I do have clients who are hands on; Dr. Luria is one of those. I designed his landscape, and gardens, and I have planted a few of the bigger evergreens for him-but by and large, he has done this work himself. I can relate to that gardener that really does like the dirt. The perennial garden sits on top of a low elliptical wall, which strongly borders the space while the garden is dormant.
lI tried very hard to dissuade him from having a perennial garden in his front yard, but working against me was how the house sits on the property. This neighborhood has large common areas that all the homeowners share. Thus most of his property, and almost all of his sun is in the front yard. I need not have worried. This garden is better than well looked after. It is the jewel of the neighborhood.
A dwarf conifer garden lines the walk to the front door from the drive. These evergreens in different shapes and textures and colors have grown in beautifully over the years. Along with the douglas fir in the lawn, and the yews near the front door, the dwarf conifers see to providing visual interest during the winter months. A pair of dwarf magnolias are a welcome shift of texture from the evergreen needles. The side yard is dominated by groups of Limelight hydrangeas, fringed in boxwood. The white flowers read strongly from the street; they look inviting.
In the back yard, The woodland common property is faced down with a mix of shade perennials. This greatly helps to expand the visual space of the rear yard. I suspect he takes care of the woodlot as well. A round terrace/deck is notable for its beautiful iron railings. What I dislike about decks the most is what I see underneath them; I rarely see a surface treatment I find attractive. The undersides of decks also tend to accumulate tools, hoses, toys and the like. This deck has the illusion of being solid to the ground; the vertical wood planks add so much color and texture to this small garden. The stairs hug the deck radius, and spill out onto a second terrace, finished simply in gravel contained by black aluminum edger strip. The blue furniture looks great.
I so enjoy the gardens my clients make for themselves. Never would it occur to me to plant a cactus garden in an iron birdbath. Does this not look swell? I like everything about this small spot in his garden-the color, the textures-and most of all, the presence and personality of the head gardener.
Dr. Luria has been making things grow his whole life, and it shows. The plants are robustly happy and lush; how they look says everything about how much time he spends here. Though I am sure there are days he wonders what he took on here, the state of the garden gives no hint of that. Well grown plants are so much a part of what makes a garden beautiful.
He also does a beautiful job of adding annuals to his perennial mix. Any day you go by, something interesting is going on. In any given year, the annuals he fancies can change the complexion of the entire garden. It looks new and fresh every year. He may consult with me about this or that, but he makes the decisions.
He likes plants, and he likes color, but how he mixes and matches works. The garden is graceful, relaxed, and profuse. I know how much work it is to keep that wild look just this side of chaos. He clearly does not fear the work of it. In fact, the entire gardens looks like he enjoys it.
This garden is truly lovely; he is the driving force behind all you’ve seen here. He should be very proud of it, should he not?
For the better part of six years I did nothing to this yard except bark the existing perennial beds, and mow the grass. It took all my energy to handle my work-or so it seemed. I am embarrassed to say that somewhere along the line I got an anonymous postcard in the mail: “It is hard to believe that a person whose career is landscape would have weeds six feet tall in her front yard”. No matter the delivery, the person had a point.
But perhaps even more importantly, I was ignoring the fact that whatever I did at home would need time to come of age-and that perhaps I would want to still be around to see that. Planning my own landscape was agonizingly slow. I had no problem designing for others; I was a wreck designing for myself. Slow turned out to be fine; who can do everything at once anyway? Getting started-that was the key.
The one hundred Hicks yews across the west and down the north side came first. Given the slope of my property from the south to the north, time would prove to be an essential element. The hedge is 4 feet tall on the south side, and nine feet tall on the north side-but every one of them is level with the horizon. This hedge took eight years to grow in.
The boxwood was even slower growing; the 18″-24″ plants I put in the ground were already seven years old when I planted them. The shaggy densiformis yews are the newest evergreen addition; they have only been in four years. I like all this evergreen; I can successfully maintain it. I knew I could never devote the time needed to a big perennial garden-why come home and be frustrated about what isn’t done? Two giant blocks of Limelight hydrangeas, and 6 pots of flowers give me perennial garden pleasure, in a manageable form.
I planted this city-mini allee of Yellow Butterflies magnolias for Buck-he loves yellow. The boxwood is a big evergreen groundcover. The petals falling on this boxwood is one of my garden’s best spring moments. The mini-boxwood strips in the foreground-this year’s landscape project. The slope of the ground here made it difficult to mow the grass. The magnolias have grown considerably, and the shade they cast was not optimal for lawn. Wall stone behind them retains the soil, and in a few years, will be invisible.
The magnolias were planted to frame the view to the side yard. It is hard arrange a long view on a city lot, making visual use of the neighbor’s mature elm adds much to the illusion of distance.
The big Yew hedge divides my public landscape, from the house landscape. The big pots are centered in front of big panels of windows; I have good views from inside. The ground is carpeted with herniaria glabra-rupturewort. This plant grows like thyme, but is much more water tolerant.
I am the reluctant and sole owner of this giant agave. Armed with vicious thorns and weighing plenty, it is an incredible ordeal bringing it out of the greenhouse-never mind trying to decide where to summer it. Mark does a great job of wintering all my clients tender plants, but this one makes him grumble. 
Mark’s staff person, the other Mark, is smiling here, but please notice the sunglasses, and the heavy duty gloves. This plant is like trying to handle a blue heron that has its leg caught in a rock (that’s another story for another time) or some other similar disaster. At this moment, no one is thinking about how beautiful it is-only how deadly it can be. 
Mark shows up with a long sleeve canvas carhart jacket-never mind that it is 78 degrees. Rob is poised as if an unexpected left jab may be coming his way. 
Finally these three slide it down the ramp, and off the truck. It sat for a week in the middle of the driveway, marooned. I finally said to my landscape superintendent Steve that it might be good to heave the thing in the dumpster, and be rid of it. Steve, who is predictably unpredictable, was indignant that I could even think of chucking an old plant as beautiful as this one. The “beautiful” part of his jolt of a statement set me thinking in a different direction. If I did indeed think it was beautiful, then where would I put it? 
I asked Steve to haul it home for me. I did not dare go to photograph that planting scene; sometimes Steve is better left alone. The tuscan rectangle, whose planting scheme had been bedevilling me for weeks-the perfect place for a giant, homeless, but very beautiful agave. Do these two not look made for each other? The big design issue here is about the seeing. Seeing the beauty in a plant or an idea can inspire lots of good. This massive and unwieldy pain of a plant is now the star of its own show. A lot of plants, clients, schemes, garden arrangements and ornament are loaded on my design bus. All of these things need the right seat on that bus, on any particular trip, to shine. This is an issue which is mine to successfully solve. 
Edward de Bono put it much than I ever could. “We may need to solve problems not by removing the cause, but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place.”