dare to dream
Our gardens provide nourishment and value for our clients
We live in a climate that allows us to grow a wide variety of edible, medicinal and ornamental plants year round. We strive to ensure that your garden delights and nourishes you and its wild inhabitants during every season. A thoughtfully planned garden provides habitat for animals and pollinators and incorporates elements that you can forage and harvest such as flower cuttings, edible fruit and vegetables.
“You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep spring from coming.”
– Pablo Neruda
Spring is a season of the garden starting to wake up and show signs of life. The rain saturates the landscape as trees start to bud, spring bulbs start to bloom and Summers perennials start to peek through the soil amongst the stable interest of evergreen shrubs and trees. We love the pop of color that forsythia and cherry blossoms provide and nothing beats the peonies starting to burst forth. In the PNW we can plant peas, cabbage, kale and other cold hardy vegetables in our raised beds to nourish ourselves through the coming months.
We are in gardens preparing irrigation systems, pruning for size and shape any shrubs and trees that have outgrown their space and bringing in layers of mulch to suppress weeds, maintain moisture and feed the soil.
“Cause a little bit of summer is what the whole year is about.”
— John Mayer
The Summer Garden in the PNW does not disappoint. Gardens are flush with budding perennial flowers and the sound of buzzing bees. Evergreen shrubs like pittosporum and abelia offer structure while blooms of echinacea, roses, daisies, whirling butterflies and dahlias bring pops of color to delight the senses. This is truly the time to enjoy your outdoor spaces and dream about changes to be made.
"There is a harmony in Autumn and a luster in its sky”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
As Summer comes to an end we start to see shorter daytime hours but we are still harvesting the Dahlias, Sunflowers and late blooming summer perennials. Apple trees are lush with fruit and as the deciduous trees start to lose their leaves we are raking them into garden beds as garden gold. These leaves will provide living mulch throughout the Winter and nourish the soil while it decays. We clean the storm drains and look forward to another cycle of the garden.This is the perfect time to put in new planting to be nourished by the rains to come.
“The color of springtime is in the flowers, the color of winter is in the imagination.”
— Terri Guillemets
We are blessed to have relatively mild Winters here in the PNW. Our winter gardens are abundant in texture and color. While a wide array of plants go dormant others burst to life. Witch Hazels and Mahonia provide strong structure and offer pops of color as well as critical nectar for hummingbirds and native bees still brave enough to forage. Conifers and evergreen shrubs offer some of the best shapes and colors for our PNW landscape. Hellebores shine with their lilting blossoms and magnificent foliage. Your garden can bring joy in the darkest days of Winter so you can hope and imagine for the oncoming warmth and vibrancy of Spring.
We are usually busy working with clients on new hardscape plans and installing or updating irrigation. Meanwhile we are visiting gardens to ensure paths are kept tidy and storm drains are clear. Fallen leaves get raked into garden beds as living mulch, not only suppressing weeds but decaying and adding nutrient rich material to the soil.