Gregg & Ellis Landscape Designs

Circular Water Wall

Create Privacy in your garden

I wanted to implement an idea I’d had for sometime of a circular wall that started out high and tapered down to sitting height.   My garden is long and narrow, so it was a perfect place to create a garden room  to create a destination and a feeling of seclusion without claustrophobia.  The wall begins at six feet and tapers down to two feet near the garden entrance.  It’s a focal point, a conversation piece, and it delights me every day I see it from my office.

Tip #3  The Money Shot

Do you believe that an evergreen garden means no maintenance because you don’t have to rake leaves? Guess again little grasshopper. The most interesting and easiest gardens are ones that have a variety of evergreen and deciduous.  If the plants are spaced correctly and layered with tall plants in the back and short plants in the front (exceptions are permitted) then the leaves and needles can fall and remain to be composted right there in the bed.  The lower plants in front skirt the mulch you may not want to see.  It’s the plant’s way of protecting and feeding itself.

We have clients who request evergreen gardens and we have learned not to drop our jaw nor furrow a brow.

*Conifers drop their needles, drip sap or scatter cones.  The Dwarf White Pine begs to be preened of its old brown needles every spring.  Some conifers decorate the neighborhood with yellow pollen.

*Evergreen grasses look so much better if the old blades are combed out yearly.

*Evergreen ferns need annual hair cuts.

*Broadleaf evergreens drop their leaves, but just not all at once.

Tip #2: Weed Less

When your bed is planted you’re still not finished.  Covering the ground with compost will help keep the weeds down and will keep the soil healthier. However, if you want  low maintenance in this new bed there’s another step.   If you had subscribed to the newspaper a few months ago, you’d have a big enough collection to lay full overlapped sections on the ground and then cover them with compost.  The paper keeps the weeds from growing through until the plants have time to establish and fill in.  But if you didn’t plan ahead with the paper subscription, don’t fret.  I’ve used the heavy paper painters use to cover a floor and it works pretty well.

Tip #1:  PLANTING

A little known study that’ll save your back and get your plants to grow faster.

You have the plant, you’ve dug the hole and you’re ready to bury it.  Hold the phone.  Don’t add compost to the hole.  According to studies, most shrubs and trees adapt sooner and grow faster when planted in native soil (the soil that is there).   Adding compost to the hole acts as a washtub by holding water.  Just plop the plant in the hole.

If your soil is hardpan or heavy clay and you want to make your life easier in the long run, hire strapping young people to amend the entire bed.  Joy Creek Nursery adds 1/10 minus and compost to their beds to help with drainage in hard clay soil. (joycreeknursery.com)

You might also consider compost tea applications.  It’s full of good microorganisms.  ”Microorganisms, such as bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes, give soil its structure, water holding capacity, and the ability to get nutrients to the plants. This essential web of life in the soil is damaged when it is tilled, compacted or moved. Compost tea restores soil ecology by replacing these missing microorganisms.”  Willamette Organics is the company we recommend for Portland, Vancouver and Salem areas.  www.willametteorganics.com/compostteaapplications.html

Don’t be to concerned about your garden and the predictions for snow. We’ve had good moisture before the snow so the ground is wet, but not soggy. If it snows enough to cover plants, the snow will act like a blanket to protect plants from the wind.  If it doesn’t cover plants and the wind comes up we have worries. Then, throw an old blanket over your favorites, or those in direct east winds.  The other thing to remember is don’t bury planting beds in more snow when clearing the driveway and walkways. The weight may crush shrubs.  Lawns can take a beating with kids playing, but their fun outways the week or so of extra care in spring. So, sit back and enjoy or get outside and play.

Enjoy your seed catalogs and hot chocolates.

Roses can be easy

It’s that time of year when bare root roses can still be ordered for spring planting:  www.jacksonandperkins.com  and www.heirloomroses.com  are two places that have fabulous selections, and look to carpet roses for spectacular color all summer and even into fall.  They are low maintenance, disease resistant and beautiful.  I use carpet roses in big masses for the strong color statement they make. Plant them about 4′ apart. They self dead head, need water in August, and they need to be sheared in the late fall.  That is just about all they need. Other colors include pink, white and yellow.

