Garden Tour, Sunday June 14, 2009 from Noon until 4 pm.

(Copy of Newsletter sent to my emailing list.)

Newsletter Highlights:

Art, Blogging, Facebook and a Garden Tour

I am really excited about the upcoming Garden Tour sponsored by the Northport Historical Society this coming Sunday, June 14, 2009 from Noon until 4 pm.

I am doing a comprehensive redesign of much of my garden this year and I’m really looking forward to showing and talking about this work-in-progress. I’ve been gardening on this little piece of ground for twenty years and I finally bit the bullet to tackle some real challenging gardening issues that develop as a garden ages.

Since my garden is such an integral part of my life as an Artist, this redesign and rethinking plays itself out over many of my artistic endeavors.

To see my garden and the other six magnificent gardens on this Tour please visit the Northport Historical Society home page to buy your tickets, tour guide and map.

Social Networking

I have joined the millions of people who have embraced Facebook as a means of staying connected with friends from the past, present and future. As an Artist and a Garden Designer, I enjoy showing my Garden and my Art. If I don’t share it in words and pictures with the many friends I have from afar, I will only have me as an audience. All that beauty just for my eyes? Far too selfish for my taste. So please visit me either on Facebook and/or on my Blogs.

For my Blog enthusiasts I’m made some changes.

Since I found that different folks enjoy different subjects, I’ve split my Blog into 2 different entities.

For those who enjoy reading about Art I have

Art Naturally – Musings of My Life as an Artist.

http://www.maryahernartist.com/art-blog

This Blog talks about Art Shows, Influences, Reviews, New Work, Education and more.

————————————————————————-

For my Gardening friends I have this Garden Blog

The Garden-Artist – My Garden, My Art, Where Passions Merge.

This Blog shows where I grow the inspiration for my Art.

It also follows in words and photos the Garden Design projects I’ve created and worked on in the Garden I’ve enjoyed for the last 20 years.

————————————————————————-

I hope to see you in my garden or if you can’t visit, I hope to continue to share with you online.

Keep smiling!

…mary

As an added bonus I will be showing some of my Digital and Traditional Mixed Media Paintings during the Garden Tour. Orders may be placed for pick-up after the Garden Tour ends at 4PM.

If you’d like to call to ask me questions about my work or would like to place an order for pick up please email me with your name and phone #.

Tags: Art, Botanical Art, Creativity, Design, Digital Art, Garden Artist, My Garden

For years I’ve been hauling hoses back and forth across my property. Each year the hoses get heavier and more difficult to move. In the last few years I can count far too many lost additions to my garden for want of water. Not a good way to treat the plants and certainly not a good way to protect the investment I’ve made in my garden.

So we half bit the bullet and had the initial stage of an irrigation system installed. If you live on Long Island and want to know a truly professional company to work with on your irrigation needs, go to Rain Rich located in Greenlawn NY. First we met with Manuel Nava who is the service manager and did a very thorough layout and assessment of our somewhat complicated property. Then Rich Silverman, the owner and founder of Rain Rich met with us to discuss the staging of the project over time.

As he explained, since we have a mature, heavily planted garden, all the digging work would be done by hand in order not to disturb the root systems. The garden, since it was in peak season would be protected and returned as quickly as possible to an undisturbed state. As a skeptical New Yorker I figured, “Oh sure, that’ll happen!”

Well it did! Rich was true to his word. In one day he had a crew come in and hand dig all the trenching for the water and the electrical work. They first moved aside all the wood chips from my woodland walks and then dug the trenches. After the installation was completed, the soil was returned and the wood chips restored. Had I not taken pictures all day during the project, had I been away for the day and missed the frightening havoc wrecked upon my garden I would not have believed that the piping system had been installed. After all was done, it was hard to see that anything or anyone had been tromping around the property.

What an amazing and careful piece of craftsmanship!

Tags: Creativity, Design, Garden Artist, Garden Design, Garden Projects, My Garden

This large vase shaped hosta emerges slightly behind some of my other hostas such as ‘Blue Cadet’. The first photo here was taken on the same day, at the same time as the photo of the emerging Cadet posted previously here.

This slug-resistant architectural specimen is a commanding presence in my perennial garden. Though planted in full sun with absolutely no sunburn effects, I plan to divide it in the fall and put a portion of it in the woodland near the Hamamelis. I think their V-shaped structure will echo each other offering a nice rhythmic change of scale and will tie the two plants together.

I’ve put that project on my to-do list for the fall. The spreadsheet keeps growing. Soon I’ll have to employ a Gertrude Jekyll type labor force to keep up with all my ideas.

