The Best Camera

There’s an oft-repeated saying among photographers that the best camera is the one you have with you. In March, I went on a fabulous photo workshop in Charleston with two first-class photographers and teachers, Alan Sislen and Colleen Henderson.  I took along my new Nikon D600 and soon I’ll share some of the photos I took with it. But today’s post is about my other “best camera,” which now accompanies me everywhere, the one in my iPhone 5. Colleen taught us some pointers on great apps to use, and now I find myself reaching for the iPhone more often than ever. Here’s a good example of what you can do with it.

This trio of Clematis ‘Dawn’ was taken and “framed” with Camera+ and captioned in the Over app.

And another recent favorite:

Echevaria ‘Morning Light’ photographed in Camera+, edited with Handy Photo, and captioned in Over.

The phone takes really sharp closeups (no wonder, with an f-stop of 2.4). My favorite app for capture is Camera+, which gives me at least a 7 MB image to work with. That’s what I used on the first photo, adding the “border” with the same app and then importing the image to “Over” to add the text overlay. In the second photo, I actually did some cloning to remove spots on the Echevaria with another app called HandyPhoto. (This is an amazingly versatile app, although it is very large and I recommend using it on the iPad rather than the iPhone unless you have incredibly nimble fingers!)

Tree peonies at dusk around Dupont Circle

Even in low light, Camera+ does a great job capturing a wide range of tonal values. This was taken around 7 pm a week or so ago in downtown Washington DC. (Copyright added in Over; no copyright symbol on our keyboards yet!) And it works well with azaleas, provided you don’t ask it to capture loud pink hues up close.

A ‘Madame Butterfly’ azalea at LPI’s shop in Poolesville.

Part of my back yard, taken just around dinner a couple of weeks ago, when both the flowering dogwood and azaleas were (finally) in bloom

Like to experiment with black and white? My other often-used app is Hipstamatic, when I want to capture patterns and shapes, or color isn’t the most important aspect of the image.

A group of variegated Solomon’s Seal in my back yard.

With Hipstamatic, although the app itself isn’t all that expensive, you can spend a bunch of money adding “packs” to shoot with (the one above uses the “James W + BlackKeys B+W” pack).

Another advantage of working with these iPhone images, especially for gardeners, is that they take up so much less space on your hard drive than images captured with a DSLR. Particularly now that I have a D600, which takes 24MB images, my computer is slowing down and filling up really fast. To work on iPhone images, I usually download them to Dropbox, open them on my iPad if I want to add a caption or work with HandyPhoto, and then I can delete them or save them to my computer if I like them. Otherwise, they may end up on my Facebook page (or my company’s FB  page) and there it stops.

I’ll close with another favorite closeup, of a tree peony. I took this one in a client’s garden last month. The iPhone was the only camera I had with me (although I usually have my Canon G11 around, for some reason it wasn’t with me that day). So glad I had it.

Tree peony, courtesy of the “best camera” I had with me.

The Hinoki Falsecypress – Gold for the Garden

Recently, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society announced its most recent Gold Medal Awards for garden plants. I was excited to see that my own excellent taste in plants had been validated by the inclusion of Chaemacyparis obtusa ‘Nana’, or dwarf Hinoki falsecypress.

My very own dwarf Hinoki falsecypress, about 12 years (I think) after planting. It’s in a sunny but occasionally windswept spot on the eastern side of my yard. (iPhone 5 photo, taken with Camera+ and captioned in Over app).

I fell in love with this shrub/tree during my education as a landscape designer. I love(d) its evergreen presence, the somewhat loose (but not out of control) way its branches and needles grew in a whorl-like manner, and the idea that you could include it in a mixed border or small garden and its slow-growing nature meant it wouldn’t eat the yard/house.

As both a gardener and photographer, I’ve found other aspects of it to admire.

A close-up of the foliage. This image (taken at the National Zoo) wound up being used as the front page of our landscape company’s brochure.

The bark exfoliates if the plant has been mislabeled (as sometimes happens in nurseries) and it’s not a ‘Nana’ after all. See this example from Filoli.

The bark of a non-’Nana’ Hinoki falsecypress on the grounds of Filoli Gardens in Woodside, California.

And last but not least, it produces these adorable little mini-cones.

Look closely or you might miss the cones!

The PHS chose this plant because, as my friend and colleague Jane Berger wrote in her blog post announcing the awards, “it is sorely under-used compared to dwarf Alberta spruce”, which is planted in so many housing developments.” (Don’t get me started on Alberta spruces . . .). The wood is rot-resistant and in Japan has been used for building temples, shrines, palaces, Noh theatres, and goodness knows what else. But if you  aren’t in the market for hardwood to build with, plant it for its beauty. It’s hardy from Zones 5-7, and possibly into Zone 8A.

