If I had to do without a clothes closet, I probably could. A big box would probably hold it all. I have five choices of a dressy outfit, most of which date back at least 15 years. I wear a Land’s End super pima cotton collared golf shirt to work every day-I have 10 in an assortment of colors. My work clothes are comfortable and serviceable-Plain Jane, to say the least. When they get to that ratty and dilapidated stage, Buck gently suggests that I might want to consider a new look.
My work boots are old and comfortable. My sneakers get replaced twice a year-they curl up and get uncomfortable from being soaking wet so often. What a nuisance to replace something I am more than comfortable with; I do so, reluctantly. I have 3 pairs of dress shoes. A pair of hot pink cowboy boots with light pink toes are available, should I feel like going all out. The thought of adding to this wardrobe, or changing it out althogether, fills me with dread. I am not really great with change.
I am always convinced I have no time to add or make changes to my appearance. Regularly I am in the ladies room at work with a dull pair of scissors chopping at my bangs-I am sure I have no time to go see Suzette. Never mind that she and her group at Salon Suzette cuts and styles expertly, and reasonably. Never mind how great I feel when she cuts my hair-the new do makes me ridiculously happy. No, I persist in hacking my bangs with dull scissors, producing a result that would remind you of my second grade picture. What is my idea?
Professional styling is not such a bad thing. But should you be reluctant to give over any design to a third party, hear this. I am incredibly persistent in preserving my status quo. I would bend over backwards to keep everything the same. What so exasperates me with clients, I see myself doing. This is what has encouraged me to spend a lot of time explaining and teaching. All of that time spent is of benefit as much to me, as to others. I have to be prepared-should I advise, teach, explain, or design. I sort through and verbalize my design process-hopefully to good end. Change is disruptive, irritating, and expensive-I try to make it sound like fun. Are you able to make your landscape renovation seem like fun? If not, ask for help.
Hanging on to what was once historically gorgeous might be admirable. Statistically speaking, there is an equal chance that the hanging on to what once was might be as much a product of a dislike of change as an interest in historic preservation. I chide myself over this very issue. Am I preserving those landscape gestures that I did 2 years ago, or 14 years ago, because I should, or because I am reluctant to make a change?
Good design is not about money. A master plan design-it is good, or bad, or mediocre. Do not associate your money with your design-this is a bad move. How you choose to implement that design is up to you. Plant sizes, yearly projects-you are in charge of what you devote to a project at any given time. Nine years separated these two photographs. The blink of an eye, actually. But the bits added or amended over the years can add up to a lot. The new shoes I buy are never better than the first day I own them. A new landscape gesture, no matter how small, done properly, only gets better with time.
I bought my house in 1996. I never saw the horrific color of the trim, or that ghastly color visited upon the only 4 urns that the GM foundry ever made. I saw something a camera could never record. I was sleepy about renovating the landscape until the day I was fifty. I realized that if I did not get going, I would die, never having had a landscape and garden of my own choice and doing. I got going.
Fourteen years has made a big difference. Did I have untold money to put to the new outfit-of course not. I did one major and one minor project a year-for years on end. This is my life and passion-of course I would do 2 projects a year. I still have the original design for the property-mostly in shreds from my years referring and reconfiguring. If a beautiful landscape is swirling around in that cauldron that is your life, one gesture a year, however small, can make can make for a dramatic change, given a decade or more.
People with vision and determination build new houses. I could never take that on. Too many decisions, a too fluid situation, a project in which the end is ill-defined-this is not a good place for me. I am much too resolution oriented to build a house. I have plenty of clients who build beautiful houses. I understand that when it comes time to dress the house in an appropriate landscape, people are not only tired of the construction, they have had every dollar wrung out of them.
The insult of the construction will fade. Lots of new house landscapes are more about obtaining an occupancy permit, than a landscape that works beautifully. The interest in a new outfit comes sooner, or later. The house I bought has a new outfit, some 14 years in the making. You do not see the years, just the change. The one tree you plant today, per your master plan, will delight you in 14 years. The 3 hydrangeas you plant tomorrow, on you way to a hedge of 30, will encourage you to keep going.
My advice? Master plan your landscape and garden-whether you do it yourself, or get help. Then buy and plant the landscape equivalent of a new pair of shoes. Every year. I recommend this.
Though the shop garden is very much frozen in time, there is work under way, under ground, in anticipation of spring. We planted 2600 tulips in this garden last fall. Each and every one of those bulbs is programmed to wake up and grow, come the spring thaw. Everything needed to grow and bloom is stored and waiting inside that bulb for that moment when the switch flips. Though it seems hard to believe, tulip bulbs do not freeze solid through and through. Planted some 8″ below the surface, they spend the winter chilled to right around 32 degrees. They need that hibernation time to properly spring forth.
