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

Entertaining deck gets it's structure

More progress photos from our landscape design installation. It's what we do, see more at the Ginkgo Landscape Design website!

One of the major elements missing in many gardens is the same that makes it appealing. I don't know about you but when I enter a garden space, I want to feel surrounded by it. Having tall structures (be it plants or built elements) really helps create this effect. Soon it will be wired for lighting to enable the clients to entertain easily in the evenings and get around safely after the sun has gone down.

For the time being the deck platform is being left open to allow for the electricity to be wired easily. Ultimately it will be topped off with Trex, a composite material created from wood and plastic fibers. I actually quite like it since it lasts longer than any wood surface ever could, doesn't splinter, has a nice feel on the feet (I love barefoot gardens!) and is easy to work with. As a bonus it is made with recovered material that used to be tossed into landfills. It's a little heavy and bendy (think 20 foot long 50 lb wet noodle) before it's set where it needs to be, but that helps in the long run anyway. Plus, it saves us from using long lengths of trees when we can.

I cannot wait to get the decking down and see the pool of light created from the deck lights and the pendant lights hanging from the arbor!

We have yet to add the seating surround beneath the arbor as well. It's in the works!

Happy Turkey Day!

Ready for Turkey? Okay, so those are chickens. I don't have a picture of turkeys.

These are my parents "girls". They live in Seattle and bring us some beautiful blue, green and tan eggs every so often in exchange for our leftover egg carton containers. As an added bonus about once a year we go and get some garbage cans full of wonderful handmade (clawmade?) chicken compost for our garden. It's a wonderfully green little cycle we have going.

A fresh egg has some fantastic properties that those store bought eggs don't have. Despite us buying the naturally humane eggs (little tip: when it comes to eggs, look for the word humane). The girls' eggs still knock their socks off though when it comes to freshness, nutritional qualities, color, texture and holding their yolks and shape in a pan. As a bonus, they are lap chickens. (yup, lap chickens). Truly happy, free range, garden picken chickens (not at all like those "happy cows" they talk about from California). I'm all for you getting a chicken or two.

Plus, they are cute! Look at those little suspicious faces!

So, I currently have about 28 eggs due to the last visit to the "city chickens" and need to make something.... lemon meringue pie, angel food cake....

What uses lots of eggs?