Archive for Before and Afters – Page 15

Hummingbirds Favorite Summer Flower

Posted by Carol

· November 16, 2016

Cape Fuchsia's tubular coral scarlet flower is a hummingbird magnet

Phygelius – Cape Fuchsia ‘Passionate’

Cape Fuchsia, Phygelius, is a colorful, low maintenance long blooming summer flower for the Pacific Northwest. I use it in landscape designs for clients who love color and watching hummingbirds. It’s a personal favorite of mine and rates at least 2 blogs.

Cape Fuchsia Practicalities

If you are a person who wants a tidy landscape that looks perfect all year long, this is not your plant. I consider this plant to be low maintenance but not no maintenance. Clients who love the color and the hummingbird show simply cut it to the ground in December eliminating the messy twigs.

Photo shows Cape Fuschia is tough enough for full sun in a parking lot.

Mass of Cape Fuchsia at local Portland coffee shop

It can spread some. In the spring if the plant is taking more territory than you want, simply pull on the stem that is straying. Pull it out of the ground and cut the root off near the mother plant. It is very easy, I promise. Give it lots of sun, decent soil and water the first year. It will need less water the following year. Some clients water it about once every two weeks.

By the way, there is nothing wrong with needing a calm and low maintenance landscape. We are all unique and a plant that makes one person feel delight can make another person feel claustrophobic. I notice clients who grew up in climates where plants tend to be sparser can feel uncomfortable with the full flush of plantings possible here.

Design creates masses of color to offset the swimming pool

Mass planting of strong plant colors including Cape Fuchsia, and a path help to break up the lines of the pool.

Cape Fuchsia used for Mass Plantings in Swimming Pool Garden Re-Design

The first time I used this plant was for Art and Linda in SW Portland. They had a 1960’s swimming pool in the backyard that dominated. It visually ate the backyard. They wanted a cottage garden style with lots of color. My design solution successfully put the pool in a subordinate position to the landscape. I created some great paths and shapes for the planting beds that broke up the lines of the pool visually. We needed masses of strong plant color in the backyard to offset the powerful aqua rectangle. I’m not a big color wheel garden designer but colors like coral and salmon are opposite the wheel from aqua. The Cape Fuchsia flowers are perfect for this situation because they flower in these colors and they flower all summer, hitting their stride during hot weather. My clients enjoy hanging out by the pool and are entertained by the antics of hummingbirds. Hummingbirds are strongly attracted to the hot coral red tones of the Cape Fuchsia.

Morris before back yard landscape design 1996

Art and Linda’s back yard needed some color to offset the aqua of the pool water.

Fav Planting Combo is American Switch Grass with Cape Fuchsia

My favorite planting combination for this design was Panicum Virgatum, American Switch Grass ‘Heavy Metal’ with the Phygelius x recta ‘Devils Tears’. They are a perfect contrast combination! The Switch Grass blade is a fine silvery blue texture. It contrasts with the Cape Fuchsia’s dark green leaf and hot colored tubular flowers. The inside of the tube is a mellow lemon yellow but mostly the hummingbirds are the ones who see this.

If you research this plant on the internet, you will read that Cape Fuchsia are not cold hardy here since they are native to South Africa and they need a lot of water. Not true for Portland, Oregon. I have grown them at 900 feet on a roof garden and only watered them every two weeks. They were successful for 12 years and were still there when I moved.

I’m always advocating for low water use so planting Cape Fuchsia with American Switch Grass results in a very low water landscape pairing.

New Varieties of Cape Fuchsia

While I love the old fashioned varieties, the new varieties of Cape Fuchsia are shorter and flowers are in softer more traditional colors. These new Cape Fuchsia are more versatile and can work well for small properties and containers. But when you select a softer color over the intense coral red, hummingbirds are not nearly as attracted but you still get a great plant. Check out other great hummingbird plants.

Are you wanting more out of your landscape? More color, more interactions with nature, more privacy? Your landscape can be made to suit your lifestyle with a thoughtful landscape design process. Go to my contact page and let’s talk soon.

Categories : Before and Afters, Dramatic Flowers, Garden Tips, Low Maintenance Landscape Examples, Plants I Recommend

Tags : dramatic flowers, food for hummingbirds, long blooming flowers, low water plantings, plants to attract birds, swimming pool plants

Cedar Mills Woodland Low Maintenance Garden Design

Posted by Carol

· November 1, 2016

DIYers Low Maintenance No Lawn Landscape

Dave and Noelle love the dyed concrete used for the lower patio entertaining area.

