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2018 Garden Cruise Tomorrow

I have seen every landscape and garden that will be on our tour tomorrow which benefits the Greening of Detroit. They are all very different, and all very strong. To follow are 19 good reasons why the this 11th Garden Cruise is worth taking. The 20th, and most important reason, is that all of the proceeds from the tickets sold are turned over as a donation to The Greening of Detroit. We strongly support the work they do in our city. We still have tickets available; call 248 335 8089. Rob opens Detroit Garden Works at 8am tomorrow, for anyone who wants to decide in the morning they would like to tour.

I will be home in my own garden all day tomorrow-please stop by and say hello.

Posted on: July 14, 2018 16 Comments

Filed Under: Summer, Parties and Events, Detroit Garden Works Tagged With: 2018 Garden Cruise, The Greening of Detroit

The 2018 Garden Cruise

When one of my dearest friends told me that he did not know we would be sponsoring an 11th garden cruise this year, I took that as a sign that I needed to step up and spread the word that we are indeed sponsoring a cruise this year. I did feel last July that having met my goal of raising over 100,000.00 for the Greening of Detroit, it was time to gracefully bow out. I was surprised by the numbers of people who expressed regret that the tour would not go on. Many people told me that day that they really enjoyed the tour, and would I reconsider? The Greening of Detroit was not so happy about it either. One of their donors, the Erb Foundation, subsequently offered to match every dollar we raise selling tickets up to 10,000.00, for both 2018 and 2019. A treasured landscape client who owns a manufacturing company known as Argent Tape and Label offered to sponsor our tour dinner and drink reception. Our heartfelt thanks to the both of them. I thought about putting on an 11th tour over the winter, and finally decided to go ahead. I was able to line up some great looking landscapes and gardens which will be available for you to see this coming Sunday, July 15, from 9-4:30.

7 gardens will be available to cruise. This is our first year, including the Greening of Detroit’s Lafayette Greens. This garden, designed by noted landscape architect Ken Weikal, and underwritten by Compuware, grows countless hundreds of pounds of fresh produce and flowers-all of which are donated to local food banks, church pantries, and volunteers. Though the garden is open for visitors every day of the week, we feel a trip there would help every tour person to understand something about the Greening of Detroit, and what they do for our city.

Four of the 6 other gardens are of my design and installation. The fifth landscape was designed by me and installed over a period of time by my clients. The 6th garden is a an extraordinary collection of known and rare plants, beautifully arranged, from a pair of gardeners who regular shop at Detroit Garden Works. This is a very strong tour. No two properties are remotely alike. But every garden reflects a passion for nature, and a love of the landscape.
Should you decide to take the tour, I promise you will be engaged and intrigued. Pictured above, a writers cottage of my client’s own invention, nestled in the landscape I designed for them. If the idea of a writer’s cottage in a landscape intrigues you, I invite you to come and see the rest of their lovely property.

I always put my own garden on tour. The fact that I work to get it ready for visitors helps other gardeners decide to go ahead with putting their gardens on tour. My pots are always different, and I do make changes on occasion, so most people seem to enjoy coming back for another look. That said, this year’s tour is remarkable for its diversity. People look for very different things from their landscape. Some cultivate a wide variety of plants for the sheer love of plants of all kinds. Others have cultivated a landscape that is friendly to outdoor use and enjoyment, from places to sit, to a terrace that can accommodate friends and family for dinner. My landscape is fairly mature. So my enjoyment has much to do with planting out my pots.

This serene and beautifully maintained property will take a while to tour, but it will be obvious that the gardener in charge has a big love for the natural world.

A small city garden has a client equally passionate about the landscape.

The descriptions of the gardens on tour this year can be found at the tour website. wwwthegardencruise.org

I am also so pleased that our tour reception will be catered by Toni Sova, who owns and operates a catering company called Nostimo Kitchen. Her food is terrific. Check her out for yourself: http://www.nostimokitchen.com/ And we will have equally terrific live music as usual by Tola Lewis. http://www.tolalewis.com/ If you have never attended our after cruise reception before, I can highly recommend it. The food, drink and company is exceptional. And the 15.00 it cost over the price of a ticket also goes to the Greening of Detroit. This year’s reception is underwritten by Argent Tape and Label, a woman owned business. https://argent-label.com/

I sincerely hope that if you are able to attend, you will. The Greening of Detroit plants trees, sponsors urban gardens, and teaches respect and stewardship of our environment. This is a cause I support, as I know it has benefited our city. What the landscapes and gardens on tour have to offer is icing on the cake. To purchase tickets – 35.00 per person for the tour, and 50.00 per person for the tour and reception – call Detroit Garden Works at 248 335 8057. As an added incentive, Rob will open the shop at 8am on Sunday the 15th, should you decide to make a day of it that morning. It is the one gardening day of the year I am home all day-I love seeing my garden full of other gardeners.

