By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Many botanical gardens offer wreath-making demonstration or other gifts-from-the-garden classes right about now.  Take advantage of them.  They're a bargain.  Here's a new venue in Southern California:

The Farm and Food Lab at the Orange County Great Park, November 21, 10 a.m. to noon. 

"Holiday Crafts from the Garden -- Create some wonderful hand-made gifts for those hard-to-buy-for people on your list from your own garden.  Join the California Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners of Orange County as they demonstrate a selection of garden gfit ideas to make for the holidays, incuding a holiday wreath."

The class is free.  Parking is $8.

The Orange County Great Park is located off the 5 Freeway and Sand Canyon in Irvine.  It's a little tricky to find. Check directions on the website before you go.

Can't make it?  Check out our How to Make a Wreath in 4 Easy Steps. 

Already an expert?  Share your know-how.  See  How To Host A Wreath-Making Party.

 
By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

    
By Julie Chai, Sunset associate garden editor

At the recent Late Show garden show, we were thrilled by all the inventive displays. There were so many amazing creations that it's hard to narrow them down, but here are a few of our favorites. Above, garden designers Suzanne Biaggi and Patrick Picard created the Future Feast with edibles planted right into a tabletop. Produce doesn't get any fresher than that!

We also loved the way designer Beth Mullins turned tires inside out and used them as planters in her display:

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

A garden can be a consuming passion—at least until you feel it consuming you. When Val Easton found herself in that spot, she knew it was time to move on, this time to a gem of a low-maintenance garden she made for herself. It kept her passion for gardening alive and spawned a terrific book, The NEW Low-Maintenance Garden (Timber Press, Portland, 2009; $19.95).

Because the book is rooted in Easton’s personal and recent experience, she makes her case with formidable authority: “Somewhere along the way to plant collecting and competitive gardening, we forgot the ancient notion of the garden as a place of respite, an oasis remote from worldly cares and chores. We forgot nature’s ability to soothe, renew, and nurture.… [Her] ability to work her magic on us is dependent on our slowing down and looking closely, not on our constant efforts to improve upon her.” Easton calls gardening as it was meant to be “the feast we forget to partake of.”

In the end, she found that low maintenance wasn’t about gardening lite—she wanted “the exhaustion ... taken out, not the fulfillment”—it was instead all about design. Thus her mantra: “Design before plants, think geometry, and invest in infrastructure.”

So how did all this work out in her own landscape? The book gives you a peek through the lens of Jacqueline Koch. In addition to vignettes of Easton’s own garden (see below), you get a look at a passel of other high appeal, low-maintenance gardens and parts of gardens that are scattered like jewels across North America. You look and say “I want this,” realizing that your desire has everything to do with the sanctuary garden that Easton is calling you back to. Low maintenance is just the part of the equation that gives you the time to enjoy the sanctuary you create.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

  Why pretend you live in Tuscany, when you reside in coastal California?  That's something Costa Mesa garden designer Molly Wood can't understand.

"You live close to the beach, where most of the world would like to be," she says.  "Why not celebrate that?"

Wood certainly does.  Everything about her design style is "beachy." 

Take her fountains. Nearly every fountain she does, I noticed browsing Wood's website, incorporates sea shells. 

Not all of the fountains are as detailed as this one, which is on display at Wood's shop in Costa Mesa, but there is some use of shells and/or connection to the ocean in all of them.

The idea came from watching her son play with an abalone shell, says Wood.  "Seeing the water trickle through the holes gave me the idea to incorporate that same movement in a fountain," she says. 

After visiting her store and and spending a morning seeing some of her projects, though, I see how the beach connection permeates everything Wood does.  Her firepits, for instance, look like more formal versions of the ones you huddle around when you're at a beach party right on the sand.  And, if you look closely, you'll notice there are often tiny sea shells in the grouting between her paving stones.

Back at the shop, I notice how the beach motif infuses everything Wood touches, from the casual styling of the furniture she prefers -- honed concrete table tops that look beach-polished; to her succulent plant combinations -- they look like coral formations; to her choice of pots -- lots of shell shapes and shell textures, like the beauty shown below. (More about this line of pots tomorrow.)

My visit with Wood has me rethinking my backyard.  I'm not exactly channeling Tuscany back there, but I'm not embracing my proximity to the beach as much as I could either.  At a minimum, I'd love to incorporate her sea-shell encrusting grouting idea.