I drove out to Cedar Mills in NW Portland to meet prospective landscape design clients Dave and Noelle. They were sitting out in their large front yard on a semi private patio. It was surrounded by large trees and was an idyllic setting. It was early evening in late summer. Dave opened a bottle of wine and we talked about their new home and goals for their landscape. They were newlyweds.

Dave and Noelle are the ultimate DIYers and fearlessly tackled many aspects of remodeling their “new to them” contemporary home. The landscape was a different story. We all must balance the demands of work and our lives with the time it can take to DIY.

The clients found their sloped back yard intimidating.

Dave had installed an irrigation system in the past. They knew they could probably plant and do some of the landscaping work. The design however was beyond them. Their sloped property was intimidating.

Wish List:

Privacy for entertaining areas and the hot tub
Entertaining space
No lawn
Blueberries
A parking area for Dave’s beloved truck
Paths that created access and flow around the entire property
Create plantings that will fit with the existing rustic woods
Make the best use of the space in the sloped smaller back yard
Create year round color in the landscape plantings
Planting style NW Natural
A weeping Japanese maple somewhere prominent for Dave.

Finally, a place for Dave to park his truck.

The contemporary house backs up to a natural woods and a steep canyon. The front yard was much larger than the back and although they had a great place to hang out in their front yard, they wanted to enjoy the views of nature in the back yard. It was a blank slate.

As you can see from the before photos, the doors to the back yard were 2 and 1/2′ above the landscape. The landscape then sloped down to a canyon that drops off quite steeply. We didn’t have a nice big back yard with lots of depth. They wanted to be able to step out of their great room with food and easily settle into a large outdoor entertaining and dining area. Noelle wanted no steps down to the new outdoor dining area. This meant we would need to work hard for privacy from the neighbors.

Rustic stone path integrates the garden rooms.

What I love about this design:

I created 3 rooms at different levels. We added grade to create privacy and used our new raised outdoor dining area to provide screening for the lower dyed concrete patio and the lower still hot tub room. I created a boulder rockery that surrounds the raised dining area and created lots of planting pockets. We planted this boulder rockery to soften the effect of the large boulders. Raising the planting beds allowed us the opportunity to improve the heavy clay soil.

As a Portland landscape designer I never miss a chance to improve our local clay soil. Soil preparation is such a good investment.

To create privacy for the hot tub room, I placed it on the lowest level – same level as the woods and planted in front of it. This created a view of plants from the master bedroom, not the view of the hot tub. I’ve yet to have clients who think the hot tub itself is a thing of beauty.

Boulders create softening with planting pockets.

Materials that were used in this landscape included large boulders from Gales Creek Quarry. The patio was a dyed and textured concrete. The new dining area surface is 24″ x 24″ concrete slabs installed onto deck framing. The planter adjacent to the dining area is made of concrete board and planted with full season color plants such as heather and dwarf evergreen shrubs.

Other plants we used for this design: Acer Palamatum Shaina – Japanese Maple, Vaccineum Tophat – Dwarf Blueberry, Cryptomeria Sekkan Sugi – Japanese Cedar, Pieris Japonica Little Heath – Dwarf Lilly of the Valley shrub, specialty heather varieties, many varieties of evergreen succulents and low water ornamental grasses.

I was on site for grading and boulder work and worked closely with longtime contractor and excavator Joe Hurd. It was a pleasure to be able to sculpt the grade into a design that made such great use of the space. Each room was spacious and functional and flowed into the next.

Here’s an example of one of Noelle’s many DIY projects. She did the stone work for her front porch.

Dave and Noelle loved their new landscape. They watched the concrete contractor create their dyed concrete patio very closely. Our next project was a planting plan for the front yard and more grading and boulder work. A few years later Dave and Noelle replaced the old front yard paver patio and path with new dyed concrete all by themselves. Natch. Fearless DIYers.

I love working with DIY clients, if you have a project on your list contact me for more information.

Categories : Before and Afters, Low Maintenance Landscape Examples, No lawn back yard

Tags : boulders, difficult small gardens, diy, garden design with stone, Hardscape Design, No Lawn

Landscaping A Steep Backyard Hardscape in WA

Posted by Carol

· September 21, 2016

Sango Kaku Japanese Maple

Washington Hardscape Landscaping

My new clients were from southern California and now lived in Ridgefield, Washington. They were new to the Northwest. They loved their new home and neighborhood and believed all their difficult small back yard needed was the right designer.

Their lot was challenging.

