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Carving Pumpkins

Every year I carve some pumpkins for a few clients.  I do not do anything fancy, nor do I use any tools but for a floral knife, and a drill.  A drill?  They are great for drilling eyes.  I do get mildly grumpy about hauling pumpkins up my back stairs to my carving station in the kitchen-but all in all, I like the process.  Buck cooks; I carve.  I only carved 3 for home this year.  I have so many kids come, I don’t dare skip this traditional part of Halloween.

Well, maybe scooping the goop part isn’t the most fun.  But picking out just the right pumpkins, the plan for the face, the carving and the lighting are all part of a fall ritual I enjoy.

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I can’t wait until later!

Posted on: October 31, 2011 2 Comments
Filed Under: Holiday, Garden Design Tagged With: ,

Apprehension

A customer came in today, faulting me for a lack of materials for the Halloween holiday.  It could be she was right.  I have no materials that are overtly aimed at the Halloween holiday.  But I believe a thrillingly scary Halloween display is more about the presentation, than the materials.  Any material can be scary, given the right environment.  This client has small children, and they like their front door pots planted for fall.  6 stems of the elegant feather grass from my roof garden makes for a wildly hairy pair of centerpieces that will look just right Halloween night.  The cabbage and kale will look good until the weather turns bitterly cold.

I will confess I am a fan of Halloween.  I do not have kids, but I have better than 300 kids who visit my house Halloween night.  I make my front door landscape as spooky as possible that night-this is part of the fun.  Jenny wrapped this serious antique stone bust in the shop in some open weave burlap erosion mat, and added a little flock of birds.  Ghoulish, isn’t it?  None of the materials are particularly scary-what is scary is what Jenny did with them.  

1 spider is tolerable.  3 spiders is manageable.  Hundreds of spiders will elicit dread.  I buy mine by the hundreds from the Oriental Trading Company.  It is the numbers that count.  Whatever you plan for your Halloween display, do lots.  Hundreds of spiders.  A flock of too many blackbirds.  Lots of grinning pumpkins.  Plenty of webs.  These pumpkins have hemp hairdos; packing materials can be a great source for a Halloween display. Should it get wet and soggy, all the better.      

The materials at the farmers market right now are great.  For a Halloween display, I choose the grass, cabbage and cut pods as they look half dead, or from another planet.  This container planting would never satisfy me over the summer, but it is perfectly in tune with the Halloween season.  The plastic skulls are a contribution from the kids.    

Redbor kale is a dark purple that deepens with colder nights.  We plant plenty of these in fall pots.  Looking to introduce some Halloween apprehension to the mix?  Centerpieces out of vertical, pots of plants laying on the ground, displays askew-horrifying.  My landscape installations aim for square and true. Halloween displays should dispute that idea.  No matter what ordinary materials you have to work with, setting them   off center, up side down, or out of kilter will endow them with a little holiday terror.  Though I do plan to plant these kale that the wind blew over, this is a desolate scene, as is.   

Canadian thistles are a vicious weed- so difficult to eradicate.  That said, I love the seed pods in the fall-as do the goldfinches.  This planting has a dead and prickly centerpiece, some very warty gourds, and some black/ purple eucalyptus-very Halloweenish.   

 I stay away from hay bales.  They are messy beyond all belief, unless they are securely bound up.  I like the wood shavings that are known as excelsior for Halloween. These wood shavings stick together.  The look is great. The cleanup is easy.  I like broomcorn much better than cornshocks-their drying seed heads look great on a windy day.   

Pumpkins do not ordinarily scare anyone. The pumpkins and the gourds are the mainstay of the October harvest season, so they are a natural for Halloween.  What makes them creepy is the carving, and the lighting.  I also like long twisting stems.  If I grew my own pumpkins, I would cut them with as much of the vine and dead leaves intact as possible.     

A Halloween display may need a  little structure-these fence panels fashioned from stout branches are a great backdrop, and provide plenty of hanging opportunities. The fence post finials-romanesco broccoli and birdhouse gourds.  I will admit the giant spider, crows and faux webs are especially creepy-these courtesy of my local Halloween store.   

The most ordinary of materials can help bring a Halloween tableau to life.  When it gets dark, the pumpkins and company will appear to be floating-excellent.  A little ghoulishness is great fun.

Posted on: October 25, 2011 2 Comments
Filed Under: Holiday, Garden Design Tagged With: ,

In Anticipation

 

This client has a very distinct point of view about what she likes, and a sincere interest in the landscape.  She is a young person with a flock of young kids-how she manages to even think about it surprises me.  What we do for her is very low key and simple.  The hydrangeas on standard in her summer pots we winter over in the ground.  Most times we plant white, sometimes there is a little lavender or purple.   

