or directions, but that would have been solved earlier in the call.) It wasn't just a lazy "how can I help you?" (oh, let me count the ways) — and it allowed me to quickly, efficiently get the information that was important to me.

In the second instance, my family and I were at a large chain restaurant (whose name rhymes with Schmilli's) for the second time in seven days — first outbound and now homebound on a long road trip. As chance would have it, the same server was working that had helped us on our first visit (which, by the way, was entirely uneventful). And damned if she didn't remember, without missing a beat, exactly what each of us had ordered seven days before, and would we like the same again? (Ironically, she said her boyfriend thought that with a memory like hers, she could be doing so much better than waitressing. I tipped generously in hopes of suggesting otherwise.)

So what do these scenarios have do to with landscape design? Everything. Because to create gardens that are personal, we need to (1) ask the right questions and (2) remember the details. It's not enough to ask, "What's your favorite season" or "List your favorite plants" or "What's your favorite color?" Those questions won't yield the important answers. What's important is why you like that season, or what those plants or colors mean to you. That's how I get to know you. And with that understanding, I can interpret you in all the details of your garden — not just the plants I select but their placement and combinations; not just the color of materials but their texture and type; not just the location of a water feature but the quality of its sound. These are the details that make your garden yours — and they'll bring you joy every day you come home to them.

"Suit. Suit. Skirt-suit."

I live in just enough of a vacuum that it's always gratifying to stumble across someone else voicing an idea I thought only I had. Case in point: the Banana Republic "Architects" ad I noticed on Hwy. 101 in San Francisco this spring, quickly and lovingly excoriated by Gawker. (Never mind that I'm only finding the post 6 months later.) My response had been, "who are these people?", and I think Flashman's reply is probably about right. Which further proves my long-standing claim that there's a very thin line between landscape/architecture and advertising: the only thing more important than a good concept is a good presentation.

And that transports me to another thought I've had recently: the "ad man" character, so prominent from the 1980s (thirtysomething, Melrose Place, Crazy People, Nothing in Common) through about 2000 (Bounce, What Women Want) seems to be giving way to the "young architect" character (Click, The Lake House, The Last Kiss) and, now, the "landscape architect" character (Just Like Heaven, Breaking and Entering). (On the other hand, this seems to mirror my own career trajectory. So maybe it's just me?)

I might venture that it has something to do with our global consciousness: as television matured in the '70s advertising messages evolved to be more subtle and pervasive than ever before, perhaps reaching their zenith with the marketing of a certain actor-turned-president. Sure, "Bewitched" had given us the goofy ad man decades before, but in the "greed is good" decade advertising took on a new allure… and we loved it.

Now, our thoughts are on the environment and our nests within it. Again, the architect isn't a new character; but in an affluent society living in a post-9/11 world, his role is paramount as he creates (or re-creates) our cities (pride, honor) and our homes (refuge, ego). And the landscape architect, well, he represents nothing less than the savior of our planet — not a warrior, though (that would be too scary), but an approachable, "outdoorsy, artsy" type. That's comforting, isn't it? Break out the wool sweater and fire up the Prius, we're going into the hills to visit Al Gore.

I don't mind the stereotype, really I don't; I just hope the media will treat the profession a little more accurately than they ever did advertising. I never did set foot in an agency where the creatives were playing paintball in the halls or binge drinking before deadline (although maybe I just never worked at the right shop). Dare we show the paying public that landscape architects spend more time bleary-eyed in front of a monitor than strolling through forests? Mostly, I hope the media will reflect the growing trend in my industry toward making things right — restoring wetlands, increasing green open space, correcting decades of environmental mismanagement — and not just making things pretty.

Color Counts

This little vignette is on display right now at Gilroy Gardens, not only home to the well-trained "circus trees" but also a dandy theme park that will keep the tots (and hort-geeks like me) entertained all day.

What caught my eye here was how much attention has been paid to the details: the lamp post and building trim match (or at least coordinate with) the blooms of the Lagerstroemia (crepe myrtle). And for good measure, the "garlic bulb" rides to the left are also streaked with violet, just like a real garlic bulb.

Is there a color in your garden that inspires you? Bring a bloom to a good paint store — they can match the color, or at least get this close. Now: did you also notice the Stachys, Lavandula and Helictotrichon down at ground level? These cool silvery tones are a terrific complement to the warm violet. On a color wheel, these two colors aren't quite opposites (think of blue and orange, purple and yellow, red and green) but neither are they adjacent (such as a violet-red-orange combination). Rather, the red-violet and blue-green are two legs in a triadic combination. The third leg of the triad would be yellow-orange; the closest we'll get is the exfoliating cinnamon-tan bark of the Lagerstroemia.

Perhaps because one of my favorite childhood toys was a set of translucent color paddles, I'm able to visualize color combinations pretty readily. But if you're not, pick up a color wheel and keep it on your desktop… pretty soon you, too, will see these subtle (or not so) color combinations that are all around you.