Dargan Landscape Architects

Create Nourishing Flourishing Home Utopias

Dargan appearances

Building a Show Garden : Hope Springs Eternal!

Well I am so grateful for assistance in building this exhibit. It is only 10 x 10 and considered to be a pocket garden, but geeeeez, is it persnickety! Of course, we will be adding things up to the last minute…everyone  does! We have plants coming from Goodness Grows, Cut Flower Wholesale, Steve Miller’s Kingsville Boxwood edging, Pike and Saul’s color, our Highcote, Jenks Farmer’s crinums, Atlanta Water Gardens…and the woods!

Show Garden

Pat Boak is helping with invaluable installation of show perimeter boards, installation of mulch, backdrop and more. Thx pal! The following list is just something I found useful for keeping it all straight…

Dargan Plant List and Supplies

Bulbs
Muscari sp grape hyacinth (Cut Flower: bulbs in pots)
Narcissus  – Daffodils (HH-H&MP harvest & pot up)
Crinum americanum (Jenks Farmer- loose bulbs in basket w/ trowel and labels, booklet)- Crinum lily

Vines
Gelsemium sempervirens (maybe)- Carolina Jessamine
Clematis armandii (Saul’s)- Evergreen Clematis or Armand’s Clematis

Ground Covers
Native moss(HH- MP harvest fresh if possible- is sheet moss allowed?)
Ophiopogon japonicus (GG or Sauls, Pike?)- Mondo Grass

Shrubs
Spiraea prunifolia (Goodness Grows, force in Lynn C’s sunroom)- Bridalwreath
Camellia japonica sp (Pikes or Habersham)
Edgeworthia chrysantha (maybe- GG)- Oriental Paper Bush
Aspidistra elatior variegata ( maybe-PIke)- Cast Iron Plant
Fatsia japonica ( maybe-Pike)- Japanese Aralia

Edging Material
Buxus sempervirens ‘Kingsville’ Boxwoods (HH-MP/H or Steve Miller)
Buxus sempervirens variegata  Variegated Boxwoods (HH-MP/H)
Buxus sempervirens Boxwoods (Steve Miller-need to be rounded nicely)

Ephemeral Color
Lobeila erinus – trailing blue lobelia (50 4″ Pike)
Viola sp blue mixed colors (Pike)
Delphinium sp (Pike)
scabiosa (Pike & Sauls)
Pansies (yellow,orange, white gallons-Sauls)
Ornamental kale (Pike or Sauls)

Small Pond Plants
Iris pseudoacorus variegata ( Atl Water Gardens)- Variegated Yellow Flag Iris
Fuzzy stuff on surface?

Cut Trees for Background
May we use top of cedar trees like PHS does??- yes

5 senses:

Color
(see plants above)

Sound
Windchime
Small bubble in pond

Texture
Stepping stones in moss, ophiopogon with muscari mixed with blue lobelia
Need something like fatsia or aspidistra
Maybe ornamental kale

Fragrance
Clematis armandii
Other plants above

Taste
Violas
Maybe ornamental kale

Site Appurtenances
Weathered backdrop fencing painted a watery blue green ( leave natural?) 3 sides partial
Pond Gold fish? (MP maybe)
Stepping stones ( PAT BOAK)
Half moon step stone stabilized on cobble base ( PAT BOAK)
3″ interior raised border of granite cobbles ( PAT BOAK)
Board perimeter 12″ tall painted gray sim to cobble ( PAT BOAK)
One band of cobble of ground outside board adds 6″ perimeter around exhibit (PAT BOAK)
Lichen side chair (here)
Beautiful antique urn (here)
Small pond basin with moss around it (here)
A good book, coffee cup on side table or on stone to side (how to display?- on large stone?)
Mulch for interior of exhibit
Natural leaves (HH-H/MP)
Candle light torcheres (no wiring) , candlesticks, globes (or one atmospheric one on treillage)

Electrical  (Show committee)  one duplex outlet only
Pump (very small for fountain)
Outlet  computer

Display Boards
Black board (Curt/Andrew to do)
Plant list (Lynn & MP)
Handouts/cards (MP)
Books (Eagle EYE supplement)
Music stand for display of materials
Chair/stool?? (2)
Storage container for our stuff…hide it where?
Plant labels (clothes pins and wire, hand printed-Lynn)
Book drawing materials, 3 books and jar for names!

 

Celebrity Guest, Author Louisa Cameron, Shares a Fun Courtyard Treatment that Solves Urban Dilemmas!

At our Charleston event this past weekend, our celebrity guest, Louisa Cameron, Charleston native who is an author of 2 books on Charleston gardens and wonderful garden designer, produced a model of a courtyard to solve the problems of an urban Bed and Breakfast for 8 Church Street, The Cabell House…now where will Mrs. Randy Cabell get those pink bushes?

Louisa was good enough to speak on her project on film for us!

Building A Garden of the 5 Senses: Memories Spring Eternal

manningly rosesHow well I remember the fragrance of the roses in England! While in Manningly, in the rain, the mist from the petals filled my umbrella and I was inside my own personal aromatherapy chamber! Now whenever I as much as SEE a photograph of these roses with dewey petals, I swim in memories of that beautiful experience.

Fragrance triggers memory pegs. Memory pegs, in Dargan-speak, are sensory reminders of something in the past…such as a walk in the woods with your grandfather with the sound of leaves under your feet, or the taste of fresh olive oil on your wedding trip, or…well, the list can be endless. As we age, memory pegs become more and more important, especially with senility patients. Anything that can trigger the feeling of connectedness presents a calming influence that is very grounding.

At the upcoming 25th Southeastern Flower Show, its silver anniversary, held in Atlanta, GA on March 14-17 at the Cobb Galleria, Dargan Landscape Architects is preparing a type of memory peg garden.  It exhibits simple  devices like a water basin for reflection, an antique urn, a mossy chair for texture, a wind chime for gentle sound and plants in an array of color, culinary value and fragrance.

Come visit!  I’ll be posting photos as it is being constructed!

A WIN a BOOK drawing will be held each day. 3 Books will be awarded and names posted on our exhibit.

Reality Courtyards

My perfect life is a series of outdoor vignettes. A meal al fresco with a good book, unplugged and breathing fresh air; that night grilling with friends under a canopy of stars.  But until the early ‘80’s, when I moved to Charleston in my early thirties to marry Hugh, I didn’t know about outdoor rooms and courtyards…I mean, really know them.

Our house at 47 Tradd was too small for entertaining, and hardly large enough for a double bed. Built in the dawn of the eighteenth century it was only two rooms wide x two rooms tall. This ancient, pink-stuccoed kitchen house was tiny; the central heating system replaced the original fireplace in the center of the building.

Our courtyard was larger than the house and far more flexible. Wedding parties, guests dropping in for a drink and puppies to raise kept it busy, plus we gardened up a storm.

How do you live life to its fullest while enjoying seamless integration of household spaces truly joined at the hip?  In today’s world, this is hard. Parking takes up waaay too much room, the house footprint is too large for its lot and the neighboring homes loom close at hand.  So we decided to hold our first design studio in Charleston in 20 years!

Our students came from California, Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina and loved the experience!  We’re planning another LIVE event in June in Cashiers, NC from June 16-18, 2013. STAY TUNED as we unfurl our plans.

LYL charleston 2013 group

A Courtyard Wedding in Charleston: YOUR Outdoor Room #6

We’re celebrating 40 years in landscape design!  Join us for a special garden design event in Charleston, SC…Come take YOUR garden to school!

Charleston, SC GardenWow. I didn’t know the value of an outdoor room until a client called with a wedding emergency early in my career. In Charleston, SC, a 18th c single house built for a family of four, had a set of rooms downstairs for business. Today, a family of two might comfortably squeeze into its narrow, one-room footprint. The classic single house, usually has a two story piazza, or balcony running alongside its long, attenuated body, but this one was strictly all building.

So, where to put the guests? The exquisite 2 tiered cake with elegant sugar petal flowers was okay in the foyer, but the dancing and merriment needed more elbow room.

Hugh and I eyed a  small garden patch, 18 x 15′ = approx 270 sq, ripe with potential. It was wildly overgrown with bushy breath of spring (Lonicera fragrantissima) occupying half the space. A hidden birdbath buried 6′ into its interior indicated this once was a small garden.

The rest of the patch was an L shape and surrounded by a tall, brick wall of mellow old brick and obscured by fig and ivy. We love fig vine for its greening effect, but this one now had knobby vines 2″ stems from decades of build-up.  Another foot of space gleaned form garden maintenance archaeology was ours!

Ragged indica azaleas and a very spindly, loquat with very messy fruit, occupied the rest of the space.

Spring cleaning came first. Once the onion was pealed, how to design for maximum use and beauty after the party was over? A circle space, outlined with a brick sailor edge, 12′ in diameter sodded with grass, created a tippy-toe spot for a garden tent with musicians. The dancing worked its way out to the parking court and the pathways.  A new courtyard garden where there was none, and now a PLACE to be.

3o years later, guess what is has become…a children’s play area, paved and ready for the next party!

The allure of the courtyard and outdoor rooms brings Charleston, SC immediately to mind.  Join us February 25-27, 2013 as we share the recipes for these timeless outdoor rooms.
In honor of Dargan Landscape Architects 40th Anniversary in 2013, Elements of Outdoor Rooms, harkens to our early design practice in Charleston, SC. Full time for decades and continuing on today, we’ve tested art elements & client needs on the canvas of this historic city. Dargan archives at the South Carolina Historical Society house hundreds of our courtyard and outdoor room designs, many of which exist today and hold lifestyle tools useful to properties anywhere.