IT’S NOT A DARK, DRY BOOK!

Apparently, figuring out what to plant in an area of your garden that has shade, but no moisture, is a problem that stymies gardeners everywhere. We have been focused like a laser beam on our lack of water and how to logically use what little we have and Planting the Dry Shade Garden: the Best Spot for the Toughest Spot in Your Garden, by Graham Rice, Timber press 2011, provides practical ideas and solutions for these problem places in the garden.

Read through and find out how to prune to allow more light and how to work with the soil to condition it to hold more water. Mr. Rice offers 130 plants that do fine with reduced light and moisture levels —long-blooming woodland gems like epimediums and hellebores, and even lush foliage plants like evergreen ferns and bear’s breeches (my personal favorite, of course). Shrubs, climbers, perennials, ground covers, bulbs, annuals, and perennials — an entire palette to help you transform challenging spaces into rich, rewarding gardens.

The book’s 125 beautiful color plates are mainly the work of award-winning photographer Judy White, so not only is the book packed with good advice, but the pictures reveal the beauty of the plants you can grow in the garden’s heart of darkness.

Photo Credit: Bear’s Breeches, Acanthus Mollis by Kristen Paulus is licensed under C.C. 2.0

ESSENCE OF SUMMER SALAD

You’re going to need something else from your garden to go with your cocktail, by the way.  Gardens are so wonderful…

• 1 lb tomatoes, large,  small and tiny, yellow, pink, red, black, green.  Large ones cut in quarters or eighths.
• 1 med. cucumber, sliced or cubed, peeled or not
• Pickled onions from following recipe, drained
• 1 pkg good feta, crumbled
• 2 c. cubed, perfect watermelon
• ¼ c. chopped mint
• ½ c. whole basil leaves

Toss all ingredients except feta together, pour on ½ the dressing, toss then taste.  Add more if you wish.  Strew feta.  Eat.

Dressing

• ¼ c. rice vinegar
• 2 T fresh lime juice
• ¾ c. peanut oil
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 t sugar

SHAKE IT UP OR WHISK IT UP.

Pickled Red Onions

• 1 sm. Red onion, halved then sliced thin
• 1 c white wine vinegar
• ¼ c sugar
• Pinch of red pepper flakes

Bring vinegar and sugar to simmer until sugar dissolves, pour over onions and add red pepper flakes, let it sit at least 30 minutes then refrigerate and cool.  These will last in your refrigerator forever.

Image Credit: Watermelon Salad by Eric Petruno is licensed under C.C. 2.0

GARDEN COCKTAILS: A METHOD FOR ENJOYING MORE SUMMER

If you were smart and planted watermelon vines in your garden, your summer is about to become even more exceptional.  A farmers’ market is another way to fulfill your summer watermelon dreams, but either way this remarkable summer drink invented by our daughter, Daisy Ryan, will be a great accompaniment to evening garden-gazing.  Do not hesitate to substitute vodka or gin.

WATERMELON TOSS

1 ½ oz blanco tequila
2 oz fresh watermelon juice
1 oz fresh lime juice
½ oz simple syrup
Pinch cayenne
1 tsp pickling liquid from watermelon pickles

Garnish: watermelon pickle
Put all ingredients (except the watermelon pickle) in a cocktail shaker with crushed ice, shake, and pour over ice in a double rocks glass and garnish with the watermelon pickle on a pick.  Go outside, sit down and drink it while the sun turns the sky the same color as your drink.

Watermelon Juice

Cut rind off watermelon, including ¼” of the pink flesh, put aside.  Juice ½ of the melon at a time in a blender until it turns to juice and strain it.  Add simple syrup and salt to taste

Watermelon Pickles

Reserved watermelon rind
3 c champagne vinegar
2 c water
1 c sugar
½ c pink peppercorns
¼ t cayenne pepper

Using a sharp knife, cut the rind into lengthwise strips including ¼” of an inch of the pink flesh. Cut into ½” squares.  Heat the vinegar, water, sugar, pink peppercorns and cayenne.  When it comes to a boil,  pour over the rind, let it cool then refrigerate for 24 hours.

Art in the Garden: Henry Null of The Romantic Garden

Long time Eye of the Day customer Henry Null of The Romantic Garden Company recently installed three Italian terracotta Sako balls in a Santa Barbara garden. The three globes, provided by Eye of the Day,  were custom colored by the company’s Service department. Null describes the project: “The Italian terra cotta Sako balls were rolled into place at the terraced garden we built in Santa Barbara. We had Eye of the Day epoxy-paint them to my color instructions (I wanted something close to the sky color to represent the universe.) But I also wanted the globes to break up the linear pattern of the texanum hedge. At the same time I wanted the globes to repeat a pattern of 3’s that I was constructing vertically with plants of Thuja occidentalis. Sound complicated? Well, it was.

One further general point about artistic objects in the garden:  to be effective, they should be distinctive or displayed in some distinctive way.  It should be the customer’s option, as a matter of personal taste.”

On another garden from years before, Null relates an example of using unique objects in the garden: “Years ago I worked for the late Margaret Mallory on Ortega Ridge. She was an art collector and in her garden a five-foot pedestal supported a beat-up metal gyroscope which was maybe 18 inches in diameter. I asked her about it and her reply was, “that gyroscope was on the last British gunship in Palestine.’ You don’t get much more distinctive than that. We don’t have any spare, war-weary gyroscopes hanging around, but we have a selection of odd garden ornaments that can be used for focal points.”

