ReportWire

Tag: Nepeta

  • Coastal Garden in the Hamptons: Hollander Design’s Tips for a Deer-Resistant Beachside Landscape

    [ad_1]

    It’s not every day that a client asks their landscape designer to come look at a barge they’re thinking of buying, but that was exactly the call the team at Hollander Design Landscape Architects received a few years back. The property in question was a house that had been built on a torpedo barge in the 1950s and docked on a harbor in the Hamptons ever since. The bulkhead was in need of a total rebuild—and the landscape would need restoration afterwards. Hollander Design was up for the challenge.

    The clients ended up buying the house, and after a marine construction contractor rebuilt the bulkhead, walks, and the docks, Hollander Design returned to conduct major revegetation efforts. The clients were looking for a low-maintenance landscape, as they wanted the home to be a retreat from their busy, working lives. They desired a beautiful landscape, but they didn’t want a garden that would compete with the breathtaking setting. The trick would be to create the illusion that the barge and bulkhead were knitted into the marsh around them.

    “Everything that’s around the house is very wet and boggy, but their property happens to be a high, dry spot because it’s up on that bulkhead,” explains landscape designer Melissa Reavis, the director of Hollander Design’s residential studio. “So we chose plants that were appropriate to that area but completely different from the immediate area that it sits in.” Think beach grass instead of the nearby rushes, plus, beach plums and northern bayberry that are found in nearby dunes.

    In addition to its unique barge setting, the property experiences intense deer pressure (a challenge that many gardeners can relate to). Furthermore, the site is exposed to sea salt and increasingly frequent storm surges. “We were left with a pretty limited palette,” says Reavis, but she focussed on what she calls “bulletproof plants for a coastal environment” to create a garden that is almost as magical as its setting. Here, her formula for getting it right.

    Photography by Neil Landino, courtesy of Hollander Design Landscape Architects.

    The soil comes first.

    Above: From overheard, you can see how the barge is tucked in behind the rebuilt bulkhead.

    After the bulkhead rebuild, Hollander Design needed to replace a lot of the soil, which Reavis explains had been backfilled with whatever was on hand back in the 1950s. The new soil is mostly clean-draining sand, so that nutrients won’t leach into the water. “Everything that was replanted in that area is planted almost into direct sand and we don’t add any additional nutrient loads to the soil, to ensure that we weren’t affecting water quality around it,” Reavis explains.

    Design for minimal maintenance.

    Above: Instead of a lawn, the main open area of the property is one over-sized perennial bed. The gravel path is used to bring kayaks and paddleboards down to the dock.
    Above: Instead of a lawn, the main open area of the property is one over-sized perennial bed. The gravel path is used to bring kayaks and paddleboards down to the dock.

    To fulfill the owners desire for a low-maintenance landscape, Reavis eschewed turf lawn and instead planted native and climate-adapted perennials. Hollander Design’s maintenance team does a hard cutback in May to keep the plants from outgrowing their homes, which also ensures a long bloom, but otherwise the maintenance is minimal—and free of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers.

    Mimic the nearby aesthetic.

    Above: The American beachgrass planted on the bulkhead mimics the look of the native rushes in the surrounding wetlands, so your eye sees an almost uninterrupted swath of textured green.
    Above: The American beachgrass planted on the bulkhead mimics the look of the native rushes in the surrounding wetlands, so your eye sees an almost uninterrupted swath of textured green.

    “You feel completely enveloped by the harbor here,” says Reavis. “The landscape’s job here is just to make it feel as knitted into this magical world as possible.” To complement the landscape, Reavis pulled in not only native plants, but also climate-adapted ones that feel like they’re in the same world as the natural landscape beyond. “They’re all flowing grasses and flowing perennials, and so nothing feels out of place with the more native natural habitat,” says Reavis.

    Mints for the win.

    Russian sage
    Above: Russian sage ‘Denim n Lace’ is reliably deer- and rabbit-resistant.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • The Best Low-Maintenance Flowers for Your Garden: 8 Sun-Loving Favorites

    The Best Low-Maintenance Flowers for Your Garden: 8 Sun-Loving Favorites

    [ad_1]

    In general, flowers are probably less important than form. Some have a fleeting season, perhaps blooming just once before doing nothing for the remaining eleven months of the year (I’m looking at you Iris germanica). Others have an important support act, providing an abundance of flowers or beautiful foliage for the majority of the year.

    Yes, I want plants that are beautiful (and that work well together), but I also want them not to be too much trouble. So increasingly, as I’ve realized that you can never really fight the existing conditions in your garden, I just plant more of these low-work plants. If something does well, and needs little to no TLC then it’s very welcome in my garden.

    Earlier this week I read a quote from the late plantswoman Beth Chatto, about her much-copied borders in Essex, England. “The point I need to stress,” she wrote in her ground-breaking book Drought-Resistant Planting, “is that copies of my gravel garden will not necessarily be successful or suitable if the principles underlying my planting designs are not understood. When visitors to my garden tell me they have attempted to make a gravel garden but the plants don’t look or behave as they do in mine, they wonder what they have done wrong. I ask ‘What type of soil do you have?’, ‘Very good,’ they reply. The amount of rainfall? ‘Twice what we have here,’ they tell me. I laugh and tell them if I had good soil and adequate rainfall I would not be growing drought-resistant plants.”

