What are some of the favorite fall perennials for garden designers? Here are a few landscape ideas that are best for fall gardens.
Read More5 BEST PERENNIALS FOR FALL
Horticulture
ALLERGY FREE GARDENING
in Horticulture, Health
In the 1940’s the USDA recommend growing separate sexed trees from cuttings, budding or grafting with only male wood. They caused a health epidemic.
Read MoreWHAT IS A SPRING EPHEMERAL?
Garden designers orchestrate flower bloom interest throughout all the seasons. Spring ephemerals fill an early void in the spring landscape design in the garden.
Read More5 GREAT TREES FOR WINTER INTEREST
Grey Birch. If I had to just plant one tree, this is it. I can't imagine any tree more beautiful in the the winter landscape than this native.
Read MoreHOW TO USE GRAVEL IN THE GARDEN
I’m a fan of pea gravel in garden design. It's an attractive hardscape cover with an element of sound and it's a permeable surface to manage stormwater.
Read More5 FAVORITE SHRUBS FOR WINTER INTEREST
Winter may be the most challenging season, but also the season that tests one's talents as a garden designer!
When doing a planting plan many garden designers, landscape designers, landscape architects design for the winter landscape first, then orchestrate their plant palette for the remaining three seasons afterwords.
Here are five favorite shrubs for zone 7 New York City gardens. Do you agree? Which shrubs would you add to this list?
Read More5 BEST SHRUBS FOR FALL COLOR
The beauty of fall color surpasses all other seasonal highlights. It's a joy to create a colorful nyc garden design among the grey buildings and early winter skies. Here are my five favorite shrubs for fall, whether I've planted them on a roof garden, brownstone yard, residential property or college campus landscape. A late-season garden is best described by a landscape designer friend.. "with all the plants flopping over, somewhat disheveled from their perfect summer form, it's as if we're at a party where everyone stayed a bit too long!"
Read MoreWHAT PLANTS WILL SURVIVE?
The issue of where a given plant comes from must be secondary to the issue of its future survival. Again, the sad thing about the debate over native versus exotic species is that it has become so polarized. At its most simplistic level, native is equated with good, exotic with bad...
Read More
HEDGES
The word "hedge" appears to stem from the Old English word "HEGG" which is believed to be derived from the Anglo-Saxon words ;
HAEG - hurdle
HECG - territorial boundary dead or planted
HEGA - living border boundary
1
Hedges are a bordering and design tool. They enclose and subdivide fields, orchards, yards, parks and gardens. They form vegetative edges, topographic spaces, garden rooms, gateways, screens, enclosures, foci and forms within the landscape.
The term Hedgerow used to refer to 2 hedges running side by side separated by a track or pathway. These hedgerows served 2 traditional purposes , that of being a barrier to livestock and as a means of marking out territory or property boundaries. The term however tends to be used these days to describe a hedge of shrubs and occasional trees that create a border between fields and gardens or to create a privacy wall for a homeowner.
An extreme privacy hedge
www.dicts.info/img/ud/hedge.jpg
It is believed that the Romans may have first planted hedges in Britain but most of the few ancient hedges date from Saxon times, making some of them 1000 years old. The Saxons organized ‘strip farming’ in which each community of people would have a field which was divided into strips separated by grass verges. Each strip was one furrow long (one furlong or 201 metres). People were given a number of strips to farm by the lord of the manor. This system changed in the late Middle Ages when landlords wanted to put boundaries around their property, so they enclosed their land with walls or hedges. Enclosure Acts in the 18th and 19th centuries allowed farmers to put more hedges round their fields and most of Britain’s 300, 000 miles or so of hedges date from this time.
“During the 16
th
and 17
th
centuries, dense hedgerow patterns provided shelter for persecuted Protestants in France and Holland to organize their clandestine religious meetings. During the WW II the dense bocage in Normandy caused the invading Allied forces much trouble in advancing to conquer the Nazi regime.”
2
In the past hawthorne (
Crataegus monogyna)
was the most popular choice for hedgerows in the ancient woodland for marking territory or as barriers to contain livestock. Nowadays hedges are commonly constructed of various plant and non-plant material for more ornamental purposes yet still as a privacy tool. Boxwood, Privet, Beech, Cherry Laurel, Hedge Maple, Hornbeam, Holly and Yew are but a few of the more desirous plants used currently for hedges.
Designer Luciano Giubbilei's masterful use of hedges at a Chelsea Flower Show garden in 2009
1. Hedgerows, Hedges and Verges of Britain and Ireland
2. Natural History Museum of Britain. www.nhm.ac.uk/index.html
*all photos copyright Todd Haiman unless otherwise noted
