My Gardens

The Designer's New Digs

Finally, The Garden Consultant is a home owner! We moved in here in July of 2004 and have spent most of this past year working on the inside of the house. I think these people just lived here and that was about it from the work we had to do to update the interior. We're through most of the big stuff now (like carpets instead of plywood for flooring in the bedrooms and replacing the kitchen floor that had been stapled down...Oy!) When we moved, I took everything I planted from the Coast Guard house. Yes, everything. The rule was leave the house as you found it and there was not a plant in the beds around the house when we moved in and when we moved out. So, the fall of 2004 I just threw everyone in the front of the new house and crafted a new style of landscape design...refugee gardening! I did put some thought into plant placement in case I didn't get to redoing the design so it didn't look like a complete train wreck. This is going to be a huge work in progress over the next several years with equally big changes. Click here for the slide show of the different photos I've taken. I know there are quite a few clients who are dying to see what I do on my own property.

I am designing my house in an unconventional way by doing it backwards. I have a ton of plant material I need to find homes for and I don't have any shrubs or woody plants that I needed to add to the gardens so they may have some structure in the winter time. I have drawn out the house and am figuring out the size of the plants I will place little by little. Once I know for sure what I want to plant, I put it into ink in the design. I know in the front the colors will be purple, blue, mauve, pinks, etc. So far, I have officially planted: Purple Leaf Sand Cherry, Globe Thistle, Japanese Holly 'Green Luster', relocated a Hydrangea 'Nikko Blue', Rhododendron 'Purple Gem, Rhododendron 'Purple Passion', Climbing Hydrangea, Hosta 'Blue Angel, Phlox 'Nora Leigh', Eupatorium 'Chocolate', Hibiscus 'Disco White', Sargent's Crabapple, and Hydrangea 'Alpengluhen'. That walkway and the shape of the beds will most definitely be changing. But, like I said, this will be a long, slow work in progress.

Eric installed an incredible water garden we've nicknamed "Lake Larson" in the fall of 2006. It's about 6,000 gallons with a waterfall, stream, and two ponds. I've added photos of this project in the slide show. I can't take much credit for the design of the water garden itself as Eric designed the whole thing. He's leaving the surrounding plant material design up to me and I started to tackle that the spring of 2007. We also acquired a bunch of bluestone which will become the new front walkway and back patio soon as we are able to start work outside. The fall of 2008, Eric began the rebuild of the deck which tied into the bluestone patio. He designed it in a way that the wide stairs framed the water features. I have held off on a lot of plantings because I really needed to see where the deck was going to go and how the flow of the back yard was going to change. I have been doing more updates on the house and gardens on the Gardening Blog I have in the button menu. Please feel free to check that out!

Cristin M. Larson, The Garden Consultant