My blog leans more toward trees or tree care. But it looks like some landscape and shrub content is on the horizon this year. M. D. Vaden of Oregon Tree Blog This is going to be a surge of gardening year at our home. Now that the landscape design has been tweaked a bit. Still have a few small trees to add like Hinoki cypress, after some tree pruning in a couple of weeks. Yesterday was my first attempt at trying to get some apple tree blossoms. Need to work on that some. I like apple tree blossoms even more than cherry tree blossoms. Here is a link that might be useful: M. D. Vaden of Oregon Tree and Forest Bllog

Talking about color and the use of color in the garden is one of those things that tends to put people in defensive/hostile mode because it's difficult at times to clearly describe what exactly one means when talking about color and the use of color in the garden. So things get misinterpreted or overly simplified as each person brings their own biases and interests to interpret what was said. There is (an annoying :-) ) tendency in some quarters to dismiss color - particularly flowers - as a sort of frivolous, unimportant 'icing on the cake' element in designing a garden. That sort of dismissal of color irritates me greatly. But it also irritates me when the 'any color goes with any other' sort of line is thrown out as an oversimplification. Because the perception of a color can very much depend on what color it is partnered with. Change the partner and you change the effect. So, for me, how I use color in the garden/where I place a particular plant depends on what effect I want to create there. In my early gardening days I went through the polychrome 'anything goes' color phase but became unhappy with that because I began to see, as GP1 said above: ' "Too much color is the equivalent of no color at all". It becomes like a street lined with billboards each competing for attention and no color stands out. ' Now I try to think through what I need to do to create a desired color effect. I don't always get it right - and it can take years to gradualy change the plantings to get to where I want to go - but it has made a noticeable improvement (to me at least!) in my gardening outcomes. GP1 - as a trained artist, you (and the gardening artists in your neighbourhood) probably intuitively use color in your gardens to create desired effects whereas for plebes like me it's something that requires deliberate thought and 'misses the mark' more often! :-) Playing with color to create effects is fun - and not limited to gardening :-) Below is a picture of DH wearing a 'tumbling blocks' sweater I knit about 17 years ago. I was aiming for an 'autumn leaves' color effect. Not perfect by any means but it's still one of his favorite sweaters. The link below is to a Google image seach that shows other sweaters of the same design in different color combinations (the fifth one is DH's sweater....) so you can see how different the sweater looks depending on what colors are used and how they are combined. And that brings me to the issue of 'rules' and styles etc. 'Rule' is one of those words that also immediately gets one's back up because most of us don't particularly like the idea of being ruled! :-) Styles tend to imply a lack of originality - a 'follow the herd' sort of mentality and we all want to be thought of as individuals. But understanding what a particular 'rule' is trying to achieve, and the consequences of breaking it is useful when assessing whether it helps or hinders what you are trying to achieve. 'Rules' can be a sort of distilled 'wisdom'/short cuts that can be useful in getting you where you want to go without having to reinvent the wheel each time! Styles, in a gardening sense, are often a response to particular times, places, cultures environments, etc. Understaning why they are/were popular can be very useful in helping you decide which styles - or elements of a style - can be used or adapted to positive effect in your own garden. That's one of the reasons I like to read widely in garden history - the more I know, the clearer I see what appeals to me and how to achieve it. Certainly my interests and tastes have changed over time but change is a constant in the garden so I'm always looking for ideas that I can incorporate - harmoniously - in the garden. The constant that drives my garden is the desire for it to have a peaceful and harmonious feel while still being a vibrant space. Here is a link that might be useful: tumbling block sweaters

Sorry, but I am a school teacher, and I think it is a violation to my right of privacy. My students have told me about where I live, what I drive, and many details about my privacy that is none of their business. I have been hoping that the courts will make this illegal. If a group of kids can use this and find out all about your home, what can the thieves do? Guess where the kids put their information --- on Facebook, of course. By the way they don't walk, they are in little cars, and they update their information regularly, and very quickly. The walkers pretend to survey your property, but they are really getting as much information as they can from the ground, then from the air. They walk through the backs of the houses, and drive the fronts. Sorry to be odd man out, but now I can anticipate about 160 kids running through my garden at Halloween. Sammy

Hey Gibson. Yes, your posts are here! The trees in Gilroy Gardens are definitely something else. Interestingly, we were just discussing them (very briefly) in a recent thread. You can find it here. If you haven't already, do a Google Image search for 'arborsculpture'. There are all kinds of curiosities to behold.