 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| Power Style Wellness Connections |
GardeningSecrets
By Mary Jo Harrod
Photos by Ewa Wojtkowska
Creating a garden that is beautiful the year round, low maintenance and
personal takes planning and vision. Since every yard is different, plans
must be customized.
How do you begin?
I have a very different approach than most landscapers who create high
maintenance areas,” said Barbie Tafel Thomas, a Louisville landscape
designer. “I tell clients that I want them to like me in five years, and not
curse me because I have given them too much to take care of. I work
very hard to keep mulch to a minimum, plant as much grass as possible
for easy maintenance, and strategically place trees and shrubs for a
365-days-a-year structure.”
Barbie tries to separate the exterior into areas for entertaining, outdoor
grilling, and service (garage, garbage cans, driveway) with plantings or
hedges. The exterior must relate to the interior spaces. There should be
a good view or focal point as you enter the yard from the house to take
your eye to a lovely site outside. Creating good views from important
windows is also important.
Twenty-four years ago with three small children, Barbie fell in love with a
lovely two-story brick home with a large, screened porch that spanned
the back and overlooked what could potentially be, and now is, a
beautiful, rolling back yard. It began with the removal of the massive
amounts of scrubby pockets of bushes, weeds, and dead trees. Grass
was planted throughout the interior of the yard, along with a screen
planting of pines, spruce, and hemlock at the rear. She planted
assorted varieties of flowering shrubs — every variety possible of
hydrangea, forsythia, lilac, wygelia, and viburnum — in a repeat along
both sides with daylilies, hostas, and roses on the fence for a splash of
color.
“One of the biggest challenges and most expensive was to create a low
retaining wall in order to create a level area wide enough for a walk from
the driveway to the existing raised bluestone terrace stepping up to the
screened porch on the opposite side from the drive,” Barbie said. “This
was our connector from the drive to the house to the yard and it was
imperative to get the design right. What started as a simple brick walk
with steps into the yard evolved into quadrants of garden space on
either side of the walk and a formal fish pond that can be seen and
heard from every room on the back of the house.”
Barbie has a classic approach much like Fredrick Law Olmstead. She
uses grass, trees, and a park-like setting with flowering shrubs as a low
maintenance accent of color. She said that gardening is not just about
landscaping, but about creating exterior rooms, architectural detail, a
good flow, good brick or stonework, subtle lighting that extends the
enjoyment of your yard, and privacy.
Hope and Albert Entwistle of Anchorage are avid gardeners, and spend
a lot of time and effort in the side portion of their wooded back yard filled
with hostas, daylilies, and ferns. But, tall evergreens formed a wall on
one side of a beautiful pool and hid all of their gardening efforts, making
the area seem much smaller and enclosed.
“I suggested that they remove the tall evergreens to open up the view
and be able to enjoy it when sitting on the raised deck or at the pool,”
explained Barbie. “Plantings were placed around the pool and ivy was
encouraged to grow around the waterfall, giving it a naturalized look.”
An adjoining shade garden was created next to the pool on the other
side of where the evergreens had been. Dozens of hydrangeas and
Korean Boxwood surround the bowl-shaped border and transition the
woods to the managed garden. Positioned between the fluffy blue
hydrangeas are bright daylilies and astilbe, offering a variety of shapes
to the view. Creekstone edging separates the wide flowerbeds from a
carpet of grass.
“My husband and I feel that removing the evergreens enhanced the
ambiance of the whole yard and made the yard become one,” said
Hope. “We love to work in our garden and are enamored with the view
now.”
Before agreeing to buy a ranch-style house she liked in Saint Matthews,
Sharon Cheek insisted that Barbie come to see the narrow backyard
and determine if it could be turned from mud and dirt into something
inviting. Having grown up on a farm and wanting to be outdoors and
entertain, it was a priority for Sharon to have an enjoyable exterior
space.
“I was able to envision that we would be able to turn the sow’s ear into a
silk purse, yet still be sensitive to Sharon’s budget,” said Barbie. “The
first challenge was widening the openings from the house and placing
wide, brick steps down to the to the narrow yard. Next, we constructed a
tall, decorative, handmade fence the entire length of the yard to create
privacy, placing lattice on the top for a more open feel. We painted it all
the trim color of the house to look more elegant.”
A cracked concrete patio was covered with a slate tile that is frost-proof,
since using brick was not an option. Black shutters were placed on the
exterior windows and doors and a new brick walk was constructed as a
connector to the new terrace and the two sides of the house. Because
the side yard had the most space but was exposed to the street, they
placed a four-foot open, square-lattice decorative fence and gate
across the front of the house to create an enclosure for Sharon’s two
standard poodles and the garden that she wanted. Sweet bay
magnolias against the side fence provide an airy screen from the
neighbor’s roof.