Null’s recent venture The Avant Garden Company “offers a unique perspective to gardening by providing a philosophical and metaphorical approach. Each aspect of the garden is strategically designed and formed to create a celestial garden piece.”

To view more of Henry’s work, please visit The Avant Garden Company and The Romantic Garden Company.

Custom finishes are a specialty at Eye of the Day. Please visit our website for more information.

Brent’s Rogue Garden

People often ask me what my garden at home looks like.  I laugh and reply it looks like a psychedelic trip to a botanic garden gone rogue with cracked pots.  Then they laugh, not sure if I’m being honest or just outrageous, and they’re right, my garden is outrageous and honestly, it is a trip. While we sell volumes of the best and most authentic pottery and garden statuary around, we get our share of damage. Handling heavy pottery, moving it, merchandising it and delivering it involves some mistakes. So I have plenty of opportunities to take beautiful Italian terracotta pots home, albeit with chips and cracks (we epoxy the cracks so they will last just as long as the first quality ones). The problem is what to do with over twenty years’ worth of damaged pots.

Welcome to my test kitchen where I try different plants in different pots to learn what works. Just like a cook’s test kitchen, I have learned what works when potting different plants, hence my belief that the first thing to growing healthy container plants is the drainage.  No matter the plant, it must have freedom to drain continuously.

Second is the soil. If you match the plant’s root system with the proper soil mixture you will have a healthy plant growing in a beautiful pot. I am a strong believer that perlite added to any soil mixture helps to grow healthy container plants.  Why do I spend more on organic soil amendments? Because I’ve learned that chemical fertilizers work fast and make container plants grow and look healthy initially, but down the road, your container plants will suffer the toxicity of chemical salts which build up in the soil. Using products like “SuperThrive”, soap, Epsom salts, wood ash from my pizza oven and most of all, composted soils amendments from the great composter I got from .

I have pots everywhere, hence the “garden gone rogue.” I have created patio areas on all sides of my house to accommodate all of the pots and plants. If a planted pot at Eye of the Day begins to look shabby, I’ll will take the plant home and perform triage by restarting it in an appropriate looking pot. I learn from doing this what looks good from a design point of view and I can share what works in containers that clients may not have considered before. I have been able to grow and pair plants with our products to help market Eye of the Day while making my “test garden” a realistic place to prove that container gardening is the best way to create “Paradise at Home”!

Blueprint: Montecito Landscape Refine a Santa Barbara Garden

Chris Cullen, the founder of Montecito Landscape, began landscaping at the tender age of eight at his family home in Los Altos Hills, CA. He got his contractor’s license in 1970 and moved to Montecito and named his company after his new home town.

Since then, Montecito Landscape has specialized in design and installation of residential landscapes. Chris has created some of the mainstays of the “Montecito Landscape” that are part of the image we see when we think of Montecito. For example, he was responsible for the creation of original landscaping at Ennisbrook (on Sheffield Road) adding the double line of Stone Pines that line the walking paths through the west end and choosing the specific type of trees planted at the entrance to match the plaster wall of the original construction (the plaster color was later changed, but the trees still remain).

One of Chris and Lisa’s newest projects is a Santa Barbara home. The property had “good bones” but needed refinement. There were a number of unattractive hedges that blocked the beautiful vistas and made it feel hemmed in. The home is a work of art in itself with its simple, modern design and the way it is nestled into the property gives it the sense that it is a work of nature. Their job was to enhance the organic feel of the house and property while creating some space both visually and literally.

Consistent with Montecito Landscape’s garden design philosophy, they first isolate, and then focus on bringing out the best features of a property. Their feeling that each location is as different as each client helps them to approach every new project “intending to help the client see and appreciate their assets and then work with them to discover what it is they need and want.” It then becomes a focus to fulfill the clients’ dreams in such a way that uses their home and property’s intrinsic beauty in unexpected and surprising ways. The goal is to use the entire property in the “picture”, creating “negative space” in a three dimensional design.

When determining exactly what needed to be done when working on this project and how to fulfill what the client wanted, the Cullens knew that something about the landscape “wasn’t quite right” but they couldn’t identify it themselves. “In fact most of our clients know what they want and know when something works and when it doesn’t. What they don’t know is how fix it. That’s where we come in. This garden already had a drought tolerant theme, however many of the plantings were just not working; they were kind of ‘clunky.’ We suggested the addition of brightness and light to the scene, so that is what we did. With the addition of Euphorbia, Mexican Sage, Nepeta, Santa Barbara Daisy, Santolina and others we were able to add color and softness. When there is a lot of hardscape, as there was in this landscape, we wanted some softness as a counterpoint.”

When it came to adding garden décor “the client knew they wanted a water feature as a focal point and so of course, we sent them to Eye of the Day. With Brent’s help they found exactly what they were looking for. It then became our job to incorporate the fountain into the landscape in such a way that it seemed as if it were always there. This is our goal, then, when we utilize garden décor, fountains, sculpture, etc. it should feel as it belongs.”

For Chris and Lisa, “It is always a pleasure to create a beautiful ‘picture’ in the landscape; it’s why we do what we do. We live for the creation of aesthetics. The pleasure comes in working with the client to give them a garden they will use and enjoy for years to come. This project was no different. We loved collaborating with this particular couple because they were very involved and they love to work in their garden.”

See more of Chris and Lisa Cullen’s work at Montecito Landscape.