Photo/Illustration: Courtesy of Laura Kokesh and Alyson Markley
Today’s photos are from Laura Kokesh in Redmond, Washington. Laura says, “I live in Trilogy out on Novelty Hill area of Redmond. I have been designing and changing my garden for the five years I’ve been here. There was nothing on my lot when I bought it. Just clay and hard pan. But I receive full sun and I brought in 47 yards of topsoil and added lots of compost. I do not use fertilizers and instead, compost two times a year and prune like crazy!
“I have some lovely specimens, including a lovely beech tree, Vanderwolf pines, several miniature Japanese maples, dozens of lilies, and massive amounts of vines like three- and five-leaved akebias, clematis, and climbing roses. I do not have much space, but have several seating areas, each with its own vignette to appreciate the stained glass and other artwork mixed in with my plantings.
“I also have several Hinoki cypress, redwoods, and several varieties of grasses as you can see. I also have five different water features spread throughout the garden. I have several large arborvitae in the back inner yard to provide length and structure throughout the year and have layered the colors and sizes of the plants to provide year round interest.
“This garden now looks mature, so the pruning is at least twice a year, often more with the massive vines I have! I hope you and your readers enjoy this garden as much as I do.”
Lovely, Laura! I’d love to see some of your seating areas next.
Want us to feature YOUR garden in the Garden Photo of the Day? CLICK HERE!
Want to see every post ever published? CLICK HERE!
**Check out the GPOD Pinterest page, where you can browse all the post in categories…fun! CLICK HERE!**
Comments
Beautiful Laura-what is that yummy clematis?!
Very artistic in your approach. Beautiful escape to a world of your own creation. I LOVE the round window to your garden. Do you see this from your seating area? That would be cool to see.
I agree, what is the clematis. Very interesting colouring.
JR
What a wonderful garden you have created, Laura! From the luscious Hakonechloa grasses to the amazing purple beech, (is it a weeping or fountain beech?) I just feel like I want to stay forever! The salmon colored maple is a wonderful specimen plant? Is that a Larch peeking into the photo of the cannas? Would love to see your fall photos. Sorry I am gushing...just a fabulous photo array.
Regina
Oh, my, Laura, looking at all your green lushness and beautifully framed vignettes, I feel like I just got my ticket to paradise punched. Those fabulous clumps of Hakonechloa grasses are positively mesmerizing..I am breaking one of the 10 commandments as I lust for them in my heart!
Are any of your beautiful glass sculpture pieces done by the artist Barbara Sanderson?
As much as I love flowers, I love the different textures as well. This is such a wonderful example of that. Nice photos, I would love to see more. I too have found that composting twice a year gives me more benefit than some fertilizers. Thanks for the ideas.
Beautifully laid out garden. It shows your hard work and your artistic eye. I lust after your purple beech. I want one. They are sold here, but they really don't grow here.
Great work!
All this in five years? Amazing. Is the salmon-colored maple one of the acer pseudoplatanus cultivars? I'd love to know more about it, especially what it looks like as the season progresses. Thanks for sharing.
Amazing garden for such a short amount of time. You have some really special varieties. I too love the clematis and the pinkish maple. The size of your Hakonechloa is really impressive. Everything looks so lush. Nice to see mid-summer when some of our gardens are showing some wear and tear from the summer's heat.
Very nice plantings and excellent photography. I also planted a weeping copper beech some ten years ago, purchased in a one gallon pot from a local nursery that propagates their own (it was still in the greenhouse and wasn't ready to be sold but I'm a good customer), was two years old, and it's doing very well (http://www.storysnursery.com/). But mine is a good twenty feet from my house. I'm hoping you won't need to move yours as even though they are very slow growers and often columnar once they attain their full height (~20') they do tend to widen to a width of 10-15 feet. Yours looks like it was fairly mature nursery stock and so likely had to have been professionally planted as one you'd be able to plant on your own couldn't have attained that size in only five years... I'm just curious to why so close to your house, I'm positive an experienced nursery person would have strongly urged against it... also its roots can and probably will damage your home's foundation, beech roots are massive and extensive. Everything else looks lovely, and thank you very much for your crisp and well composed photography.