By Sharon Cohoon , Sunset senior garden writer

Since I've already confessed to having limited success with plants in containers--(See Hard Truths)--you'd think I'd shy away from buying pots.  That would be logical.  But the truth is I love them.   So it is probably only a matter of time before I succumb to something from Flat Earth Designs, a line of goregous pots I saw recently at Molly Wood Garden Design's shop in Costa Mesa. 

Here's a sample:

The pots are cast concrete, and their English designer is obviously enamored with all things textured. 

And that, I'm afraid, is about all the info I have.  Not surprisingly, Wood is reluctant to share much info about her source.  And I haven't been able to find anything about Flat Earth Designs -- the name stamped on the pots -- through a web search.

All I know is I am already regretting not buying the small, ribbed pot directly above on the left.  It wouldn't have hurt my budget that much--the bigger ones can be a bit pricey--and I could keep it restocked with inexpensive supermarket houseplants and it would still look cute.  Heck, even a plastic plant would look good.

Or maybe I'll just buy that separate ring thing it is dropped into and set it on my desk.  It looks like a mermaid's tiara.  Maybe I'll even wear it.

By Julie Chai, Sunset associate garden editor

Photos by Alicia Martin

We can't wait to check out the Late Show Gardens, a brand new garden show at Cornerstone in Sonoma, California focusing on design and sustainability. We've been looking forward to it for months since the contributors are some of the biggest names in horticulture—essentially the who's who of the garden scene—from the Bay Area and beyond.

As you can imagine, pulling together a garden show is a major undertaking. It involves endless planning and organizing, and the week before the show, when designers actually start building the display gardens, is especially intense. Tons of soil are hauled in, along with large trees, landscape art, and accessories—the photo above is a behind-the-scenes look at two displays, Growth Melt and Overgrowth, in progress. We can't wait to see what they look like when they're done!

The show kicks off this Thursday 9/17 with an evening preview party, and runs through Sunday 9/20. I'll be there Friday—hope to see you there!

For info and tickets, go to thelateshowgardens.org or call 415/721-1550.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

We wrote about a garden with dark purple walls recently. (Suzanne McKevitt's house with its Approaching Storm paint).  Here's another wonderfully brave garden.  Three primary colors in one small patio!  The mustard yellow of the house, a tall cobalt blue wall, and a shorter tomato red wall.  The plants are still young but eventually, there will be blue agapanthus spilling over the red wall and Tropicana cannas flanking the blue one, and the color will be even more riotous.

But it's already a wonderfully energizing space.  Makes apache tan and adobe white seem pretty dull, doesn't it?

Fullerton landscape architect Alison Terry designed the garden.  The home's Spanish colonial architecture and its owner's bold personality inspired the space.  There are more details from this project on her website.

By Hazel White, Sunset contributor

Photo by Marion Brenner

 A new outdoor garden show, focusing on design and sustainable practices, runs September 18–20 at Cornerstone Sonoma. See 18 gardens that propose imaginative solutions to climate change by designers such as Chandler and Chandler, Beth Mullins, Gary Ratway, and Shirley Alexandra Watts. Among the 19 speakers are photographer/author Ken Druse, Tom Fischer of Timber Books, Mark Hertsgaard, environment correspondent for The Nation, and garden designers Glenn Withey and Charles Price. Shopping is horticultural top of the line: Australian Native Plants Nursery, Chimera Nursery, Digging Dog Nursery, Momiji Nursery, Renee’s Garden Seeds, San Marcos Growers, Sunnyside Organic Seedlings and many more. For information and tickets: www.thelateshowgardens.org or 415/721-1550.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

You saw Venice garden designer Suzanne McKevitt's front yard on Monday.  Now here's what her inner courtyard looks like.  There's a little joke hidden in this sleek, sophisticated garden.  Can you spot it?

For those of you who didn't -- I certainly wouldn't have if McKevitt hadn't pointed it out -- here's a closer look.

Yes, that weed popping up out of her faux turf carpet is a real dandelion, deliberately planted.  McKevitt's little prank.  Funny thing, though, but this has proved to be the place her dog Boots, a sturdy Australian blue heeler, likes to sit most.  "Good thing dandelions are tough," says McKevitt, "because this plant gets squished often."