An Artist Down the Road

In early March, the day of our “kick-off” meeting of all the crews and staff at Landscape Projects’ Poolesville, MD location, the other designers and I took a small road trip. Two miles away from our company’s physical plant, in Beallsville, sits Alden Farms, a local annuals-and-perennials garden center that happens to be owned by an accomplished sculptor.

David Therriault, the sculptor/gardener/entrepreneur in question, has been working with various kinds of “found” stone and metal for a number of years. What I loved about his work was its variety and how he combines different materials into a beautiful, cohesive work of art. Some of them are stand-alone sculptures of different sizes; some are water features. I saw at least a dozen I could envision incorporating into a garden.

If you’d like to contact David about his work, he can be reached via the Alden Farms website. If you live in the Montgomery County area, it’s worth a trip. But don’t be surprised if some of these works are gone when you visit, because I’m planning to take a client there soon, and she has a very large garden.

One of the water feature sculptures at Alden Farms

This piece, called “Shell,” could be used indoors or outdoors.

The stone used here is sandstone, etched with a beautiful design.

Some of the delightfully whimsical items available for sale at Alden Farms are by other artists.

One of my favorite works, this piece has metal insets and two different kinds of stone.

A detail from another water feature.

Inside David’s studio, this work caught my eye.

Another sandstone piece with a “yin-yang” flavor.

Art in the Garden, Bay Area-Style

One of the most enjoyable stops on the September 2012 “garden tour” APLD conference was a Bay area garden owned by Gail Giffen and Chris Pisarro in Lafayette, CA. Our tour materials gave this garden the title “Playing for Art’s Sake,” and that felt pretty accurate. The sculpture selections are eclectic and whimsical – from tiny metal marching “ants” at the foot of a large tree draped in a Marcia Donahoe “necklace” of carved wooden spheres, to a “motorcycle creature” hiding in the grasses on the outskirts of the back yard. The garden was designed by Michael Thilgen at Four Dimensions Landscape Company. Pisarro and Giffen, who sits on the Board of the Ruth Bancroft Garden, were incredibly gracious hosts – mimosas and snacks were on hand! I’ll let my photos tell the rest of the story.

Water, metal, stone and grasses create a wonderful palette of textures.

A view from the patio next to the rear entrance to the house.

The architectural elements of a motorcycle “creature” contrasts with flowing grasses.

Landscape and sculpture meld together in the outskirts of the garden.

Two reclining stone sculptures seem to rise from a bed or grasses and gaura.

The two figures, with the pool house in the background

A Malliol-like sculpture hugged the diving board but couldn’t block our access to champagne and Mimosa cocktails!

The swimming pool area, complete with sculptures.

Three mysteriously painted, colorful sculptures dominate the view from the rear patio.

Inspiring Tah.Mah.Lah

One of the most inspiring sites we visited during this year’s annual APLD conference in the Bay Area was a home in the Portola Valley area, called Tah.Mah.Lah. I’d looked up what I could about it ahead of time and was intrigued by what I’d read – designed to be “the greenest custom home” in the United States, it is a net-zero, LEED Platinum certified project whose owners built a home and landscape designed to last 100+ years. We had more than an hour on site (a great improvement over some prior garden visits limited to 25 minutes or less, because of small sized projects and a packed itinerary), and I tried my best to capture some of the most interesting aspects of the house and landscape. (Among other things, I was delighted to see an installation by Patrick Dougherty, which the owners’ little girls have dubbed the “fairy castle.”)

Because there are so many photos, I’ve decided to present them in gallery format, to avoid endless scrolling for readers. The captions provide additional information about the project, but for more details, please visit the Tah.Mah.Lah website, which went live for the first time the day of our visit. Thanks and kudos to landscape architect Thomas Klope, for his inspired implementation of the owners’ vision, as well as to the owners and the builder – all of whom were on site when we visited, providing background, history, and answers to our many questions.