“The changes are dramatic,” said Sharon. “I gave Barbie ideas of what I
like, and she created a flow from the house to an entertaining area and
sitting areas outside. She is very talented.”
When making plans to renovate their kitchen, Polly and Keith Williams of
Harrods Creek called Barbie to help them incorporate an exterior plan
enabling the family to utilize more of their outdoor space. They decided
to incorporate an intimate terrace for outdoor dining with a fish pond as
a focal point.
“Our yard is wonderful now, but it had some challenges,” said Polly.
“Our fish pond was on a hillside where it was not in a natural spot, so we
decided not to do a waterfall as we had planned.”
A covered porch serves as an outdoor family room, complete with a
fireplace made of stone. The hand-hewn mantel personally selected
from a barn in Lexington was positioned just inside two mature oak
trees. Tennessee Crab Orchard stone was chosen to veneer the
concrete floor, which began at the new kitchen door and wrapped from
the side to the back extending the length of the house.
“An outdoor cooking area was created just outside the kitchen with
enough seating for the family,” said Barbie. “We went back and forth
about the style of the fish pond and decided to nestle it in on the
perimeter of this area in a formal way since it was in full view of the
kitchen and dining room. Brick sides were chosen to pull in the existing
elements of the house with a coping on top of a sitting wall of the same
flagstone on the floor.”
Wide walkways connect the pond area to the covered porch and
continue on to the far side of the house to the formal rose garden and
the Williams’s shade gardens. Here grow an assortment of ferns, hosta,
and Lenten roses that came from Polly’s mother’s garden.Overall
Garden Planning
• Do not make a focal point of your driveway and your garage doors.
The focus needs to be on your house.
• Color in the garden is a bonus for several months. Get a good
evergreen structure and just have splashes of color.
• Even small yards are very pleasing if they are manicured. Don’t take
on more than you can comfortably maintain.
• It is not pleasing to design a window looking out to the side of a
neighbor’s house, and if you have that situation,
then plant a tree to diffuse the bad view.
• Do not create a bed any larger than your shrubs. If you do have a lot
of mulch showing, underplant with a groundcover (green is much more
lush and easier to maintain than brown mulch). I have most of my beds
underplanted with ground-cover, and I simply “weed eat” it as flat
as I can get it (weeds and all) to give it a manicured look.
By Mary Jo Harrod
Photos by Ewa Wojtkowska
Creating a garden that is beautiful the year round, low maintenance and
personal takes planning and vision. Since every yard is different, plans
must be customized.
How do you begin?
I have a very different approach than most landscapers who create high
maintenance areas,” said Barbie Tafel Thomas, a Louisville landscape
designer. “I tell clients that I want them to like me in five years, and not
curse me because I have given them too much to take care of. I work
very hard to keep mulch to a minimum, plant as much grass as possible
for easy maintenance, and strategically place trees and shrubs for a
365-days-a-year structure.”
Barbie tries to separate the exterior into areas for entertaining, outdoor
grilling, and service (garage, garbage cans, driveway) with plantings or
hedges. The exterior must relate to the interior spaces. There should be
a good view or focal point as you enter the yard from the house to take
your eye to a lovely site outside. Creating good views from important
windows is also important.
Twenty-four years ago with three small children, Barbie fell in love with a
lovely two-story brick home with a large, screened porch that spanned
the back and overlooked what could potentially be, and now is, a
beautiful, rolling back yard. It began with the removal of the massive
amounts of scrubby pockets of bushes, weeds, and dead trees. Grass
was planted throughout the interior of the yard, along with a screen
planting of pines, spruce, and hemlock at the rear. She planted
assorted varieties of flowering shrubs — every variety possible of
hydrangea, forsythia, lilac, wygelia, and viburnum — in a repeat along
both sides with daylilies, hostas, and roses on the fence for a splash of
color.
“One of the biggest challenges and most expensive was to create a low
retaining wall in order to create a level area wide enough for a walk from
the driveway to the existing raised bluestone terrace stepping up to the
screened porch on the opposite side from the drive,” Barbie said. “This
was our connector from the drive to the house to the yard and it was
imperative to get the design right. What started as a simple brick walk
with steps into the yard evolved into quadrants of garden space on
either side of the walk and a formal fish pond that can be seen and
heard from every room on the back of the house.”
Barbie has a classic approach much like Fredrick Law Olmstead. She
uses grass, trees, and a park-like setting with flowering shrubs as a low
maintenance accent of color. She said that gardening is not just about
landscaping, but about creating exterior rooms, architectural detail, a
good flow, good brick or stonework, subtle lighting that extends the
enjoyment of your yard, and privacy.