Posted on: July 9, 2018 16 Comments

Filed Under: Deborah Silver and Co Inc, Parties and Events, Detroit Garden Works Tagged With: The Garden Cruise 2018, The Greening of Detroit

The 11th Garden Cruise Club

Our tenth garden cruise to benefit the Greening of Detroit was this past Sunday. As usual, I spent the day at home. My garden is on tour every year as I so enjoy meeting and talking to everyone who stops by. And I enjoy talking to those people who have taken our tour year after year, now a decade old. It is satisfying that people who have toured for years do not tire of visiting my garden. This year my garden had a few surprises. A new pair of arbors, a new fence, and 72 linear feet of planter boxes across the front, planted with summer blooming annuals. For someone who likes to plant containers as much as I do, that 72 feet worth of planting space is a treat. What fun it was to plant those! The weather forecast was perfect – 72 degrees and partly cloudy skies with a slight chance of a brief shower. Hovering over the event was my decision that this would be our last tour.

Ten years ago, encouraged and sponsored by board member and noted architect Michael Willoughby, I joined the board of the Greening of Detroit. I went to one board meeting. It would be my last; I was completely out of my depth. While I was familiar with their mission, I did not understand the issues the board had before them well enough to have anything to contribute. The next day I decided that the best contribution I could make to them would be an effort to raise money on their behalf. Putting together a tour of landscapes of my design or influenced by our group, and a dinner reception, was a commitment we were ready to make. We charged more than most tours for tickets, and all of that ticket money would go to the Greening. I do truly believe in the work done by the Greening of Detroit, so I persisted. We have kept the tour going a long time.

Detroit Garden Works and Deborah Silver and Company put their weight behind this tour. The shop rearranges and cleans. Rob designs the reception party. The Detroit Garden Works staff sets up tables and chairs and the bar, spanning the entire length of our driveway. They gracefully handle request for tour tickets for weeks before, and that Sunday morning beginning at 8am. They design tours for people who only have a few hours to attend. They put on a dinner reception with live music that is a perfect summer evening for those who have toured. Rob obligingly mixes up his latest version of the classic gin and tonic, and also mixes an array of unusual summer drinks. The line at his station is always long. Christine has long retired from the shop, but she does work the cruise. She handles the wine bar, as she has for the past 10 years.

Deborah Silver and Company weeds and rakes the shop out for company. All the gardens and pots get groomed and watered. They also lend a hand to every garden on tour the week before. We weed, haul away debris and brush, water, attend to a fountain which is not working right, or any other issue that needs to be righted in time for the cruise. They prune and fluff- so every landscape and garden looks its very best. A beautiful landscape and garden is a pleasure for those who make them, and for those who experience them. The Greening of Detroit does important work – making and sustaining landscapes in our city, and teaching people how to make plants grow.

Tour day this year was a very emotional experience for me. My original goal in 2008 was to raise 100,000 for the Greening. We went over that mark on our 9th tour, but so many friends of ours and the Greening asked if I would do a 10th tour, I said yes. The tenth year and tour would be the last. Why our last? I had done for the Greening what I had set out to do. I did not want to overstay my welcome. All things run their course, do they not? I did not want to risk people losing enthusiasm. I was not expecting what was to come.

All day long, people attending the tour came up to me, and talked to me about how much the tour meant to them. About how much they learned from a conversation and exchange of ideas with garden owners. One person in particular articulated how she was able to take what she saw in other people’s gardens that she liked, and express them in her own garden. So many made a point to tell me they regretted that this would be the last tour. Many asked if I would consider continuing the tour. Some said it was the best tour of all, and they were sure next year’s tour would even be better. I was not expecting such an impassioned response.

Would I consider continuing the tour? Sunne has always thrown her entire weight behind this tour. Everyone who shops at Detroit Garden Works knows her. She turned out to be the founder of the 11th Garden Cruise Club. She made a point of explaining that this was the last tour, and anyone who was not happy with that should let me know. I got to the tour reception about 5:15. The first person I saw was Jennifer T, who had flown in from Seattle with her daughter to take the tour. She is a long time reader and supporter of this blog. How incredible that she took the time and handled the expense to come out for our event. Though I have read and responded to many comments she has made on these pages, it was such a treat to meet her in person. How charming that her daughter was all on board to take that trip with her Mom. Though we were only face to face for two days, I will never forget her. This tour made possible a meeting with a passionate gardener halfway across the country from me. Grateful does not express how happy I was to meet her.