A few years ago we made these steel boxes for her; they sit on the ground, as her windows are very low.  I took this picture of one of those boxes September 5-this was the first time I had seen it since it was planted.  The white non-stop begonias were thriving; I was impressed.  They are not the easiest plant to grow. The heliotrope has faded from the picture, but the box by and large looked great.  June Bride caladiums, euphorbia Diamond Frost, cirrus dusty miller and variegated licorice have all grown together quite companionably.    

All good things must come to an end-I wonder if Chaucer’s summer pots were waning when he wrote this.  Can you hear me sighing?  Steve cleared out all but one of my deck pots yesterday-I cannot bear that look of decline.  I should do like this client.  When summer comes to an end, she moves on to the next season.  Having kids, she was interested in a containers that would look just right for Halloween. 

I like Halloween.  The best are all the kids that come to the door in costume.  Next best, I love any holiday that depends greatly on the plants and props native to the season, presented in a suitably holiday way. I could not engineer anything as horrifying as what the average 10 year old could dream up, so I focus on the plant part.  First up for these pots, a centerpiece of broomcorn, and 3 colors of amaranthus, zip tied to a stake that goes most of the way to the bottom of the box.  A good deal of the soil had been removed as part of the rootball of the hydrangea on standard.  We topped up the boxes with new soil. 

The cabbages and kales I have written about before.  There color only gets better, as fall progresses.  But when I am thinking Halloween, my kale of choice is Redbor.  Redbor kale is stalky growing, and krinkly leaved.   

The color of redbor is an amalgamation of grey, turquoise, purple and black.  As the night temperatures decline, that color gets a little more emphatically black.  Black for Halloween?  Perfect.

I planted the kales in the outermost corners of the box, and angled them out.  Tied around the bottom of the centerpiece-2 bunches of molten orange dyed eucalyptus. We like a little fire going on at the center.  The turquoise and cerise cabbage front and center is a little tame and off color,  but it will keep the planting looking great and full until Halloween.      

The orange eucalyptus appears to have pushed to redbor kale outwards.  This is a very easy way to be spooky-plant the plants out of kilter.  What might take the place of that cabbage in the front?  A lit pumpkin?  A skull?  A giant spider?  A skeleton hung over the side? A mummified hand dripping in plastic blood?    No doubt I will consult the kids about that.  In the meantime, my client is happy to have a lively planting in her boxes at the front door.   

Every nursery, farmer’s market, roadside stand, grocery store, garden and vacant land has materials that look great in fall pots.  As for the spiders, skulls and skeletons that need to be added that one night, any kid can help you get ghoulish.

Posted on: October 5, 2011 3 Comments
Filed Under: Holiday, Good Design, Garden Design, Landscape Design Tagged With: , , , ,

Bare Branches


March in Michigan is as much about bare branches as November in Michigan.  This makes me sympathetic to any local gardener who thinks that bare branches are a synonym for dead branches.  No wonder people in my zone so value evergreens.  I am really tired of looking at them; this is March 25th for pete’s sake.  Every day, it is still winter.  This is part of why I am so interested in espaliers as landscape plants-they look great in that leafless stage.  The past few rainy days have been accompanied by temperatures near freezing.  Every branch is glazed with ice. 

This morning it was very sunny and cold; the bare branches were glittering.  Rain drops froze before they dripped off the branches-what I would not give for this look at the holidays.  Weather has a way to drawing attention to the color, structure and overall shape of those bare branches. In addition to their leaves, flowers and possibly fruit, woody plants have beautiful bones. Actually, most woody plants in their leafless stage are still beautiful.   

I do not grow forsythia in my garden.  I have only planted it on very large properties with room to spare.  The only truly beautiful planting of forsythia I have ever seen is the Forsythia Dell at Dunbarton Oaks.  Should you be there at the right time, it is spectacular.  But the forsythia across the street from me were very good looking today.  You can tell they are about to burst into bloom; the cinnamon color of the stems is glowing.  Covered in ice, it looked good enough to eat. 


Lindens have a robust overall shape, but the branches are weepy, drapy, and languid. Interesting this, for a tree that has a round overall shape. The bare branches have a jewel like appearance today. Not that I wouldn’t prefer to be smelling the flowers right now, but this is all I have available.  

Crabapple branches are hunky and gnarly; the color is a bright red brown. The sun and ice brought all of that to life.  It is incredible to think that in a few short weeks this branch will be floating in a pale pink tutu.   


I moved all of the potted bulbs inside yesterday-the frosting of ice and all.  It was 19 degrees last night-17 is forecast for tonight.  24 hours these pots have been in the garage-they are still icy. How is your spring coming along?

Posted on: March 24, 2011 2 Comments
Filed Under: Spring, Holiday Tagged With: