At High Glen Gardens, I oversaw a garden “room” called the Summer House. This garden had a color scheme of silver and white with accents of yellow and other bright colors, and featured a variety of plants from the Mediterranean and American Southwest.
Over time, areas of the garden needed to be refreshed. I created new designs for three key areas in the Summer House garden: the arbor, the “window”, and the northwest corner.
The Arbor
Only low-growing, minimalistic plantings existed around the western side of the arbor. The owner desired tall shrubs to create visual structure and more dense plantings to separate the arbor from the rest of the garden. Junipers were selected in order to mimic the cypress trees of the Mediterranean region and supply the needed visual structure. Round, dwarf white pines and blue spruces filled in the gaps between the junipers, along with perennials such as lavender, salvia, and variegated thyme. The design was installed in two phases—the junipers were planted in the spring and pines and spruces were planted in the fall. Decorative containers and existing shrubs held the places of the pines and spruces between spring and fall.
Flora Nova Designs 