Hope and Albert Entwistle of Anchorage are avid gardeners, and spend
a lot of time and effort in the side portion of their wooded back yard filled
with hostas, daylilies, and ferns. But, tall evergreens formed a wall on
one side of a beautiful pool and hid all of their gardening efforts, making
the area seem much smaller and enclosed.
“I suggested that they remove the tall evergreens to open up the view
and be able to enjoy it when sitting on the raised deck or at the pool,”
explained Barbie. “Plantings were placed around the pool and ivy was
encouraged to grow around the waterfall, giving it a naturalized look.”
An adjoining shade garden was created next to the pool on the other
side of where the evergreens had been. Dozens of hydrangeas and
Korean Boxwood surround the bowl-shaped border and transition the
woods to the managed garden. Positioned between the fluffy blue
hydrangeas are bright daylilies and astilbe, offering a variety of shapes
to the view. Creekstone edging separates the wide flowerbeds from a
carpet of grass.
“My husband and I feel that removing the evergreens enhanced the
ambiance of the whole yard and made the yard become one,” said
Hope. “We love to work in our garden and are enamored with the view
now.”
Before agreeing to buy a ranch-style house she liked in Saint Matthews,
Sharon Cheek insisted that Barbie come to see the narrow backyard
and determine if it could be turned from mud and dirt into something
inviting. Having grown up on a farm and wanting to be outdoors and
entertain, it was a priority for Sharon to have an enjoyable exterior
space.
“I was able to envision that we would be able to turn the sow’s ear into a
silk purse, yet still be sensitive to Sharon’s budget,” said Barbie. “The
first challenge was widening the openings from the house and placing
wide, brick steps down to the to the narrow yard. Next, we constructed a
tall, decorative, handmade fence the entire length of the yard to create
privacy, placing lattice on the top for a more open feel. We painted it all
the trim color of the house to look more elegant.”
A cracked concrete patio was covered with a slate tile that is frost-proof,
since using brick was not an option. Black shutters were placed on the
exterior windows and doors and a new brick walk was constructed as a
connector to the new terrace and the two sides of the house. Because
the side yard had the most space but was exposed to the street, they
placed a four-foot open, square-lattice decorative fence and gate
across the front of the house to create an enclosure for Sharon’s two
standard poodles and the garden that she wanted. Sweet bay
magnolias against the side fence provide an airy screen from the
neighbor’s roof.
“The changes are dramatic,” said Sharon. “I gave Barbie ideas of what I
like, and she created a flow from the house to an entertaining area and
sitting areas outside. She is very talented.”
When making plans to renovate their kitchen, Polly and Keith Williams of
Harrods Creek called Barbie to help them incorporate an exterior plan
enabling the family to utilize more of their outdoor space. They decided
to incorporate an intimate terrace for outdoor dining with a fish pond as
a focal point.
“Our yard is wonderful now, but it had some challenges,” said Polly.
“Our fish pond was on a hillside where it was not in a natural spot, so we
decided not to do a waterfall as we had planned.”
A covered porch serves as an outdoor family room, complete with a
fireplace made of stone. The hand-hewn mantel personally selected
from a barn in Lexington was positioned just inside two mature oak
trees. Tennessee Crab Orchard stone was chosen to veneer the
concrete floor, which began at the new kitchen door and wrapped from
the side to the back extending the length of the house.
“An outdoor cooking area was created just outside the kitchen with
enough seating for the family,” said Barbie. “We went back and forth
about the style of the fish pond and decided to nestle it in on the
perimeter of this area in a formal way since it was in full view of the
kitchen and dining room. Brick sides were chosen to pull in the existing
elements of the house with a coping on top of a sitting wall of the same
flagstone on the floor.”
Wide walkways connect the pond area to the covered porch and
continue on to the far side of the house to the formal rose garden and
the Williams’s shade gardens. Here grow an assortment of ferns, hosta,
and Lenten roses that came from Polly’s mother’s garden.Overall
Garden Planning
• Do not make a focal point of your driveway and your garage doors.
The focus needs to be on your house.
• Color in the garden is a bonus for several months. Get a good
evergreen structure and just have splashes of color.
• Even small yards are very pleasing if they are manicured. Don’t take
on more than you can comfortably maintain.
• It is not pleasing to design a window looking out to the side of a
neighbor’s house, and if you have that situation,
then plant a tree to diffuse the bad view.
• Do not create a bed any larger than your shrubs. If you do have a lot
of mulch showing, underplant with a groundcover (green is much more
lush and easier to maintain than brown mulch). I have most of my beds
underplanted with ground-cover, and I simply “weed eat” it as flat
as I can get it (weeds and all) to give it a manicured look.