The Bodes wanted to make Ridgefield feel like home. Their list was extensive and precise – their lot was tiny and challenging. It was one of those small and steep up hill lots. The builder gave them a slice of level land by building a high utilitarian block wall. This divided the yard into half and neither half was big enough to do much with. It’s great that people understand that a good designer can work miracles. I was flattered they chose me to bring their new outdoor home to life. It was not going to be easy.

Side yard transformed to easy access edibles garden

Lauren and Kathryn’s wish list went like this:

•Large covered outdoor area for year round entertaining

•Covered hot tub room

•Dwarf fruit trees and raised beds for edibles – this was a serious hobby for them

•Convenient access to smoker and BBQ

•Water feature to see from inside the great room for year round enjoyment

•A Sangu Kaku Japanese maple-because they loved it so

They hired me after looking at several designers and we met early one fall morning. As soon as I saw their lot I knew I’d recommend D & J Landscape Contractors for the installation. We had teamed up for a similarly difficult site. Although I am a Portland landscape designer I have several Ridgefield Washington landscape design clients. See Mastersons swamp to paradise blog.

The Bodes and I worked together to create their plan using my landscape design in a day process.

The basic grading was completed so the back porch addition could be built.

The big items were first. For seamless outdoor living the thing to do was extend the roof of the house for the cover. Not inexpensive but an important priority. We made the ceiling high in this addition so it would add light to the great room and make it feel bigger. Adding onto the existing small back porch rather than adding a new covered area elsewhere in the landscape kept it simple. With all the items we needed to add, it would be easy to turn this tiny yard into a hodgepodge.

Important hardscape back porch addition.

After back porch addition

Next the harsh straight wall dividing the landscape in half had to go. The design broke the steep slope into three levels. Using naturalistic boulders artfully placed changed this landscape completely. This is where I have to stop bragging about my spatial skills and brag about the landscape contractor. It isn’t financially practical or practical in any manner to draw a design that precisely places every boulder. Sometimes I am on site during construction and I work closely with the excavator to place the boulders but even then it is a very collaborative effort. Donna Burdick and Brian Woodruff of D & J Landscape Contractors took the design and brought it to life. It was such a tough site that we were planning to have me on site to help with the artistic efforts but the fall weather was threatening and if they had waited for me, they would have lost an opportunity to install until the next year. We met on site once and they ran with it……beautifully.

The perfect spot for the smoker.

A place was made for the smoker just on the edge of the covered back porch. Nestled among the boulders it sits at a height that makes it an easy reach.

Now that we had created usable space it was easy to nestle the gazebo and tot tub into a curve of the boulder walls. The hot tub feels private and there is good access. It is planted beautifully.

The gazebo nestled into the boulder walls to create it’s own private hot tub room.

Lauren and Kathryn are get it done people. Lauren built the hot tub gazebo using a kit, designed and built a potting table and storage cabinet for the back porch. It was such a pleasure to visit them and hear how much they love their new outdoor heaven.

Their easy access raised beds are a delight to use and to behold.

The water feature, a drilled rock with the hidden echo chamber under it is beloved by their young nieces, they love to play in it. The sound calls them outdoors.

They are home.

Sometimes I feel a little like Santa Claus – All the boys and girls deserve a wonderful outdoor heaven to play in. If you need help with your outdoor haven, contact me to learn more about my landscaping services.

Categories : Before and Afters, Easy Edibles, Low Maintenance Landscape Examples, Tree Selection

Tags : Aging in place in the garden, backyard landscape design, boulder wall, covered deck, gazebo, Hot Tub, no lawn backyard, outdoor living, paver patio, raised beds, retaining walls, rockery boulder wall

Portland Landscape Design Remodel

Posted by Carol

· September 7, 2016

A Garden Redesign for Family & Dog

Echo Chamber water feature in NE Portland designed by Landscape Design in a Day and D and J Landscape Contracting for people and family dog.

Freshly installed echo chamber water feature will reduce traffic sound from nearby NE 33rd.

Lynda and Michael live in a sweet old Northeast Portland Grant Neighborhood House. It’s a classic with a big front porch and several mature large trees including an amazing 40′ tall Japanese Maple. They raised their kids and more than one wonderful dog in this house. Their landscape adventure began with the loss of their old plum tree – okay kind of sad but it was so big it ate the backyard space. It also blocked most of the morning light. Their dining area was crammed up against the hot tub. Once the plum was gone they realized a golden opportunity had landed in their laps. They wanted a good designer to look at the possibilities and create a landscape design that would utilize every square inch of their small backyard.