I bought this plant in the early 1990′s from a mail-order house that I don’t think still exists. At least, they don’t have a web presence at this point in time. I still remember the excitement I felt when a box with the plants showed up on my deck.

It was my first plant mail order purchase. I’d worked so hard to pick and choose varieties of hostas with different leaf shapes and colors. I was still in my newbie phase of distaining variegated plants so all my purchases were solid greens and blues.

I remember how horrified I was when those straggly roots came out of the package. I felt so robbed. I’d never seen or even heard of bare-rooted plants at that time. Was I ever that young and naïve?

Well, I planted them all and they all lived. But over time many of my plant labels were lost or destroyed or misplaced so I no longer can easily identify some of them. The Krossa Regal is an exception since it has such distinctive charisma.

Tags: Creativity, Design, Garden Artist, Garden Design, My Garden

There are so many stages of hostas that I enjoy seeing. None of them include slugs by the way.

Having a shade garden I naturally grow many different cultivars of hostas. This particular one is named ‘Blue Cadet’ and was given to me years ago by my son Chris for Mother’s Day. Two Cadets and a Phlox subulata, I made out like a bandit!

Each year I try to catch the hostas as they emerge from the ground but each one has its own timetable and the prime time is very short. If you go into the garden in the morning to look at their progress, by the afternoon’s stroll they’ve changed again.

I’m always glad when I take these worms eye view shots with my Sony digital that I have a swivel lens so I no longer have to lie in the mud like the olden days. I can thank my friend Elise for nodding in the right direction when it came time to buy my first digital camera.

I love the textures of the newly emerging hostas and the changes in coloring at the base. I love the unfurling spirals so dramatic from the top view. Each leaf unfolds with its own personality and destiny.

I don’t grown hostas for their flowers but some of them do have quite beautiful and in some cases, fragrant blooms. The Cadet has a nicely formed lavender flower emerging by the end of June. The heart shaped leaves have a blue tinge to them and in my garden is almost slug free. It forms a compact, well-balanced medium sized tidy mound like the rest of the tokudama clan from which it is an offspring.

I think I should transplant some of my Athyrium nipponicum ‘Pictum’ to create a vignette. The scale of the two might get along nicely.

Tags: Creativity, Design, Garden Artist, Garden Design, My Garden

Rhododendrons have such a great place in plant hunter’s history. Tales are still being told and re-enacted as new and old seekers traverse the back roads and non-roads of the Himalayas in search of the newest and rarest of Rhodies. Courage, stamina and leeches always play a big role in these adventures.

Having quite a different perspective of plant hunting, I traverse the hills and dales of Long Island in search of the ever elusive cultivar not yet in my plant collection. Rather than being the intrepid adventurer of far off lands gathering seed, I drive to nurseries and make some of my decisions on whether I can lift the plant into my car. Rhodies can be backbreaking.

Which brings me to the problem of this Rhododendron catawbiense which is an original visitor to the property when I bought it nearly 20 years ago. The foundation plantings were all huge view-concealing Rhodies. Over time I’ve managed to dig up and move all of them except this last remaining specimen. Some of the huge plants I moved myself and in some cases I hired a person with a bobcat. Some survived the transplanting and some didn’t. In retrospect I think the fatalities had to do with watering and drought issues since the rootball of Rhodies are pretty shallow and self-contained.

The way to view Rhododendrons is not to the exclusion of a view of the rest of your garden when sitting at your dining room table. This view is only beautiful for maybe 2 weeks a year. The only other benefit to having this view is that in the winter you can use the leaf curl as a thermometer to determine if the temperature is below freezing. Not worth it I say. So, as I’ve said every year for the last decade or so, I’m going to move that Rhodie to the woods this year.

Tags: Creativity, Design, Garden Artist, Garden Design, My Garden

My Garden and my Art work side by side. Both require me to make aesthetic judgements about composition, scale, color, texture and style. When I’m deciding where to plant the flowers I’ve hauled home on my endless trips to the nurseries it doesn’t seem that much different to me then when I’m deciding how to compose them on a two dimensional surface.

I think about what style I’m looking for, what colors will work together, whether the scale of the placement works for me. I think about the type of flower and texture of the leaves. I make decisions about the 3D composition of the garden much like the 2D composition decisions on a painting.

The garden adds so many additional layers of complexity since the artwork is moving in time with nature, the seasons, the elements, and time. The painting remains caught in a moment.

Capturing that ephemeral moment is so gratifying to me in my Fine Art. I control it, unlike my Garden which is usually out of control.

You can visit this Watercolor painting on my website in The Work or you can buy a print of it in The Store.