An ‘Endemic Creation’ in El Cerrito

I enjoy visiting gardens that unsettle my designer’s sensibilities. One of my sons once told me that he thinks of me as a photographer who likes taking images of “beautiful things” (rather than edgy street scenes, etc.) and I guess that’s what my mindset is when I design – somewhat traditional gardens with as much beauty in the design concept as I can pull together. So when we visited a garden on the APLD Conference Tour described in our materials as an “East Bay hillside in a modern vein,” I was delighted that our schedule let us spend some time there so I could take it all in.

Created by Brian Swope, who describes himself as a ‘contrarian designer,’ the back yard garden welcomed us first.

The view from this part of the garden includes a vantage point that takes in the neighbors’ house – which belongs to the garden owners’ parents.

Where to start? The sloping site has been brilliantly handled; the gravel “trail” that is visible just beyond the  perforated steel obelisk ( which is lit at night) climbs a hill that is modeled after trails in Marin County, complete with switchbacks.

‘Siskyou Blue’ fescue grasses soften the planting area at the foot of the perforated steel obelisk.

The plantings in the garden are predominantly native species, including small buckeye saplings that cast shadows at night against panels set above a retaining wall behind the dining patio.

Buckeye saplings edge the patio area at the top of the steps.

Poured concrete walls, as well as the edging for the planting beds shown above, have been textured with Trex – something that I never would have thought of doing in a million years.

Bed edging, created from concrete forms textured with Trex.

Closer to the house, in a shady site, planting combinations were softer.

I loved this combination of ferns, ginger, clover and other shade plants at the edge of the back of the house.

The front yard, installed in a second phase of work, is defined by a previously existing bamboo hedge. Swope chose other large forms – substantial rocks, Corten-steel edging, and gravel – to respond to the bamboo as counterpoints. (For a look at some other Corten steel projects for the garden, click here.)

A variety of shapes and textures, including ‘Siskiyou Blue’ fescue grass again, define the narrow front garden.

In a harsh and challenging setting (with a fabulous view of the Bay), Swope and his client have created an inviting, modernist landscape. We felt privileged to visit it – and I knew my designer’s horizons had expanded, more than a little.

Flora Grubb, the Succulent Lover’s Mecca – and My New Garden E-Books

I’ve been a member of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD) since 2003. Despite the fact that I’ve won a couple of design awards from this organization and am delighted to be a certified member, until this year I had never attended any of its annual conferences. This year, I vowed, would be different. My son had just moved to the Bay Area and the conference was being organized primarily as an opportunity to tour gardens throughout the area, meeting some of the designers and learning through seeing in person, with written materials delivered via iPad rather than exclusively in lecture settings.

But what really cinched the deal for me was when I learned that the very first event of the tour would be a visit to Flora Grubb Gardens - a dinner reception the night the conference opened. I’ve developed a real love for succulents and consider it somewhat unfair that the most enticing varieties aren’t hardy here. I do have a client with an incredibly wet back yard, save for one area where we have planted lots of creeping sedums and included sempervivums along with other rock-garden plants like Gaura and dianthus. But it’s too cold for agave, and we often find we have to replace the sempervivums in the spring if the winter has been wet.

At Flora Grubb’s store (out a ways from central San Francisco), we ate dinner from food trucks but mostly lusted after the plants, the pots, and the other garden furnishings on display. A bicycle planted with succulents, carnivorous plants in a sink, air plants decorating a freestanding wall, and a vertical wall hanging planted chock full of succulents. I’ll just stop chattering away and let the photos speak for themselves. It was nirvana.

A chartreuse bench beckons visitors to the store. In the foreground, agaves and phormiums are grouped with other plants.

It’s a jungle in here – of the best kind.

A large vertical panel planted with lots and lots of succulents was in one of the back rooms.

A wall hanging that caught everyone’s eye. Wish I had it!

Flora’s truck, decked out with succulents and other plants for sale.

A “potting bench” with wares for sale.

Pitcher plants in a sink!

Tillandsia plants (which need no soil) decorate a small free-standing wall in the shop.

Blooming succulents as a centerpiece.

The store sells pots in varying sizes – simple in this case so as not to detract from the agaves planted in them.

A wall of multi-colored garden chairs makes an artistic display while providing a clever storage solution.

A bicycle serves as a “planter” in the store, decorated by talented staff.

For more information about Flora Grubb, including links to her Web Shop (where I just ordered some great little holiday gifts for clients), click here.

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Speaking of holiday gifts, I’ve just turned two of my Blurb books into e-books if you’re interested in having a virtual copy. Chanticleer: A Pleasure Garden can be purchased as an e-book for $4.99 by clicking here, and the Garden Conservancy Open Days book (priced at $3.99) by clicking here. I can attest that they look great on an iPad!