Clients Enjoy Gardening

They didn’t want a “perfect” garden. Lynda and Michael have some gardening chops so the plants didn’t need to be extreme low maintenance but it did need to be simple. The existing landscape was overgrown after 20 plus years. They were happy to let a lot of the plantings go so they could have a new look. They selected NW Natural and low water landscapes from my list. A touch of cottage style fit the old house nicely so that was included.

Their Wish List:

Before landscape design in Grant Park: Dining took place next to hot tub. Without dog garden space.

Before: Dining took place next to hot tub.

◊Privacy for dining

◊A separate room for the hot tub, their current landscape had the dining table next to the hot tub.

◊Plenty of patio space for entertaining

◊ A bit of lawn for their sweet dog Mira.

◊Michael especially wanted a water feature for the sound. The traffic sounds from NE 33^rd interrupted conversations and the ability to relax in the back yard.

Installing the patio Grant Park N. E. Portland Landscape Design in a Day in this dog friendly garden.

Sam of D & J Landscape Contractors installing the new plantings.

Water Features: Over the years I’ve noticed people have very different experiences with traffic noise and other urban background sounds. My own family is a good example; my husband can tune out background noise and carry on a conversation but I often can’t. Some people can have their TV or radio going on in the background and carry on with language based activities. Some people have filters and some people don’t.

The Benefits of Echo Chambers:

My favorite design element, a water feature solves this problem and adds an elegant visual focal point. An echo chamber water feature triples the water noise but is safe for kids because there is no need for a pond, not even a tiny one. Standing water is dangerous for kids, birds and provides an environment for mosquitoes. Birds can drown in ponds that they can’t get out of. The echo chamber is a buried steel box, it is easy to clean and you can control the volume of water. My sister turns her water volume up so the water leaps from the pot. This is attractive but results in quite a bit of splash and the evaporation that results uses a lot of water. Other clients keep the water volume turned down so it slowly spills from the drilled rock or plumbed pot. It still makes that wonderful water sound because first the water noise is produced when water drops onto the rocks around the pot or rock. Then the water goes through the surface rocks, through the steel grid and into the chamber. As it hits the rocks that line the chamber the sound is amplified inside the box. It is so simple.

Landscape Design in a Day creates a garden echo chamber water feature or is it a water bowl for family dog?

Jack Hofmann and his new water bowl

Placing Water Features:

The echo chamber was designed by Lew Smith of Smith Rock on Johnson Creek Blvd. It creates more sound out of the water available so it’s also environmental. For perfection itself another small plug-in water feature, something you might pick up at Portland Nursery or Cornell Farms, as a second water sound creates the effect of a water based duet. We typically locate the 2^nd small water feature in another part of the landscape. The sound of water helps people attune to their immediate environment and filter out the background noise. For the best sound I placed the water feature on the side of the garage wall to add more amplification. By design it can easily be heard from most areas.

Flowering Tree with plantings underneath

Japanese Snowbell Tree flowering in North Portland residential landscape

Plantings: So much of the landscape was overgrown, after all it had served for over 20 years. We kept the mature Japanese Snowbell Tree, a December blooming Chinese camellia which serves as Lynda’s view from her office. The overwintering Anna hummingbirds love this simple 7 petaled deep red camellia flower and together they put on a show for 3 months. We planted easy care Beesia Deltoides near the bird bath because it will appreciate the splashes of water and has glossy heart shaped leaves that will reflect the light. Saxifraga ‘London Pride’, Hosta ‘Sum and Substance’ and a mass of Wood Fern will add year round color under the Snowbell Tree. A sterile variety of Russian Olive, Eleagnus ‘Gilt Edge’ will be trained into a small evergreen tree, giving more privacy to the hot tub room and fragrance in the fall.

We will show off this garden in a blog next year when the plantings have filled in. The client, Michael Shay, is a professional photographer and has promised photos for us. For more information on how I can help you with your garden remodel, contact me for more information on dog friendly and other landscaping.

Categories : Before and Afters, Dog and Cat Friendly Gardens, Low Maintenance Landscape Examples, Plants I Recommend, Shade Plants

Tags : Echo Chamber Water Feature, flagstone, food for hummingbirds, Grant Park Neighborhood, Hardscape, Hot Tub, Portland Traffic Noise, Stone Patio

Lawn Do Over for Portland Landscapes

Posted by Carol

· August 10, 2016

Drought Tolerant, Synthetic & No Lawns Landscaping

Landscape Design in a Day's newly installed drought tolerant RTF grass.

Landscape Design in a Day’s newly installed RTF grass with dry stream bed.

