Tag Archives: SEATTLE GARDENS
A Windermere Garden
Designed for art-loving clients with young children, this landscape in Seattle’s Windermere neighborhood features a broad lawn overlooking Lake Washington and the Cascade Mountains, surrounded by colorful perennial borders. After demolishing a covered swimming pool, the site was filled several feet, minimizing the number of steps down from the main floor to the garden level. A custom, linear fire feature graces a bluestone terrace outside the living room, overlooking the lawn. To the right of the fire feature, a custom children’s play area was installed over an artificial-turf safety zone. To the left, the roof of the pool equipment room was re-purposed as an outdoor dining terrace and a sculpture garden featuring three totem poles by acclaimed Seattle artist, Steve Jensen.
In the front, a new auto-court of pre-cast permeable pavers was installed, and a curving bluestone walk leads through a circular lawn to the front door. Care was taken to preserve several towering conifers and a number of large rhododendrons were moved to flank the new driveway. Low, shade-tolerant plantings border the lawn, welcoming the owners and visitors alike.
Photos by Ben Benschneider and Brooks Kolb
Starting a Garden on a Budget Can Be the Best Retirement Activity
By Carrie Spencer, Garden Writer,
for Seattle Landscape Architect Brooks Kolb
carrie@thespencersadventures.net
Seniors with an inordinate amount of free time after retirement are wise to spend it in productive and enriching pursuits. Undoubtedly high on the list of such worthwhile activities is gardening, as its well-known benefits are varied and plenty. Research shows that it’s a hobby that can help you live to be 100, as it offers you regular physical activity and copious amounts of outdoor time. Moreover, it’s wonderful for your mental and emotional well-being.
Your garden also has the potential to yield fresh food that can contribute to keeping your diet a healthy one. The best part is, it’s an activity that’s quite cost-effective and may even save you money in the long run. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at how you can start.
Do Your Research
No doubt, your road to a green thumb starts with due diligence since gardening has a great many nuances you’ll need to learn from the ground up (pun intended). These are largely reliant on where you are geographically speaking, what kind of garden you want to grow, and even how much time and effort you can put into it.
Luckily, there’s plenty of guidance — often for absolutely no cost — that you can find after a quick search online. For instance, if you live in a city, you may want to find out how you can grow a small garden despite space constraints, which, in turn, can give you that much-needed connection to nature. Or, if you’re looking to grow a vegetable patch, research will help you determine which vegetables are best in your area as this will ensure that you don’t waste money on the wrong seeds and time on the wrong methods.
Stock Up on Supplies
Of course, you’ll need to invest in the appropriate garden tools to help you with your initiative. This will run the gamut from trowels to shears, from gloves to wheelbarrows. It also goes without saying that you’ll need to know how each one is used in your gardening efforts.
Now, you can easily buy the gardening tools that you need, even when you’re working on a budget. Ditto with supplies like fertilizer, mulch, etc. When you’re pinching pennies, it’s definitely a great idea to buy gardening implements from retailers like Target, which often has deals on already-discounted items. You can even save more when you take the time to search online for promo codes and cashback offers that you use for additional discounts.
Starting a garden will be hard work and will require an investment, but the fact is, the return on investment you can expect can’t be beaten. At the very least, growing your own food will ultimately translate to savings toward your food budget, while you get to ward off unwanted medical bills as you eat and stay healthy. More than enough reasons to get your garden started, yes?
Are you a Seattle-area homeowner looking for sustainable garden design services? Connect with Seattle Landscape Architect Brooks Kolb! Call 206-324-0858 for a free consultation.
Photo via Pexels.com
What’s Blooming in January?
by Seattle Landscape Architect Brooks Kolb
When we think of a garden bursting into bloom, we automatically think of spring, and in the Pacific Northwest that means March and April. However, that doesn’t mean that no plants are blooming in January and February, when the garden still appears to be mostly dead. In addition to the lovely purple and yellow Crocus bulbs that everybody is familiar with, not to mention the Primroses and Cyclomens found in every supermarket’s flower shop, here are some fantastic selections for winter blooms, and three of them are fragrant to boot!