Your gardens are truly beautiful, Laura. There is no question that you are an artist.
So beautiful! Cannot imagine the number of hours you have logged. My garden is the same age but is not this mature!
A garden after our own hearts! That beech looks like 'Red Obelisk', a variety that only gets three feet wide, as its name implies, so is sited appropriately. The maple does indeed look like a pseudoplatanus - 'Esk Sunset' is our guess. We have both of them and they are amongst our favorite trees. Really beautiful job, Laura, and it shows what great soil prep you did, too - a step too often overlooked. We too would like to see it in fall!
Beautiful garden art works! The blue glass bottle reminds me of Chihuly's glass art and the wood work with a circular opening reminds me of a Chinese garden. The clematis has an interesting color pattern. I googled it and the closest I could come up with is Clematis viticella "Alba Luxurians". Is it?
Stunningly beautiful! Thanks so much for sharing!!
Wow! I have a serious case of garden envy.
Your Jap. forest grass does look amazing! And I love the second photo with the cannas and that crazy looking shrub... what is it? a pine?
I love cobalt blue garden accessories and yours' are stunning!
We're having an awful drought here in The Catskills and it's been hot (85-95). The other day I was in my garage and noticed how I still had my grand's snow coaster that they grew out of some five years ago so there it hung on the wall all that time. Suddenly a light came on, what a great (and inexpensive) way to kill two birds with one stone so to speak, waters the birds and their splashing waters my new Acer griseum.
A better picture of my new water feature:
As one can see I like lots of space between my plantings.
Nice privacy ,nice land, Tractor1. What else ya got planted there? Love Acer griseum, but my husband cut ours up for bonsai material.
cwheat000: Your husband cut it up?!?!?was he punishing you? That was some mighty pricy bonsai material, wouldn't an old lettuce crate have worked as well? I planted dozens of trees of all types... in those two pictures you can see two sycamores, a blue spruce, and a gingko. There's a huge multi-trunked Norway maple that was obviously there before I existed... and of course my vegetable garden. But right now I'm most pleased with my new water feature, I even added a flat stone, makes a nice island for the smaller birds. I actually searched diligently for a birdbath but those I liked cost hundreds of dollars, were not much larger than a dinner plate, and weren't made very well. I can buy a three pack of those snow saucers at Amazon for $12, and they are much larger, are simple to clean, and the birds love it, the bluejays put on quite a show.
Impressive plant combinations! As many have mentioned, your artistry shines through in a luscious, pleasing, well maintained and healthy garden. Wow!
Laura is a good friend, and passionate gardener. I photographed her property last week, and suggested she submit them to Michele. So glad you get to enjoy her garden with me... via the pics! She has several seating areas, and one does view the round window. Laura is going to log in tomorrow, and give specific plant/tree names and answer questions.
Tractor1- Thanks for feeling my pain. I was hoping to see that paperbark maple grow into an impressive tree. In all fairness to my husband, he did foot the bill that day we bought plants, so I guess it was his right to hack it up. I'm digging the water features, too. Looks like the geese are enjoying as well. Maybe they aren't the most elegant, but they sure are practical. Hey, if the neighbors don't like em; oh wait, what neighbors?
cwheat000: perhaps you can obtain a new paperbark maple, I'm sure you can find some spot to plant it as they grow very slowly and they don't grow very large. I still find it difficult to believe that anyone would kill such a rare tree. Canada geese may not be very elegant on the ground but the instant they become airborne no other bird flies so spectacularly, or as high, they own the stratosphere... and their landings are so perfectly synchronized that they don't look real. Some years I have over a hundred here, some years only a few, but that can change at any time... right now I have eight residents that were born here but as the summer progresses more will arrive, as fall approaches my yard is busier than Ohare. I don't mind them at all, lot's of free organic fertilizer. I can't tell which are which just by looking but I can recognize their movements, they all walk differently. Even the crows that live here, each have a particular walk. Oh, I do have neighbors, but we are all some distance apart, the minimum property size on this road is five acres. I sure wish it would rain.