This is the year for rethinking the lawn. As a Portland landscape designer many of my new clients want to make big changes in their landscapes. I am recommending clients replace their old lawns with new and improved grass varieties.

My Lake Oswego clients, George and Marcia, contacted me completely discouraged about their front yard. I met them in the fall after our particularly hot and horrid summer of 2015. They had spent their entire summer watering and watering their lawn. It wasn’t dead on the October day that I came to their home but as you can see it was quite unattractive.

Uplands Neighborhood of Lake Oswego before drought tolerant lawn.

Damaged Lake Oswego lawn

They decided it was time to hire a designer and start over with their landscape. It is a typical Lake Oswego landscape with heavy clay soil, fir trees nearby with thirsty roots, and drainage problems.

Before we even started the landscape design process, I was able to share information about a new lawn grass that uses less water and is more durable than the grass (perennial rye grass blends) we have been using for the last 30 years. Working closely with Kevin Schindler of Autumn Leaf Landscaping Inc. we replaced their old lawn with Rhizomatous Tall Fescue (RTF) grass and designed a naturalistic dry stream bed that also solves the drainage problems. Solving the drainage problems also enhances the health of the grass. Even RTF grass doesn’t do well in a boggy winter soil. George and Marcia are very pleased with the appearance and performance of the new grass. They love their new dry stream bed and how it has pulled together the entire front yard, giving it a dramatic focal point.

They are no longer slaves to watering with drought tolerant lawn.

Installation day at George and Marcia’s Lake Oswego home.

This year several of my clients have taken out their old grass and installed RTF. From a distance it looks like any lawn, in fact it looks more uniform because it grows so thickly that it tends to crowd out weed grasses much better than our perennial rye grass does. My Lake Oswego clients especially appreciate the fact that RTF tolerates more sun and heat and if they did decide to let it go dormant, it will come back beautifully. RTF can even handle a south facing lawn with reflected heat from a sidewalk. This is the most difficult place to successfully grow grass so Portland landscape professionals are embracing this new product.

It is available as a roll out turf product (sod) and as seed. Kuenzi Turf & Nursery

After front lawn of drought tolerant landscaping in Rose City Park.

Rose City Park Neighborhood

No grass lawn for drought tolerant landscaping.

West Portland Park Neighborhood

Other clients want no lawn designs, thinking it will be lower maintenance. No lawn will mean lower water usage but replacing a lawn with paths and plants does not promise low maintenance. Even the fairly new minimalist style using 90% round river rock and 10% plants isn’t as low maintenance as you think. Someone has to blow dust and debris out of the river rock frequently to prevent weeds from building up. Many clients simply don’t want to mow any lawn and are fine with the first two years of extensive weeding that is needed to get a no lawn front yard established. For a lot of people, however, weeding is the least favorite gardening chore.

Synthetic Lawn Installed in front yard for drought tolerant landscaping.

Newly installed synthetic lawn in Parkrose Heights neighborhood

Other clients are installing synthetic lawn. Before you sneer at the idea of fake grass (which I did when I first heard about it), check out these photos of my Southeast Portland clients Bob and Norma Bleid. They gave themselves a retirement gift, front and back synthetic lawn. No water, no chemicals, no fertilizer; it is the ultimate low maintenance landscape lawn.

Early fall is a particularly good time to install a new lawn or landscape. With a good irrigation system landscapes can be installed any time of the year. As a Portland landscape designer I am not fond of July or August installations, I know my clients will be “nervous nellys” seeing their plants’ leaves droop, scorch and burn in the summer sun. The fall rains typically do a beautiful job of providing the moisture needed to get plants (including grass) well established. This eliminates the stress and worry of summer planting.

If you are interested in having your landscaping updated, redesigned or help with a plan – contact us for more information.

Categories : Before and Afters, Fall Gardening, Garden Tips, Gardening Green, Low Maintenance Landscape Examples, New Improved Plants, No Lawn Front Yards, Summer Garden Tips, Synthetic Lawn and Dogs

Tags : drainage problems, drought tolerant grass, dry stream bed, landscape drainage, low watering, mid century modern style, No Lawn, no lawn front yard, synthetic lawn, xeriscape plantings

Archive for Before and Afters – Page 15

Cedar Mills Woodland Low Maintenance Garden Design

DIYers Low Maintenance No Lawn Landscape

Landscaping A Steep Backyard Hardscape in WA

Washington Hardscape Landscaping

Lawn Do Over for Portland Landscapes

Drought Tolerant, Synthetic & No Lawns Landscaping

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