After having so much fun at Pastels on the Plaza in Arcata last year, I decided it’d be fun to make a tradition of it.

Trevor Shirk was my artist again this year and came up with an excellent theme of a koi pond with a water lily.

Our friend Leah Vaughn did the Holly Yashi Jewelry square and Trevor and Leah decided to both do a water theme so our borders could blend and look harmonious. I think that kind of collaboration is so fun!

Here’s my artist, Trevor, and my letterer, Meadow Bell, working on my square:

Leah, seen to the right in the photo above, did a yogi theme with lotus flowers and a purple orangutan doing a yoga pose on a lilypad, for Holly Yashi. Isn’t the blended border cool?

And our finished square, which I’m making into a postcard to send out as a reminder to turn off irrigation as the rains begin…

I’ve written about this garden before, and wanted to show you how the entry to the drive was transformed from a boring bare lawn and Escallonia hedge to an eye-catching and cheerful area with year-round color and interest. This garden is also deer-resistant.

Here’s the before:

And after (you can see the Escallonia hedge is used as a strong green backdrop instead of the central feature):

Need help creating your garden transformation? Let’s talk about how we can work together to create the garden of your dreams…

While going through my photos recently to write an article on the passing of time in a garden, I found the “before” photos of a garden I had designed a few years back. Even as the designer, it was a lovely surprise to me how far the garden had come in such a short time.

This is what it looked like when I was called in, and just after planting. What tiny, baby plants!

And here’s what those plants look like three years later, with regular care and organic fertilizer to help them be their best:

This is a really fun garden that gets a lot of compliments from folks walking past– the owners wanted a balance between cheerful, bodacious color, and not having to do too much garden maintenance.

We take care of the landscape maintenance once a month, and we spend about 5 hours per month taking care of this garden (there’s a back garden, plenty of blueberries and some dwarf fruit trees, a front garden area around the front walkway and door, and a long strip of flowers and low-maintenance shrubs along the drive).

For such a large area of planting, most gardens with a lot of flowers would require much more care to stay healthy and gorgeous. The key is in both the planning and a quality installation.

I took care in the design phase to specify some real garden workhorses – plants that bloom almost constantly through the growing season but only need minimal care. Then we added some year-round interest by using a few ornamental grasses and plants with colored or interesting foliage, so that even in the depths of winter there is a feeling of motion and beauty in the garden.

Simon Trapkus of Soil Seekers Landscape did the installation from my plans, and as always, it was a pleasure to work with him. I sourced the plants from the appropriate suppliers and put each one in the right place (making any design substitutions as necessary), and Soil Seekers did the soil work, installed edging for easy maintenance, planted all the plants, put in lawn sprinklers and drip irrigation for the beds, hydroseeded a lovely fine-bladed lawn, and applied mulch to the finished project to help the plants stay healthy.

It’s the small touches in the installation which make for easy maintenance – using professional-grade supplies, a careful job in grading/ leveling the soil smoothly, making sure to overlap weed fabric (as was used here) by a foot and bring it up to the edges in just the right way so that it keeps the weeds down effectively, using enough mini bark/ mulch to cover the weed fabric and irrigation lines… Even just using enough pins on the irrigation tubing so that it stays hidden under the mulch and doesn’t shift saves hours of maintenance a year.

These and other small touches in the design and installation phase don’t cost much money, but they make all the difference in making your garden easier to care for.

Since Soil Seekers Landscape and my company, Genevieve Schmidt Landscape Design, both do skilled garden maintenance as well as design and installation, we have the real-world experience to ensure that your garden doesn’t just look good on paper – but that it functions properly and is a pleasure to keep up.

Here are a few more pictures of the front of this garden:

Do you see elements of this garden that you might like? Call us today and see how we can help you create a gorgeous garden suited to your tastes and style.

I designed this commercial garden in McKinleyville (3135 Boeing Avenue near the Holiday Inn/ Airport) a couple years ago, and it’s already filling in admirably despite the rough conditions.

This garden has very hungry gophers as well as strong and salty seacoast wind which blasts the plants constantly, yet you can see that the plants are doing beautifully and there are some really cheerful year-round color combinations to enjoy.

This very sturdy Fuchsia attracts hummingbirds to its plentiful tiny blossoms:

I love the way the Heuchera highlights the burgundy leaf edging on this Phormium grass:

This grass flows constantly in the breeze and provides a sense of motion and excitement to the garden:

You can see that strong seacoast wind is no excuse for a boring garden!

Do you have tough conditions in your garden? Let me help you choose plants that will survive and thrive, through landscape design or garden coaching. Give me a call today!

I was honored recently to open up my copy of Turf Magazine, a magazine for gardening professionals to learn about new equipment and trends in the field, and find I’d been quoted in their article on using edible plants in the landscape!

My “sidebar” on which edibles work best alongside ornamentals in the garden is at the bottom of the article, but I’ve quoted here:

A Landscape Good Enough to Eat

Genevieve Schmidt, an edible landscape designer in northern California, www.GenevieveSchmidtDesign.com, suggested a few landscape plants that are both beautiful and edible.