Christine Ellis, Gregg & Ellis Landscape Designs, Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington since 1995

Landscape Design: From panic to happy

Gregg and Ellis Landscape Designs Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington

As a landscape designer, I appreciate strong design in the landscape, smart graphic designs, and thoughtful architectural design.  It’s kind of like a dance.  To the observer it is effortless and creative.  So, when I wanted to renovate my kitchen, I asked Sandy Hayes, interior designer, to help me.  She came over, we discussed things and I felt good about hiring her.  But the next day I had an inexplicable panic that caught me off guard.  There had been no doubt in my mind when I first contacted her, but letting go of the design process was suddenly scary.  What if I don’t like her ideas?  What if her plans put me way over budget?  Worry was burning a hole in my brain.

And then it dawned on me.  This might be how some of my landscape design clients feel when they hire me.  I listen to what a client wants, I offer to come up with different design ideas and take their budget considerations to heart. Sandy did the same.  She couldn’t have said or done anything differently.  I had to wrestle with my demon of worry myself.

A kitchen design might be a bit easier to explain to clients than a landscape design.  Cabinets don’t grow, bloom, or even die.  A good landscape designer knows plant sizes, how big to make a patio for a crowd or just a family,  and tricks to help hide the neighbors.  You must put a great deal of trust in a landscape designer to give you  options that will work for you.

The interior designer has since sent me a couple of conceptual ideas to check out that I’m excited about.  Designers have experience and ideas that people outside their business can’t imagine.  Landscape designers have puzzle pieces that can take years to learn.  It’s worth the fee to have someone guide you in a decision that could last a lifetime.

Part Shade Plants in a Shady Garden

Portland Oregon and Vancouver Washington and vicinity

I was at Nordstrom Rack yesterday and as usual, any shoes I wanted were in another size.   The sweater that would make me look like a million bucks was too tight, so instead I felt like a two dollar bill in it.  It reminded me of all the plants I want in my shady garden.  I lust for sun lovers, but only shade plants are in my size.

An untold number of part-shade plant victims have died (or been murdered) over the years because I was sure they’d look like a million bucks in my shady garden.  I want deep vivid colors.  Baptisia australis (Wild Indigo), Phygelius (Cape Fuschia), Crocosmia (Montebretia) all are listed as being capable of growing in part shade and have the colors I salivate for.  I’ve tried them and they do grow, but at a striking 45 degree angle, with minimum bloom and leggy composure.  My shade plants whisper among themselves that these wanna be part shaders are a disgrace.  ”She calls herself a landscape designer but allows that riff-raff in the yard” my shade plants whisper to one another.

There are a few success stories that my shade plants would rather not talk about.  The full sun loving Boltonia spurts forth hundreds of blooms in it’s mostly shady area.  Part shade winners also include a Clematis blooming in November, Rosa glauca (Blueleaf Rose) growing a tad too vigorously (any one want a start?) and Salix ‘Hakiro NIshiki’ (Dappled Willow) rudely throwing limbs here and there surprise me in their continued willingness to show up the shade plants.

Part shade plants in my garden, both good and not so much

• Penstemon ‘Apple Blossom’  It’s short, so no one can tell that it leans to the sun
• Spiraea  Other designers may pooh-pooh this plant but it’s a workhorse plant that requires little and gives alot
• Fatshedera ‘lizei ‘Aureo-Maculata’  Love this evergreen climbing on a trellis next to my house
• Rhamnus ‘Fine Line’   They look so cook, all columnar with fine fingery leaves, but half of them croaked in my yard and in my neighbor’s yard.
• Choisya ‘Aztec Pearl’  They think they’re so perfect with their evergreen leaves and scent, but they fall over without staking
• Hebe ‘Silver Dollar’ or ‘Red Edge’   They’re cute enough that I can live with a brown limb here and there
• Philadelphus coronaria ‘Aureus’   Didn’t bloom, have yellow leaves, nothing in it’s half shade area.  The neighbor cut down a tree, giving it more light and viola, a whole new plant
• Eucomis  I have three and have yet to see five year plants bloom
• Erysium ‘Apricot Twist’   Love this plant.
• Aster   If they’re under two feet tall, they’re prolific
• Callicarpa japonica is a total winner
• Callicarpa bodinieri ‘Profusion’ looks like a spindly stick.

