We're engaged :)

And he had the ring custom handmade too.

Winter coloring

Part of my blog focuses on including readers as we install gardens for our clients. We are Ginkgo Landscape Design, a Pacific Northwest based landscape design and installation company that strives to create more natural, manageable, and sustainable spaces. The designer himself installs the gardens to meet high standards of quality, see more about us at our website.

It's wintertime at our house and while the cold and very wet weather surrounds us, the task of garden design continues. What starts as a blank sheet of paper evolves into a well thought out plan to enhance outdoor spaces and the lives that they touch. Who doesn't love being surrounded by natures beauty?

The current design drawings are complete and will soon be ready to present. It's a big garden, and I will be there to follow along with the progress of this next installation and give you a glimpse into the details and extreme planning, skills and knowledge involved in crafting a garden from start to finish. Feel free to just follow along for the pretty pictures :)

Other landscape design blog posts with pictures:
2008 Wallingford Garden Tour entry

Same Wallingford Garden years later with mature plants during fall color

Redmond Garden design installation
Completion and final photos of Redmond Garden

2009 Broadview Garden demolition of a driveway
Raised garden planter prep
Raised garden planter structure
Raised garden planter completion and stucco coating
Exterior garden entry trellis and privacy fence with storage prelim construction
Garden fence and trellis completion and demo of old fence
Start of deck construction
Construction of brick garden path to connect spaces
How far have we come, a collection of before and construction shots
Irrigation testing
Completion of Broadview Garden installation

Natural Diversity, very cool.

We recently had a period of cold weather, the kind that freezes things. As part of this years freezing process we transferred the goldfish from the little water basin in the courtyard into the large water pond (where their long lost family had been residing) behind the house.

When things were frozen over we found that the pond in the back had one of the few sources of fresh running water. The pump is always on to keep the natural processes going in the pond as it supports itself with little to no help from us. The fish sustain themselves with the plants and insects that end up in the pond.

We usually get visitors such as raccoons, cats, crows, and a bunch of other birds including woodpeckers. When the ice formed this year and only a few places for fresh water were left to choose from there were a bunch of more rare birds that came to enjoy a sip.

The diversity here is so much more impressive than when we lived in the city.

This year a Red Tailed hawk visited us, and it was awesome. I got a quick photo thru our dirty windows.