*  Artichokes—These have beautiful silvery-blue foliage that looks good with purple or blue flowering perennials. Note that artichokes need a lot more fertilizer than landscape plants and are high-maintenance.
*  Blueberries—There are many varieties from dwarf for containers to large sprawling shrubs for a bigger garden. Most blueberries have a graceful arching form, blazing golden-orange fall color, pretty flowers in spring, and produce attractive and tasty blueberries in summer. The only downside to blueberries is that for most varieties, you need to plant more than one, and your best yield happens with a greater number of varieties in one garden.
*  Dwarf Meyer Lemon trees (for warmer climates)—These are one of the easiest plants to grow for food, and they can go in a container or in the landscape as an attractive large shrub or small tree. These trees need plenty of organic matter in the soil to establish well, and the leaves go yellow fairly quickly from lack of nutrients.
*  Strawberries-This plant makes a good, attractive ground cover (and spread faster than ornamental covers).
*  Rhubarb and Swiss Chard—These can be tucked in among flowering perennials for interest.
*  Espaliered fruit trees (even types with multiple varieties on one tree) or dwarf fruit trees—These are beautiful and easy to care for. Figs have lush, tropical foliage.
*  Annuals—Such as red cabbage with its colorful foliage, string beans with purple flowers, the many varieties of lettuce with their interesting leaf patterns, and the eggplant are all interesting, and tasty, additions to a landscape.

Do you want to incorporate edibles into your garden, but need help figuring out which ones will do best in your conditions? Give me a call and ask me how we can work together through garden coaching or landscape design to help you have the lush, edible garden you dream of.

Often, as the kids grow up and stop playing touch football in the backyard, I’m asked to help people beautify what was once a large expanse of plain old lawn. Mowing a large area of grass can get to be a tiring chore, and once you begin thinking about all the possibilities, it’s easy to say goodbye to a portion of your lawn.

The owners of this home in Blue Lake wanted a garden to enjoy through all the seasons, which would be low-maintenance enough not to add any new household tasks to their schedule.

While all plants take some degree of care, there are certainly some year-round stars that give a lot of flower and foliage for very little in return.

Heaths and heathers, ornamental conifers, and plants with colored foliage such as a ‘Bloodgood’ Japanese Maple made up the backbone of this plan, along with some beautifully-flowering plants that add a bold burst of color through each part of the year.

One of my favorite themes in this garden is Astelia ‘Silver Spear’, a silvery-blue year-round grass that glimmers in the sunshine, with a silvery-grey Scotch Heather which blooms in the fall. I love the rich velvety grey tones with the purple flowers found throughout the garden, and the warm burgundy found on the foliage plants.

The garden’s barely a year old, so the photos don’t look like much yet, but I’ll be sure and post them as the season progresses and everything fills in…

The owner wanted a simple, flowing landscape that would be low-maintenance, deer-resistant, and have a clean, open appearance with bright bursts of gorgeous color, and some elegant foliage combinations.

Here’s what it looked like before:

And after:

(1st year, still filling in)

I love the unusual interplay between the orange color of the Rhododendron’s stamens with the orange new growth of the Autumn Fern in the background:

Do you notice the buff throat of this purple Rhododendron carrying the Autumn Fern’s color through the garden? Subtle, but fun! As the garden fills in and the plants grow closer to one another these small touches that bring continuity will become more apparent.

This red Rhododendron has such rich, glossy foliage – much different from the dull leaves on many varieties.

Some lovely natives in this garden to support our local wildlife, one of which is the Giant Chain Fern seen behind the red Rhodie above.

Are you ready for your garden transformation? Call me today for an information packet including addresses where you can see my work!

I had the pleasure of consulting with/ garden coaching local wildlife artist Susan Fox, an extremely talented artist here in McKinleyville.

We had a fun time doing the rounds in her garden and talking about a few areas which needed an outside perspective. Susan’s an excellent gardener already, but like most of us, has a few areas which need a little extra help to look and work just the way she wants. I had a wonderful time meeting with her, hearing her gardening adventures and tips, and giving my ideas about how to smooth tough transitions or bring unity and flow to different areas of the garden.

Susan was kind enough to write about our day on her gardening blog, Digging Dow’s Prairie. If you enjoy gardening and want to see what is working for other local folks, reading garden blogs is a great way to connect with other locals and get good regional info. I also write an informational site for our region, North Coast Gardening, and I really enjoy garden writer Amy Stewart’s blog Dirt.

(Photo above taken at Singing Tree Gardens that afternoon.)

People who know me, know that I am not afraid of technology. In fact, I love trying to find new ways to be efficient, share what I know, and connect with people.

But I understand that for many people, putting up a web page is an intimidating prospect, and it can be especially hard for smaller community groups to reach an audience for their events. That’s why it was such a pleasure to be able to help out the Trinidad Civic Club and Patrick’s Point Garden Club promote their Garden Event in Trinidad this past April 4th.

I really enjoyed getting to connect with the members of the clubs and learn all about the community projects they are involved in, and to put up a web page detailing everything going on at the Event.

I had a blast at the Event, and even got to video-record Amy Stewart giving her talk on Wicked Plants, her newest book.

I had so much fun being a part of the event, and when I came home, I was touched to see such a nice mention in their event leaflet (bottom left), given to everyone who came:

I can’t wait for next year’s Event!

I was honored to find a photo of one of my gardens today in the Times-Standard Newspaper to promote the North Coast Garden Event!

The photo is of a Eureka garden which has a purple Salvia leucantha (Mexican Bush Sage), a Bright Pink Flowercarpet Rose, and a Cup-and-Saucer Magnolia (not in bloom) in the front garden.

It feels great to see one of my gardens featured in print!