    Favorite plants should always come with this disclaimer—what works in one garden may not work in another, because the soil, moisture, and conditions will vary immeasurably. Some of my most cherished plants will flourish in all conditions, but some do particularly well because they are especially suited to my garden, which has very free-draining sandy soil and is largely in full sun.

    With that in mind, here are the plants I would not be without.

    Photography by Clare Coulson.

    Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’

    Above: I love almost all salvias and they all tend to love my garden, too, so long as I put them in a sunny spot. ‘Caradonna’ has the most intense deep purple flowers that will be smothered in bees for weeks on end. Once it’s finished flowering I cut it back and it will re-flower again, although less prolifically. This is a very upright salvia and looks best softened with hazy grasses or more unruly perennials such as Knautia macedonica.

    Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’

    Above: Arguably the most prolific, no-trouble plant I grow. Catmint springs into life early in the season, often flowering well before any other herbaceous perennial. It’s healthy, seems to cope with almost any conditions, and is particularly beloved by bees that smother this plant while it’s in flower. As soon as it starts to go over, I cut the whole plant back to a few inches from the base and it will usually regrow and flower again within a few weeks. It’s also very easy to divide and replant and looks fabulous flopping over a pathway.

    Verbena bonariensis

    Above: All the verbenas work really well in my garden, but the tall, billowing Verbena bonariensis is a brilliant border plant, emerging in mid-summer amongst other perennials and grasses. It’s a favorite of many butterflies and has an extremely long season. It looks wonderful though the autumn and winter as it holds its structure, but it will also happily self-seed so I am normally selective in how much of it I leave standing. Finches love to eat the seeds in winter, too.

    Stipa tenuissima

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Silver Sands Motel: How Melissa Reavis of Hollander Design Redesigned its Landscape

    Silver Sands Motel: How Melissa Reavis of Hollander Design Redesigned its Landscape

    [ad_1]

    The Silver Sands Motel in Greenport, NY, opened in 1957 as a laidback motel that felt more like a beach home away from home than a fussy hotel. When the property changed hands a few years back, the new owners were keen to keep the family-oriented spirit of this beloved destination alive. “They wanted to honor what Silver Sands had been and try to retain that sense of nostalgia, while still creating a modern, comfortable destination for new travelers,” says Melissa Reavis, a landscape designer at Hollander Design, the landscape design firm tasked with updating the surrounding property.

    Sitting at the end of a wooded road, Silver Sands is sited on the Peconic Bay along 1,400 feet of sandy beach. Having worked on many residential properties throughout the East End and the North Fork, Reavis and her team were well aware of the challenges of the coastal wetland location. “Out in Long Island there’s extreme deer pressure,” she says. “And this site had dense clay soil, a high water table, and salt winds.”

    The Hollander Design team developed a new master plan that kept much of the original landscape’s spirit, but wove in more garden beds, planted predominantly with a native plant palette that supports local birds and pollinators. “We tried to help highlight that unique ecosystem that surrounds Silver Sands,” says Reavis. “And because we were so careful about what we brought in and that were reflective of the natural environment, the property is still fully maintained without the use of any chemicals, and minimal irrigation and intervention.”

    Here are 10 lessons everyday gardeners can take away from this inspiring project:

    Photography by John Musnicki, courtesy of Hollander Design.

    1. Start with a site inventory.

    Above: In the research and planning stage, Reavis made sure to check out what plants were thriving on the property—and just beyond.

    “We started out just by taking stock of what was there and what actually was surviving,” says Reavis. “In such a tough environment, you have to really go in with no ego and say, ‘What is already doing well?’ because that’s going to help ensure that whatever we plant can also survive.” Gardeners could do the same on their own property (and even on nearby yards and parks). 

    2. Assess the water table.

    A melange of grasses.
    Above: A melange of grasses.

    While gardeners often get their soil tested to learn its composition, Reavis says they’re often unaware of where they sit on the groundwater table. “As long as you know water isn’t within the first 24 inches of soil, then you have a dry site,” says Reavis. “At Silver Sands if we dug even 12 inches down, the holes would start to fill with water.” To determine where your land sits in relation to the water table, simply dig a hole. Because of the high water table, Reavis was inspired to plant rushes, which are accustomed to wet roots, in the perennial beds. “They’re a really beautiful native type of grass that I had never planted in a garden environment before, so it’s actually helped expand my own palette,” she adds.

    3. Save the trees.

    None of the mature oak and pine trees were cut down.
    Above: None of the mature oak and pine trees were cut down.

    With the exception of some dwarf spruces in the courtyard, Hollander Design left all the mature trees on the site. “I didn’t have to cut down a tree, which is almost unheard of for new construction,” says Reavis. “You walk onto that space and it feels like it’s been there forever because the trees are still there.” If you’re building new or renovating, work with your landscaper to preserve as many trees as you can.

    4. Strengthen an indoor-outdoor connection.

    Planters right outside some guest room doors.
    Above: Planters right outside some guest room doors.

    The hotel owners knew that the flow from the interior to exterior was key, so they shared the interior design plans with Hollander Design from the very start. “The room’s colors dictated some of the garden palette, especially within the private gardens,” says Reavis. “For instance, we would take some of the peaches that we were finding in the interiors and we would select an ‘Autumn Joy’ sedum because we knew it would come up in that same peach.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link