Inside the shop, it takes plenty to get ready for spring. We do a spring cleaning in February; once spring actually comes, there is no time for that. I do not mind that I have missed this part at all. Steve took every book off the library shelves, dusted them, cleaned the entire space, repainted the room, and put it all back together-all I had to do was choose the colors. Green for the walls of course-but a very light green this time. The room looks light and airy now. For the shelves and trim-what I call Belgian chocolate.
The floor of my office is courtesy of Flor-the company that makes carpet tiles in all kinds of colors and textures. This series is called house pet-it is so easy to pull up a stained square, and replace it with a new one. Gardening being the dirty business that it is, I think I am due for all new squares. Having a project indoors helps the winter fly by. 
The auricula theatres got new outfits as well. The best fun was finishing the terra cotta pots. Each pot was primed in UGL basement waterproofing paint. This gave the pots a substantial gritty texture. This also keeps the top coat of paint from peeling off, once the pot is a home for wet soil. Each pot got a jute knot or bow. With the finish coat of ivory paint we soaked the bows in thinned paint; I like the look. I could see these pots planted with small growing herbs-or succulents-or even miniature ferns. 
They layout table was handy for painting the pots. I could never again do without a table at a height comfortable for me to stand and work. This we made with a 4 by 8 foot sheet of exterior grade plywood. The top is held up by a pair of shelves four feet deep. These shelves hold long blueprints that I need to store.
The little pots look great. Machine made terra cotta pots can be finished in so many ways, when you tire of that orange clay. This shape is called a rose pot-they are taller than standard terra cotta pots. They are great for growing plants with long root runs. Bareroot roses that are potted up for sale at nurseries are generally on the tall side. Large rose pots are also great for growing tomatoes. Rose pot and long tom are interchangeable common names for pots taller than they are wide. 
One of the plant theatres got a coat of Belgian chocolate paint. 
Pam has been making small topiary sculptures from preserved eucalyptus and other preserved greens. The trunks are made from cedar whips, kiwi vine, and fresh blacktwig dogwood. They are great for spots indoors asking for something soft, that will not support plant life. As I have no interest in house plants, these suit me fine. 
The fall is the perfect time to talk about light as an element of design in the landscape. How, when and where the sun shines, dramatically influences the visual impact of any landscape or garden. October light in Michigan is cold and low in the sky. Uneven or carved surfaces are cast in sharp relief. Any shadows cast will be dramatically elongated. A client choosing a smooth surfaced ornament for their garden should be happy for a subtle light rendering; if not, choosing ornament with some more graphic surface variation might be in order.
I could write on into the next decade about how light is the engine that gets any outdoor space moving. One of my favorite parts of my Michigan gardening life is how the light can make the appearance of everything change, from hour to hour, and day to day, and season to season. The contrast of light and dark in a garden is its heartbeat. In October, the trees coloring up are all the more dramatic for the ignition supplied by that intensely pale light. Its worth thinking about the degree of shade a tree or shrub will cast in a landscape. A densely shady area is all the more dramatic with a pocket pool of light behind it. Plan for dark spaces close to your view, with light spaces in the distance. 
The spring leaves emerging on my Princeton gold maples cannot hold a candle to their yellow fall fire. I am a photographer whose lack of understanding about the mechanics of photography is considerable. So I watch the light. When it suffuses every element in a garden such that the color in my pictures, or the feeling of my pictures, will be saturated-that is the time I photograph. I record; I do not have the skills to generate. It is hard to believe this collection of these maple yellow leaves produces such dense shade underneath; the grey cedar fence appears black by way of contrast, and almost disappears.
Our thin rod steel spheres permit the view of your choice through to the landscape. How they interact with a garden is the best part about them. Imagine this view in the winter, the early spring, the early summer, the high summer, the fall; you get the idea. Add light to the mix, and your possible visual combinations increase considerably. Garden ornament interests me greatly, given how it offers me a sense of solidity, and steadfast longevity, against the ever changing landscape. 
The bright flat October sun sets all it touches on fire. The greens are all that much more electrically green; the reds glow red. If you are looking to see the rhythm established by the masses of light and dark in your landscape, look quick now before the leaves fall. There is instruction coming from the natural world every day, should you care to tune in.
The color of these pansies speaks softly in the spring. The fall light intensifies and electrifies the appearance of their color. On my best days, I think about how the light will fall on a landscape in every season, as this should influence how I place every plant or object.
