Esterni Design Partnership Blog

As the winter evenings darken the garden, it’s worth thinking about  lighting, as a way of providing intensity, drama and visual pleasure.

You can highlight the structure of the garden, specimen plants such as grasses and trees or provide notes of colourful, sculptural interest.

Below are a collection of images to brighten up all our evenings, with the promise of interaction and play once the weather and temperatures turn towards spring and summer…

Images are courtesy of CASA&DESIGN

Ulf Nordfjell’s garden style is beautifully illustrated and explained in Fourteen Gardens, a monograph published by Frances Lincoln, with photos by Jerry Harpur.

The introduction, named Inspiration- the desire to create, states that:

I take my inspiration from the urban landscape of Stockholm, bubbling with the energy of everyday life, combined with a longing for the ‘romance’ of the Tuscan landscape and the familiar atmosphere of  the norther Swedish province of Argemanland where I grew up. I love contrasts, and in my work I move freely within these extremes”.

And in another section, Experiences, Nordfjell shares his techniques of planting design scaling down the broad brush plantig effects of his larger works to suit the domestic sphere:

Large drifts of perennials can be emulated in a normal-sized garden by groups of 5-15 plants of each variety. Let the plants appear in different parts of the garden, in different combinations.This creates both drama and calm. Individual plants of the same species can usefully be employed as spot plants in other parts of the garden.

A trademark planting style is reminiscent of meadows and fallow, untouched open land, where grasses, Deschmpsia cespitosa ‘Goldschleyer’, Calamagrostis acutiflora ‘Karl Forster’ and Miscanthus sinensis ‘Poseidon’, are interplanted with giant white foxtail lilies, Eremurus x isabellinus ‘ Obelisk’, or Anemone x hybrida ‘Honorine Jobert’ for late summer/ autumn.

The book is delightful for gardeners, as it clearly tracks and labels the plant species in the photographs,and in this way adds to our enjoyment!

I leave with images of the Chelsea 2009 garden, Best in Show.

images courtesy of the Daily Telegraph and www.gardener.blogg.se

In this post- we’re having a short break in the next couple of weeks – I would like to speculate on connections between the architect Carlo Scarpa’s and the garden architect Fernando Caruncho’s use of water.

This is prompted by an interesting post by an architecture student at Curtin University, Australia, blogging at architecture moves us. I am indebted to him for the use of the images below:

courtesy yang@yangsquare

Here is his quote:

Born as Venetian, water is one of the greatest elements of Carlo Scarpa’s architecture. The cemetery is carved with a series of everflowing canals; sometimes flowing aside the path and sometimes within a pond surrounding the steps and pavillion.

This put me in mind of Caruncho’s equally impressive, but more positive and sundrenched water parterres, large and reflecting to Scarpa’s minimal but exquisitely detailed.

And in turn, there is something about how both these men imagine and build with water which reminds me of Calvino’s meanderings in recollecting the city of venice…

“Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his.” So begins Italo Calvino’s compilation of fragmentary urban images. As Marco tells the khan about Armilla, which “has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be,” the spider-web city of Octavia, and other marvelous burgs, it may be that he is creating them all out of his imagination, or perhaps he is recreating details of his native Venice over and over again, or perhaps he is simply recounting some of the myriad possible forms a city might take.

Quote from review for Invisible Cities, amazon.com

Happy summer break, see you at the beginning of September.

Summer is advancing, we are enjoying the layout and hard work of spring so  we are taking this opportunity to do some reading …and research.

Always seeking to extend the knowledge of planting that underpins our mediterranean, low water usage ethos, we’re tracing the use of plants in antiquity,  understanding the use of these  traditional plants and the impact they might have within a 21st Century design layout.

Claudia Lazzaro’s in depth study of the Italian Renaissance Garden, Yale University Press, 1990, focusses on the planning and historical development of the gardens around Rome and Florence, with an excellent bibliography and a useful Appendix gathered from many textual sources, documents, treatises and inventories of the gardens. Here she subdivides fifteenth and sixteenth century plant material according to its use in the gardens, also mentioning “exotic” plants introduced in the late sixteenth century.

Here is my take on the list.

Herbs and flowers to follow!

Achillea filipendula- yarrow

Apologies for the short break in posting…the summer is lovely and busy for Esterni, and we have been working on plans and planting!

Here is a lovely set of recommended plants, if like most of us, you would like them to survive without too much watering involved.

Most of these will need good drainage, so try to improve the soil by digging in some grit: some of these plants will overwinter if not sitting with their roots in cold, wet, claggy (not technical but gives the picture!) soil conditions..

The images are courtesy of  Better Homes and Gardens: handy names if you go to garden centres, or as a colour and planting planning tool – print them out and mix them in colours and textures that are right for you.

Starting with Achillea, above, I would suggest that it looks a bit old fashioned (my gran used to have it everywhere), but is much better teemed up with grasses, narrow leaved miscanthus or perhaps pennisetums…

Agastache ‘Desert Sunrise’, common name hyssop, below, offers orange blooms that feature pink and lavender tints. It attracts tons of hummingbirds and is a great cut flower, too. I would say again excellent with more recumbent grasses, greener such as anemanthele lessoniana, to the make the most of complementary form and texture.