Keep the philosophy quite simply conservative. It is mostly influenced by the power in the defensive team. [url=http://www.miumiutokkaja.com/]ミュウミュウ 財布 新作[/url],Let's consider extra bases if we can, yet you cannot find any motive we should not need faith typical own participants will bat us in (if they can be doing all their job).[url=http://www.yuumeigagauotti.com/]ガガミラノ 時計[/url], Recreational softball is actually a hitter's video game. [url=http://www.vivienneoutletshop.com/]ヴィヴィアンウエストウッド アウトレット[/url],In case the team will be hitting properly, we need to not have any problems running conservative bottoms. [url=http://www.katespadergirl.com/]http://www.katespadergirl.com/[/url],Aggressiveness for the base routes ought to be inversely in connection with great the team is impacting. [url=http://www.seikouottijap.com/]seiko 時計[/url],FORMER MATE: you will not see one of the best teams playing the overall game today stretches many doubles straight into triples. Once we make bottom running mistakes we take the bordtennisbat out of our own hitter's arms. [url=http://www.vivienneoutletshop.com/]ヴィヴィアン 財布[/url],Having a strong hand? [url=http://www.katespadergirl.com/]ケイトスペード バッグ[/url],Having an exact hand? How well does the some other team's cutoff system are doing work? [url=http://www.coachofftenpo.com/]http://www.coachofftenpo.com/[/url],The time could it be taking them how to obtain the ball throughout through the outfield? [url=http://www.miumiutokkaja.com/]ミュウミュウ バッグ[/url],These are typically just some of the questions a superb base trainer will be attempting to answer as being the game moves along (as well because the other group, [url=http://www.coachofftenpo.com/]コーチ 財布 新作[/url],create know after you is going to be foundation coaching).
Bear in mind given that often the ball is in the outfield almost nothing can be performed to counteract runners by advancing. [url=http://www.yuumeigagauotti.com/]ガガミラノ 時計[/url],Typically the quicker a baseball returns on the infield, the earlier we can easily prevent such development.
The top pitchers are those that can throw any strike if they must. [url=http://www.seikouottijap.com/]seiko 時計[/url],A powerful pitcher is often one that throws many balls, however has few guides (it's called "challenging the actual hitters"). [url=http://www.vivienneoutletshop.com/]http://www.vivienneoutletshop.com/[/url],Conversely, the pitcher having no guides may be suppose of throwing lots of attacks. [url=http://www.katespadergirl.com/]ケイトスペード 財布 新作[/url],This may suggest they are not challenging often the hitters. [url=http://www.coachofftenpo.com/]http://www.coachofftenpo.com/[/url],Allowable limits for moves: 0 in order to 2 walks for every game and taking walks with no just one on bottom part. [url=http://www.yuumeigagauotti.com/]ガガミラノ 時計[/url],Inappropriate restricts for taking walks: walking the particular 9th, 10th, or 11th batters, guides with 1st basic occupied. Avoid ever argue having an umpire. That do a tiny bit of excellent. It only hurts a person and the group. The umpire may consciously or even subconsciously get back toward you and also the crew. Along with the umpire's depths of the mind should be to get influencing. [url=http://www.miumiutokkaja.com/]ミュウミュウ 財布 新作[/url],Like if you are hitting and the pitch is a limited strike or baseball, an umpire may undoubtedly look for signs whether or not the actual pitch was obviously a strike or not.[url=http://www.seikouottijap.com/]http://www.seikouottijap.com/[/url], Typically the split second you opt you are not about to swing with the message, stop checking out this.
Log in or create an account to post a comment.
Sign up Log in