More than 125 people attended our reception. Between our companies and the Greening, we sold 385 tickets. We raised 15,650.00 for the Greening. Garden Design Magazine had some 40 new subscriptions, from which they would donate 12.00 from each to the Greening. The new President of the Greening, Lionel Bradford, attended our reception, and gave a short and heartfelt speech about his appreciation for what the tour has done for his organization. For me, a basket full of things to eat and drink-made in Detroit. Touching, this.

That moment was a moment I will not soon forget. Sunne has the idea that tour was just hitting its stride, and I was considering the possibility.

Michael on tour. For those of you too far away to have toured, to follow are more pictures of my landscape and garden from that day.

tour morning

the deck

Milo and Howard were both home for the tour this year.

pots planted for summer

a little one on tour

upper deck

planters

planter detail

deck pots

fountain landscape

fountain

front yard

landscape

the opposite view

new planter boxes and original cast iron pots

new planter boxes in the other direction

tour landscape

Bringing the tour to an end is tougher now, considering all of what we heard that day. Yesterday I heard from Monica Tabares at the Greening that a donor who took the tour for the first time this year regretted this was our tenth and final tour. In a meeting with her, they pledged that if I would continue the tour for 5 more years, they would match the funds we raise every one of those five years. That offer gives me great pause. It could be that what we thought was the end is not quite the end yet.

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Posted on: July 21, 2017 53 Comments

Filed Under: flowers, Deborah Silver and Co Inc, Parties and Events, Detroit Garden Works, Garden Design, Landscape Design, Garden Stories Tagged With: the Garden Cruise 2017, garden tours, The Greening of Detroit

Detroit Garden Works 2016 Spring Fair

Detroit Garden Works will be hosting its annual spring fair tomorrow and Sunday. We are particularly fond of that time when winter is just about over, and a new gardening season is about to begin. Spring is the puppy season of the garden. Once the landscape and garden plants break dormancy, everything grows grows so fast is difficult to keep up with it all. The trees and shrubs are leafing out, the spring flowering bulbs leap out of the ground, the hellebores come in to their own-and there are weeds everywhere. The garden wakes up one moment, and is in high gear the next. One barely knows what to look at first. Some spring moments are as brief as they are beautiful, and gardeners do not want to miss any of it. In anticipation of the spring garden on the way, we invite a diverse group of people who make a career of some aspect of gardening to bring their plants and wares to our fair. The idea is to put a group of green industry people in the same place as lots of interested gardeners, offer a little something to eat and drink, and let the fun begin.

Our building is just about 10,000 square feet, and it is chock full of new pots, tools, garden ornaments, and best of all, the first of many interesting specialty plants we carry throughout the garden season. April weather can be very uncooperative. We’ve had quite a run of cold days and very cold nights recently. There is snow on the ground this morning, for pete’s sake. We plan to launch the spring 2016 season in spite of it. We have 10,000 square feet of warm space. Our fair space in the warehouse in the back of our building has lots of new lighting, and a new all glass garage door. If you have a mind to come, we will valet park your car at no charge, and load your purchases for you. You will be shoulder to shoulder with other passionate gardeners who are keen for perennials, cut flowers and bulbs that show themselves early in the spring.

Our bunches of fresh cut pussy willow are the best I have ever seen. I wonder if the mild winter had something to do with this. Though our fall grown and cold wintered pansies are shrugging off the inclement weather, every one is covered with frost cloth for the night. Our hellebores are big and well grown plants. Our topiary plants can be enjoyed indoors until the night temperatures are warmer, and then moved outdoors for the summer.

The shop is especially beautiful this spring. This is our 20th year in business, and the pride we feel in that is evident. You’ll see. But for all of you who are too far away to visit this weekend, to follow is a collection of pictures that will help give you a sense of what we look like right now.

It has taken quite a few months to get to this moment. The shop walls got repainted. We have a fresh floor painting. We have new lighting. Every room is clean-sparkly. Every day we have something new coming in. In the distance, you can see how much light we have in the back now, courtesy of our glass overhead door.

We have big and little ideas, and appropriate the materials to go with, for gardeners of every persuasion. This sentence is pretty short. Our effort to help gardeners of every persuasion is long lived, and serious. That aside, what we have in store for the weekend is all about the pleasure that a garden can provide.

I promise there is enchantment in the air.

Even Howard has come out from under my desk to take part in what is going on.

In anticipation of our spring fair, we had two truck loads of topiary plants delivered. Our greenhouse space is packed with plants. This is my favorite part-the plants.