DryStoneGarden

Just after Gothenburg, I rode past Peter Korn’s old garden and checked it out. Peter Korn is a horticulturalist with some garden-world reknown for using thick top-dressings of sand in his plantings. I’d read about him and his sand technique here and here and maybe a couple other places, and I’d listened to a couple of talks on youtube; I like this one he gave for a Beth Chatto Gardens conference, but the others are good too. The sand thing is interesting. I recommend listening to his talk to really learn about it.

The garden I visited is his first garden, the one where he developed his sand technique. He left it some years ago and moved to southern Sweden; it’s now tended by another professional gardener, Max, who was kind enough to let me visit. Maybe I’d have have done better to visit the garden during its heyday or maybe I’d do better to visit the new garden, but I liked seeing this one in its post-creator phase. It’s nicely maintained by Max with a bit of a loose grip, a lovely expansive space, fun to explore, charming.

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In Sweden I also visited the Gothenburg Botanic Garden. Another great garden, it’s the best thing in Gothenburg, and one of the best botanic gardens in Europe. It has a number of nice sections, most are naturalistic, it’s rocky and hilly, and does a great job incorporating the plants with the terrain. Read the rest of this entry »

In Europe I saw a new Piet Oudolf garden. It’s at a newish design museum, Vandalorum, outside a small town in Sweden. It’s great. The garden is pretty much the showcase of the museum — I only know about the museum because of it — and it was unquestionably the highlight for me. ‘Artistic museum planting’ has become quite a niche for Oudolf, he must have done close to a dozen at this point, and I don’t know of any other landscape designer or architect who has done anything like that. I’ve seen a half dozen gardens by him at this point and they’re always worth the effort to see. Really glad my route took me past this one.

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I rode a bicycle in Scandinavia again this summer, a mostly coastal loop around the sea. Starting in Denmark, I rode up the east coast of Jutland, ferried to Norway and rode a section of the southern coast, then took another ferry and rode through Sweden to get back to Copenhagen. It was all really nice. I rode a lot of separated bike paths, ate a lot of salmon and rye bread, and camped in a lot of lovely spots. I swam from rocks, docks, and platforms. I saw a lot of wheat fields and a surprising amount of California native Phacelia blooming as a cover crop. I picked a gluttonous amount of bilberries. These are my sketches. I brought along watercolors this year instead of colored pencils.

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I was back doing a bit of work in a garden from a couple years ago, took some photos.

The front included a lawn conversion.

I found a watercolor rendering in the ten year old real estate listing. I respect the watercolor technique but it’s a dated vision of suburbia. No one plays on a front yard lawn anymore, and guests should have a path to the front door that doesn’t squeeze them past the cars in the driveway.

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Photos of another lawn conversion. Olive trees, Lavender, Grevillea, Manzanita, Westringia, succulents, California version of a mediterranean palette.

The photo above is in the fourth year.

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