Sasanqua Camellias are a species of winter-blooming Camellias, with many named varieties. They come in white (‘Setsugekka’ and ‘White Doves’), light pink (‘Apple Blossom’); dark pink (‘Tanya’) and red (‘Yuletide.’) If you’re lucky, the latter selection will bloom at Christmas-time.
Witch Hazels (Hammamelis) are a large species of small trees or tree-form shrubs with fragrant, confetti-like flowers that twist all the way along their up-reaching branches in shades of bright yellow to deep orange. And they’re fragrant besides.
Tall Sarcococca, called “Sweet Box,” is a delicate low hedge of glossy green leaves featuring white to cream-colored flowers partly concealed in the leaf joints. These perfume the air with a vanilla-spice fragrance. Sarcococca ruscifolia has small red berries, while the virtually indistinguishable Sarcococca confusa has small black berries resembling currants or huckleberries.
Pink Dawn Viburnum (Viburnum bodnantense ‘Pink Dawn’) is a tall, upright shrub with lovely, Daphne-like fragrant pink flower clusters that bloom on the bare wood.
Hellebore Hybrids (hybrids of Helleborus orientalis, also known as “Lenten Rose”) offer downward-pointed, cup-like flowers in shades ranging from white to chartreuse to pale pinks, mauves and purples on a low-growing evergreen shrub or tall ground cover. These are flowers that I always think of as painted in water colors rather than oils. You can select a variety for a desired color or just purchase randlomly mixed hybrids and enjoy the resulting color rainbow.
If you had all 5 selections in your garden, January would not be a dead month in the garden after all!
Helleborus orientalis hybrids
Hamamelis ‘Arnold Promise’
“Growing Gracefully” – A Brooks Kolb North Capitol Hill Garden Featured in “Pacific NW” Magazine
The Entry Gates – all photos by Seattle Times Photographer, Mike Siegel
Seattle Landscape Architect Brooks Kolb was once again featured in the Seattle Times’ “Pacific NW” Magazine on September 7, 2014, in an article by the noted Times garden writer, Valerie Easton. Titled “Growing Gracefully, A Redesign mixes the best of old and new,” the column lead with the following paragraphs:
“It’s not often a landscape architect gets another shot at a garden he designed years ago. But when horticulturist Sue Nicol was hired to come up with a fresh plant palette for an aging Capitol Hill garden, she asked Brooks Kolb to collaborate with her on the project. And it turns out that Kolb, along with his partner, Bill Talley, had renovated the garden in 1997 for an earlier owner.” ….New owners Don and Marty Sands “remodeled the (1932 brick Tudor) inside and out, then turned their attention to updating the garden. The couple appreciated the dramatic entry gates, as well as the matuing Japanese maples, Korean dogwoods and Hinoki cypress from the earlier renovation. Marty loves how the garden wraps around the house ‘like a little haven.’ And she calls the majestic copper beech that dominates the scene ‘a Grandfather tree.’”
Since the house is located on the corner of a curving street near Interlaken Boulevard, Brooks loved the original opportunity to remove a scruffy lawn, replacing it with a path that curves parallel to the road, connecting several distinct garden rooms along the way.
All photos by Seattle Times Photographer, Mike Siegel: The House and Rockery from the Street; the Entry Gates
The Birdbath with Japanese Forest Grass; Owners Marty and Don Sands
The Fountain in 1997; The Fountain Today, with its Lily Bud Jet
Inteviewing Brooks, Valerie asked, “What was it like for Kolb to re-imagine a garden he designed long ago? ‘It’s a wonderful chance to come back in and retool a garden,’ he says. He planted a necklace of new daphnes around the old fountain and left alone the huge white wisteria growing on the hefty arbor at the side of the house.”
Brooks also relished the opportunity to work collaboratively with Sue Nicol, whose contributions to the jointly designed planting plan included the “intensely fragrant” Daphne bholua and ‘Korean Apricot’ chrysanthemums, among many other selections. Brooks has collaborated with Sue for her horticultural and arborist expertise on a number of Seattle area garden designs.