Tags: Creativity, Design, Garden Artist, Garden Design, My Garden, Traditional Painting, watercolor

I’ve been working on my garden for a long time. When I had the driveway widened, I had bluestone gravel put down since I like the crunching sound of homecoming when I drive off the paved street into the driveway.

I took the stones, which come up every time I sink a shovel into the garden, and used them to create the edging with the slight curves that welcome you onto the property and foreshadow the style which will be followed throughout the garden. Though I had professionals widen the driveway and initially place the stones I supplied, I moved them and moved them for quite awhile until I got the actual curves visually right.

I moved the stone edging 6 times before I was satisfied with the curves. I did this instead of joining a gym.

I planted spring bulbs and flowers in order to give an early season welcome to the folks driving by and the ones who walk by on their daily exercise circuit. I am pleased how the area filled in since my initial planting in 2001. In fact, it has filled in so fully that I’m able to divide and share the wealth with some other eager gardeners.

I like the way the stones seem to have settled into their niches and look as though they’ve always lived where they are. The soil has slid through the gaps and the ground covers have leapt over the tops, naturalizing their arena of display.

Tags: Creativity, Design, Garden Artist, Garden Design, My Garden

I have designed a rather informal garden with meandering paths using a variety of materials. At the end of, or just around the corner of each path, is some type of focal point, which draws you forward, in eager exploration. Much of my garden is about moving through and around rather than sitting in one location and observing the whole.

The irregular bluestone pavers serve as the path to bring you from the front entrance, around the deck and under the aging mountain laurels. The azaleas to the left are rather dense so you don’t see the deck but instead have the sense that you’re walking through a woodland. The path is narrow and the laurels create a ceiling of sorts until you emerge into the openness of the front garden.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed the ceilings in his houses to give the same effect of enclosure and expansion as you walked from room to room. Variation of space enhances the experience of the individual as they explore the design.

This giant oak serves to keep the garden and deck cool all summer and feed the squirrels all winter with it’s abundance of acorns. In the fall you need to sit on the deck with an umbrella over your head since the acorns come down with such determination.

Tags: Creativity, Design, Garden Artist, Garden Design, My Garden

I am an Artist so color, texture, scale, focal points and other factors drive much of my garden design. My son, Michael, gave this Japanese Maple, Acer palmatum ‘Dissectum’ to me many years ago. Not knowing the eventual size of the tree I placed it right by the deck where I would be able to enjoy the delicate filigreed leaves all summer.

For a few short weeks in May this wonderful, almost stage setting display of cool pink azaleas blooms as a backdrop to set off the wine colored purple leaves of the maple. The azaleas were already on the property in this location when I bought the property in 1989 though they have certainly grown and expanded.

As a ground cover underneath the mounding maple I planted Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’, commonly known as Creeping Jenny. The bright, almost chartreuse yellow offsets and lightens the ground underneath the purple leaves of the maple lightening an otherwise potentially dark corner. Happily both the maple and the nummularia retain their vibrant colors the entire summer.

I would like to take credit for the whimsical placement of the dandelions in front of the maple but alas, that was the creative idea of Mother Nature.

Tags: Creativity, Design, Garden Artist, Garden Design, My Garden

Grape muscari, otherwise known as Grape Hyacinths live close to the ground. For years I never took much notice of them except for the little spots of brilliant purple that bounced so nicely against the bright yellow daffodils they bloomed along with in April.

Then I got down. Hands and knees down.

What a surprise! How intricate the little flowers are. Little bells dance around a central stem forming a small pyramid. This inflorescence changes shape as it ages and can be more and less tightly knit.

The individual purple doesn’t seem to change on each bell but the overall purple varies when viewed at a distance based upon the tightness of the overall flower.

I enjoyed these 4″ bulbs so much in my garden that I bought a bag of them from Costco one year and low and behold the next spring the flowers that bloomed were very different from my originals. They were more blue then purple and had a more rounded then pyramidal over shape.

So I googled Grape Muscari and found a world of cultivars I didn’t previously know existed. That’s one of the things that is so much fun about gardening. You are constantly in a learning mode. You are in for surprises every year and every season. The knowledge and information you acquire just keeps on growing, along with your garden.

So now I know that so far in my garden I have Muscari armeniacum and M. azureaum. Next year I’m sure to have more.

When I made my Digital Mixed Media Painting of my Grape Muscari I was careful to recreate the basal growth of the leaves. It would not have been accurate if I’d placed the leaves higher on the stem. The painting would have looked like a plant Frankenstein. As a Garden Artist, that is not what I’m trying to create.

You can view this Grape Muscari piece in my Store.

Tags: Art, Bulbs, Creativity, Design, Flowers, Garden Artist, Garden Design, My Garden