LANDSCAPE DESIGN

Portland, Or and Vancouver, Washington and surrounding areas

Do you need a landscape design?

Have you tried to figure out how to change your patio so it’s big enough but not too big, has a pleasing shape and fits into the right spot?  You probably want your yard to look more like a photo you’d have on your fridge and less like a “what not to do” picture in a magazine. Perhaps your mental landscape dream has become a mind quagmire  because you can’t figure out where to put the hot tub, water feature, BBQ, play structure or whatever.  A landscape design will help create an enticing, yet sensible outdoor living space to calm our head and your heart.

When you lust for the plants you see in the nursery, or want vivid fall color, or fragrance in your yard, flowers to pick, pretty plants to screen the neighbors but feel overwhelmed by all the plant choices, then a landscape design is just the ticket.  In our designs, each plant is drawn to the size it will become, color and plant choice is fussed over throughly and larger shrubs and trees are placed appropriately for shade, window height and screening.

The Gregg and Ellis Landscape Design team in Portland, Oregon has the  imagination to develop landscape designs to help visitors easilty find front doors (sounds crazy unless you have this kind of house),  come up with ideas to make small yards look and feel bigger, and give large yards a feel of intimacy. Useless sideyards have become lush and desirable , front yards envied by neighbors, and steep slopes have become sportcourts.

 How does our landscape design process work?

We serve clients in the great Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington areas.  If that’s you, this is how we work with you…

1) Initial interview.  We meet on-site for 30 to 45 minutes to discuss the dreams you have for your yard and see the yard. It’s a time to get to know each other a see if we can work together to create your landscape design. You are presented with a proposal for the design at this time.

2) A base map is created.  We measure the house, the property and exisiting plants, walks, drives, walls, etc. Sun and shade patterns, adjacent property issues,  environmental impacts are all noted.

3) Conceptual plans.  With the base map and notes taken during the interview, we start drawing and drawing and drawing, balancing the elements you want with the space you have.  The ideal puts it all together so it looks simple, but has a twist of different.  Once we come up with one great landscape design conceptual, we draw, draw, draw agian to come up with a second, equally mouth watering landscape design conceptual.

4)Meeting.  We all meet to look at the conceptual plans and discuss what you like and what’s not so hot.  Sometimes clients love them both and can’t decide, sometimes a client falls in love with one conceptual immediately, and sometimes we choose bits and pieces of each.

5)  Finish up.  Back in the studio the landscape design is drawn.  All the  hardscape elements like paths, patios, walls, fences and other hard stuff in drawn, and then we put on our thinking caps to figure out the perfect plants for each area and how their colors and texture will all fit together. You end up with a landscape design that you can either self install or hire a contractor to install.

6)Landscape Installer.  Experience has taught us that the best landscape design installations are created when you allow us to facilitate throughout construction and be on site at regular intervals.  We work with excellent landscape contractors and are happy to recommend the perfect one to install your landscape design.  If an issue arises that calls for change, the contractor will call us to problem solve and the lines of communication will stay open.

Low cost, recycled garden, and not too shabby.  That’s my backyard.  The space needed a design with hardscape that allowed access to plant maintenance.  Bricks left by previous owners were used to outline the gravel area.  I set them end to end, thin side down.  Shallowly buried in the gravel is a broken planter bowl that pleaded to stay.  It got filled with a modest collection of rocks from various trips.  The bird bath wasn’t free, but it is recycled.  For a lower cost option, I might use three metal three inch pipes at various heights.  I installed this area fifteen years ago.  It’s the only part of my whole yard that hasn’t changed because I still like it and it gives me bragging rights to a recycled garden