"..like roses, only easy to care for, don’t have thorns and aren’t ugly when they aren’t blooming"

That is probably one of the five best quotes I have ever read in a garden article.

In case you missed Thursday's Home and Garden section from the NY Times, check out this wonderful story about rare camellias in southern Louisiana. 

an architect designed (and built) deer fence

Durham architect Ellen Cassilly and her husband Frank Konhaus live in a breath stealing home that they co-designed for a perched site near Duke Forest. The project (which includes an artist's residence and gallery) has its own blog. Last summer their Cassillhaus made the New York Times.

I visited in August of last year and let Ellen show me around the property. Ellen loves to garden but when you live anywhere near the forested border of Orange and Durham counties, you have to deal with hordes of deer....or maybe herds?  I think hordes sounds more terrible.  So, Ellen was forced to do what many rural gardeners do...build a deer fence.

Deer fencing is not usually thought of as beautiful to look at- rustic at best, ugly at worst.  But being the design minded couple that they are, they created a solution for how their deer fence abuts the driveway. Last Sunday I was invited back to check out the finished product.

Ellen and Frank  dreamed up and assembled a very cool group of corten steel panels. That reminds me, I need to ask Ellen to teach me how to weld. 

Two cattle grates were installed in the driveway. Apparently deer are not such great long jumpers when it comes to horizontal movement. Custom hinges (which were hired out to a metalsmith) allow one of the panels to be opened for visitors who do not want to brave walking over the cattle grates. And even though they understandably selected a more inexpensive fencing system for the property's perimeter, it is mostly invisible unless you are out tramping in the woods.

So how is it working?  I noticed Ellen had put a lot more plants in the ground since my last visit, so it must be working just fine.

ten acres in chapel hill for ten thousand dollars...

....and that's not even the most interesting part of the story.  See today's Home and Garden feature from the New York Times.

other people's wwws: N&O Sunday op-eds

If you read the editorial page every Sunday in the News and Observer, you are probably familiar with the bit of seasonal musing-cum-nature writing that lands somewhere on the left hand side of the fishwrap. I am almost 100% certain that Bob Simpson writes these unattributed gems. Simpson is an old-school outdoorsman and journalist who has been writing for the N&O for a long time. I tried to find a really good bio. of him online but ran out of time on today’s lunch break. Here is the link to last Sunday’s piece. I have come close to writing him a fan letter now and again; I don't think a blog post counts. These weekly reflections on topics such as waterfowl migration, constellations, plant life, and Native American lore, help me keep track of how our seasons shift. 

Wright's viburnum = bird feeder

White oak acorn. I pulled it off and put it on the sidewalk. 

I was thinking on fall when  I took several picutures this morning. Even though there is plenty of summer heat and foliage to obscure my commute through Sarah P. Duke Gardens, the signs of autumn are in the making.

other people's wwws: Monticello

Over the past week I noticed several garden related stories about Monticello. First, was the NY Times' piece on  the work being done to interpret the landscape there.....the always excellent Anne Raver explains that there's more to these gardens than a postcard picture. 

On Sunday I came across another reference to Monticello, this time from Pepperdine professor Wade Graham in a McClatchy op-ed piece. It made me think about those palladian windows that are so common in McMansions nowadays....

And lastly,  I just opened my mid-summer email from the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. They are helping out with an heirloom tomato tasting at Monticello later on this summer. It sounds like a good enough reason to go....if I could just find a weekend to get away from my own garden. Of course with this heat and lack of rain, I may need to seek out someone else's tomatoes.  

other people's wwws: Gene's Garden

I bet there are thousands of garden blogs out there but Gene's Garden out of Hampton, VA is on my shortlist of bookmarks.  Cheers Gene and keep up the good work!

elsewhere

This picture was taken from my car last Friday night as I drove through Rutherford County in southwestern North Carolina. I spent the weekend on a landscaping project for my in-laws and really enjoyed the chance to think about someone else’s yard and actually put some stuff in the ground. The plants I purchased, cottoneaster and a low growing gardenia, were chosen to replace several large foundation shrubs that had to be pulled out by a tractor..….unfortunately I didn't make it in time to use the tractor myself.

The weather was so nice, it was almost eerie. I made my way  into North Carolina's "thermal belt" via a leisurely tour of backroads south of Interstate 40. On Hwy 64 from Rutherfordton to Morganton, I noticed dozens of ancient dogwoods in full bloom. They seemed to be much larger than the ones I usually see in central North Carolina….must be that near-mountain air, I suppose.

an unexpected garden tour

On Tuesday, I took my lunch in the car. I do not usually do this, but I was on a mission to find a gardener. Not just any gardener. I was looking for someone with a big loud crazy bunch of flowers, succulents, topiary, or statues in the yard. I was looking for an interview subject for an article I am writing about pass-along plants. I slowed down past several houses in Old West Durham and Trinity Park but it didn’t look like anyone was in their yards or on their front porches. With my lunch break winding down, I drove through the Burch Avenue neighborhood and made notes about houses and gardens I would like to visit sometime. I saw bold sunflowers beside the sidewalk, long mantles of clematis vines, plenty of canna lilies, and heaps of the not-so-precise cottage garden style that I love to rave about. But no one was toiling in the noon-time sun. So I made up my mind to hit Arnette Avenue where I had been planning to drive by a corner property for some time.

As I pulled up to the incredible yard and garden in Durham’s Morehead Hill neighborhood, I realized I was in luck. The resident gardener was in. His name is Angel Redoble, owner of a landscape design business named Angelscapes. Immediately he took me into the complex and serene world of his garden as if he had been expecting me.

It was wonderful. Angel’s lot has a koi pond that he hand-dug after hurricane Fran took down a large oak tree in 1996. He finished it in four days as a birthday present for his wife. He has named each of the big fish. This water feature is covered with netting to keep two things at bay-falling leaves and a blue heron, both of which should return to his urban property in the next month or two.

We talked about plants and the business of landscape design. I asked him some questions about favorite flowers, but I became distracted by all the sights in his garden- a statue made from a tree trunk; a row of purple crape-myrtles; the three and a half foot tall spikes of something I’ve heard called jiso, akajiso, Chinese basil, and wild basil. Angel calls it red basil. It self-sows, tastes good in salads, and looks like a bushy coleus. Coincidentlly, the day before, a co-worker had "passed along" this plant (perilla frutescens) for planting in my garden.

I had to leave too soon. But I left with Angel’s card and gave him mine. I also gave him a promise to return. His place is glorious in the springtime. I know because he showed me pictures and because I’ve driven by before, wondering who lived in that old house with the traffic-stopping yard. Now I know and now I have at least one more person to swap plants and stories with.