A packed-gravel bocce court greets visitors as they walk up the driveway.

50-gallon cisterns throughout the site are used to store rainwater for irrigation and other uses.

Gravity walls were built of abandoned “quarry waste” limestone boulders found in Minnesota. They are used all over the site.

The interior of the house gives seamlessly to the outdoors. The owners have opened Tah.Mah.Lah for numerous educational tours and fundraisers to promote green energy and construction.

The pool has an adjacent natural pond/bog. To the right, the “fairy castle” built by Patrick Dougherty.

A view up to the house and outbuildings from the pool area.

I loved the simplicity and softness of the native grasses contrasting with the plain wooden walls of the buildings.

Between the garage (with three electric cars) and one of the residential buildings, the owners’ dog greets visitors, and view of the hills behind Tah Mah Lah can be seen.

The owners commissioned new blends of native sod that would need less water. The final products are now available commercially as well, and require 80% less irrigation than a fescue grass lawn would.

A view from the dining room to the outdoors.

Behind the main house, hand-hewn fencing encloses an area for chicken coops and raised vegetable beds (not shown).

Only one area seemed to contain “ornamental” perennial (native) plantings. The project was planned from 2006 – 2008 and completed only in July 2011; over fifty non-native trees were removed from the site prior to the replanting process.

Boulders provide a setting for a small firepit and assist in the grade change from the pool area up to the house.

Native grasses soften the edge of the driveway and the stark simplicity of the buildings constructed from recycled and reclaimed materials.

Lighting Up the Garden

My new 'Glowing Embers' Japanese maple uplit in snow.

This is my new screensaver, at least until spring arrives. I took this photo (a 15-second exposure, on a tripod) the other night when we had an unexpected, very tiny snowstorm. I liked the photo so much that I posted it to Facebook and wrote, “Snow + up-lit Japanese Maple = magic. Takes some of the sting out of losing my beautiful crabapple.” Later the image was re-pinned on Pinterest to a “Just a little magical” board. Magic, indeed.

Garden lighting is often thought of as an extravagance, an “extra” that you’ll get around to – someday. But I’ve concluded that it’s one of the most worthwhile investments you can make, to dress up even a new landscape, in terms of bang for the buck. My own front yard is a good example. I had to spend a lot of money this year taking down and replacing two trees,including getting the tree stumps ground out, and replanting one bed area around the new ‘Riversii’ beech. I may have to spend more this coming year because I suddenly have a sunny exposure where I had shade before, and I don’t know which of my current plantings will survive.

It broke my heart to see how small my new trees were when they went in, and how dark the front yard seemed at night. The old trees, you see, had been uplit beautifully.

The branches of my old American beech tree uplit at night.

Without the lighting, the front of the house looked bleak and sad at night, with the only lights on my steps and two carriage light fixtures on either side of the front door. So I bit the bullet and had lighting installed on the ‘Riversii’ and the new Japanese maple by my go-to lighting contractors, Outdoor Illumination Inc. Neither tree is large, but the difference the lighting makes to the house and landscape is amazing.

Lighting can be used not only for trees but to draw your eye to other built elements in the garden, such as these wooden Nepalese screens one of my clients installed as a kind of sculpture.

Three wooden panels surround a young copper beech in a garden in Chevy Chase, Maryland, uplit by soft spots.

Behind this screen is an up-lit Magnolia 'Leonard Messel'

In a more modern landscape setting, you’ll see lights used around pool perimeters, as here in this Potomac, Maryland garden designed by landscape architect H. Paul Davis.

Spotlights for the pool jets as well as the hornbeams and river birches adjacent to the water area create a beautiful effect as dusk descends.

But even away from paths and major trees, lighting in the garden can contribute to an atmosphere of calm and magic.

As evening approaches, a garden bed with color fall foliage is illuminated, bringing the outside in for a little longer.

So consider some “night lights” if you’re working on improvements to your garden. You won’t regret it.