The Personal Garden Coach

THIS.

There’s new gardening science being revealed to us all the time. We never stop learning newer, updated techniques in horticulture.

Bare root primer Bare root primer - Download as a PDF or view online for free

FOLIAGE FIRST REIGNS SUPREME yet again!!!

Unloading plants from our shopping trips for various clients today and BAM!! These two WERE going to separate locations, but now they will live together forever. ❤️

Weigela ‘Magical Fantasy’ and Barberry ‘Admiration’.

This color scheme is always a winner!

Morning sun, afternoon shade and great water make these colors sing. A container in the background is a pretty color echo too.

Early fall here in the Seattle area is making me a little sad. Even though it’s my favorite season typically, this summer just seemed so short!

Enjoy this rainy combo with me so we can soak up the last of the FLUFF before we all start rotting. 😂

HIT TOPIC TIME!!

25 Deer-Resistant Shrubs for a Beautiful Garden - Garden Design Discover 25 stunning deer-resistant shrubs to protect your garden from hungry deer. Enhance your landscape with low-maintenance, fragrant, and...

Are you having any fun? 😁

We try to offer value by adding echoes of colors, textures and plants from container to landscape to carry the eye from view to vista in fun ways. Succulents are often fun choices to fit the assignment!

CLICK!!!

I snapped a quick shot of this spot at a clients today that is SO low maintenance that I hardly check on it and just look at it go!

**PRO tip!!**

For a gardener, I have an obsession with clean nails. Scrubbing with a nail brush and cleanser just doesn’t quite cut it and wearing gloves only covers so much after a while. So, when I discovered a by-product of using the whitening shampoo and conditioner for my silver hair was super WHITE to almost blue-white nails, I thought I’d pass it on in case you have a passion for clean nails too.

(Showing my purple, whitening toothpaste too for kicks)

Gardeners LOVE LANGUAGE! Now we’re talkin!!! ❤️

Not sure what kind of Voodoo magic is happening here, but these ‘Bright Edge’ Yucca have been getting more gorgeous by the day in this raised bed with yellow daisies (freshly sheared for rebloom) and gold variegated creeping euonymus hiding in between that you can’t see. They also bloomed HARD in spring too!
I think it’s that these HOT concrete trough planters (at a golf course driving range) are filled with a VERY sandy soil so they have EPIC drainage. We mulched them and they get watered every morning. But still! They’re positively luscious and I’ve never seen Yucca this nice in….EVER!

These photos depict a question I get A LOT as a professional container and landscape designer. Sadly, I often have to be the bearer of a realistic view for what’s possible and I thought it was a good opportunity to show all of you.

“I’d like to grow a vine on my arbor to shade my patio (or give fragrance, feed hummingbirds, grow fruit) how long will it take my XYZ vine to cover it?”

Can you see the problem? 😬

This patio is gorgeous for certain! Those vases will hold your vine, maybe 3-4 years at most before they 1) ate what little potting soil they had and even with adding an inch fresh per year, isn’t enough even with fertilizer 2) they’ll be so root bound, it will be impossible to keep watered. 3) what waterlines? 4) once that vine begins to get even close to enough coverage they’ll either break the pot or you kill the vine saving the pot.

Saw this system used in Little Rock, Arkansas and was SUPER impressed!!!

Seattle could learn a thing or two!!

Came up in Memories today!

Scale, texture, balance and drama for visitors at this front entry courtyard.

“Make it FUNKY!” -James Brown

Textural bonanza!

A container collection facing west in Juanita, Washington.

A pair of summer containers flanking the back door at the golf and country club showing off!