Agastache 'Desert Sunrise'

Anemanthele lessoniana, courtesy plant-pictures.net

The useful and lovely Russian Sage, Perovskia Atriplicifolia, is a stalwart in the Esterni palette of plants: starting to bloom now in early July  it looks good in SE England until October and after that provides good winter texture. Rabbit and deer proof!

Perovskia atriplicifolia

Salvia 'Rasperry Delight'

The image below is only really for delight, as Salvia pachyphylla, common name Mojave sage, is only truly happy in the arid conditions of the desert, as you can see from the glaucous small leaves….. what looks though!

Mojave sage

Echinops takes a couple of seasons to bulk out, but is reliably perennial in SE England: in my own garden they were planted in February and are now sporting lovely round seedhead/flowers: mine are facing east and are searching for light, so make sure you plant in an open sunny spot.



Echinops ' Blue Globe'

Sedum ‘Frosty Morn’ is one of many varieties of reliable clump forming plants, with a understated variegated leaf slightly succulent in look. This grows to 50 cm and is good for mass plantings with grasses…

Have fun planning and planting combinations.

Sedum 'Frosty Morn'

Garden Shows are happening all over the country, and we have visited West Woodhay, in Berkshire, this weekend.

This show is hosted in the grounds of a lovely house, built in the 17th Century, and is a mixture of show garden ground plant and country charity  fair. The proceeds of this very well attended event are given to local charities and church funds.

On a sunny Saturday, 4th June, there was a really strong community feel: this is an important event in the local social calendar as much as RHS Chelsea is in our national psyche.

The house and gardens were as beautiful as those seen in National Trust properties: in 1947 the house was taken back to the original footprint and style of its architect, a collaborator of Inigo Jones, and retains a really graceful country house look.

The planting around the home is consistent with tradition, and below are some details of the D shaped bed at the front entrance. Further afield, a series of distinct garden “rooms”, the most notable being the walled garden, provide great visual experiences of the associations between roses, shrubs, kitchen garden plants and arboretum-type woodlands.

And so to the show gardens: three in all, they were all on the theme of improving habitats for insects; this is a topical issue, as the National Trust is publicising the plight of the Uk bee population, halved in the last 20 years.

The varied gardens provide a platform for local designers and landscapers, with a school for deaf children providing inspiration and artworks for the one featured below.

Gold medal show garden

If you are lucky enough to have a sea view or garden where there is a lot of salt spray, there are still many opportunities for creating windbreaks, hedges, havens….If you click on the coastal planting category you will see  examples of more dramatic rocky outcrops in Southern Tuscany, where I am from…On a recent trip to the UK south coast, facing the Isle of Wight, we saw fabulous examples of naturalization of salt tolerant plants and succulents, – incredibly -flourishing on a windswept and generally very exposed site.

I think this rugosa rose amongst Phragmites australis reeds is really poetic, and shows how this tough plant withstands high levels of salt in air and the swampy ground…

Wild rosa rugosa in the midst of Phragmites australis

Succulents need very free draining slopes such as these to cope with cold wet winters: below a lovely example of texture, where the large green angled leaves form a carpet, mixing with grey saltbush and wild grasses.

Succulent plants and atriplex

armeria maritima, atriplex species, grasses

Armria maritima, or sea thrift, is a remarkably adaptable plant, which in some european cities such as Paris and Berlin has recently been used to help with green mats and high tolerance planting schemes in urban greening projects. It survives in poor soils and being rolled over by trams!

Paris tramways- image:urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com

Armeria maritima

Armeria and Saltbush, atriplex species

The question of the positive impact of  building and landscaping practices with relation to renewables is generally discussed when talking about buildings, architecture and energy technology. It has been less of a concern when planning and designing gardens.

This post looks at the ideas explored by Howard Liddell, of Gaia Architects, Edinburgh in his book Eco-Minimalism, RIBA Publishing, in particular Shelter Planting and biodiversity.

Courtesy of amazon.com

Liddell writes that ” many projects experience , during late cost cutting, the removal of landscape elements once they get towards the end of the site operations. Suddenly, trees and bushes do not get planted because they are seen as “amenity planting”, that is, non essential decoration.

However, vegetation (or the lack of it) can have a very significant impact ….. on the energy performance of a building.

Trees and shrubs can shelter buildings from prevailing and chilling winds, with a resultant reduction in heat loss as a benefit.

…of course these items can have amenity value – but with a practical (and calculable) economic benefit, they are less likely to be omitted during belt-tightening  cost exercises.”

Shelter planting, courtesy http://sreekumarcn.wordpress.com

On biodiversity,  a simple rule and challenge: ” The city of Berlin has a 50 per cent rule for new developments, whereby half the built-up footprint of any site has to be biodiverse – it can be “greenscape’ (gardens, etc) or ‘bluescape” (ponds, etc).”

These proposals can be applied to all of our planning, design and execution of exterior spaces: they remind me of one of the most successful, livable, recent UK developments, Accordia in Cambridge.

Fabulous.

Accordia: courtesy grant-associates.uk.com