Producing Ambiance With Gardens

For the duration of his 40-year profession as a backyard garden writer and photographer, Derek Fell has created many garden areas, several involving his spouse Carolyn. The very best illustration of Garden perform might be seen at their residence, historic Cedaridge Farm, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. There, they have got designed a lot more than twenty concept areas, such as shade gardens, sunny perennial borders, tapestry gardens involving trees and shrubs, a cottage backyard garden, herb backyard garden, cutting backyard garden and an bold h2o garden.

Derek labored as being a expert on backyard garden design for the White House in the course of the Gerald Ford Administration. Derek designed Ford's 'Win' backyard, following his 'Win Speech', advising the country 10 strategies to struggle inflation.

Several yard designs by Derek Fell have been carried out with no inspecting the location. The great late architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed lovely houses for his clients, fully from pictures with no require for a site inspection.

Fell's backyard areas have been featured in newspapers, publications, books and also on television, such as Architectural Digest, Gardens Illustrated, The Backyard (the journal in the Royal Horticultural Society), Country Gardens, HGTV, QVC and PBS.

Derek has authored more than sixty textbooks and yard calendars, like 550 House Landscaping Suggestions (Simon & Schuster), The Encyclopedia of Yard Style (Firefly Books), The Complete Backyard Planning Manual (Friedman), Yard Accents (Henry Holt) and House Landscaping (Simon & Schuster).

Curb appeal and ambiance are important to brighten up your propoerty or prepare it for sale. Feel free to ask Derek any backyard related questions regardless of how big or small.

SOME Yard TYPES

H2o Backyard. H2o is the music of nature. It could be tricked over stones, cascaded from a excellent height so its crashes onto rocks. It can fall in a solid sheet or as silver threads. A lovely water backyard garden with waterfalls and stepping stones might be located in sunlight or shade. The drinking water backyard shown here is located at Cedaridge Farm. It includes a pool for dipping, and it features both a collection of koi and hardy h2o lilies. A popular water garden style features a koi pool fed by a series of waterfalls, and the drinking water re-circulated through filters to keep the drinking water clear.

Sunny Perennial Border. This could be formal or informal, square, rectangular, round and kidney shaped, in the form of an island bed or backed against a decorative hedge, wall or fence. Plants might be chosen to produce a parade of color through all the seasons, or concentrated to get a particular season. Color themes might be polychromatic like a rainbow, monochromatic (for instance all white - perfect for any wedding), or it can feature an Impressionist color harmony, such as yellow and purple; orange and blue; red, pink and silver; blue, pink and white; even black and white or black and orange (one of Monet's favorites). A popular perennial backyard garden design is two parallel border with a grass path leading to a focal point such like a sculpture or gazebo.

Tropical Backyard. You do not need to have to live in a frost-free area to have a lovely tropical yard. At Cedaridge Farm we have two - one is a tribute towards the design philosophy on the late Roberto Burle Marx, who developed dramatic tropical gardens around Rio. It is in a lightly shaded area and features plants that are hardy (like 'Sum & Substance' hosta) but look tropical and tender plants that are tender (like banana trees and tree ferns) that either want moving indoors for the duration of winter or could be discarded like annuals at the end of the season. Our second tropical space is a patio with tropical plants grown in containers.

Shade Gardens. We layout two kinds of shade gardens - one where the plants provide mostly foliage interest (like ferns, hostas, heuchera and hakone grass), and plants that flower well (like impatiens, coleus, and lilies), or a combination of the two.

Woodland Yard. Whether you have existing woodland or you want to create a woodland from scratch, the result might be sensational. Decide whether you want deciduous trees that provide fall color or evergreens that stay green all winter, or a mixture. At Cedaridge we made a 'cathedral' backyard where the existing trees are trimmed high so the trunks look like the columns of a cathedral, and the branches arch out to meet overhead like the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral. Below, we provide two a lot more layers of interest, at ground level and the under-story.

Vegetable Backyard. We can style you an easy-care backyard garden of raised beds where vegetables are planted in blocks or an edible landscape where edibles are grown for ornamental effect. We can provide the plan for a backyard that was approved for the White property throughout the Ford Administration where Derek Fell labored being a yard expert. Derek Fell's book, "Vegetables - How to Select, Grow & Enjoy", won a ideal book award from the Garden Writers Association.

Herb Backyard. The herb garden at Cedaridge Farm is a 'quadrant design', feature in many calendars and books, like Derek Fell's 'Herb Gardening for Beginners.' We can also provide a cartwheel layout or a parterre herb garden for bountiful harvests of fresh herbs. The Herb Garden can also do double-duty as a vegetable yard.

Slicing Backyard. The chopping garden at Cedaridge Farm features bulbs such as tulips and daffodils for spring, and ever-blooming annuals to follow the bulbs so armloads of flowers could be harvested from April through October.

Victorian Backyard garden. A backyard with romantic overtones! Imagine a white gazebo framed by mostly white flowers to get a wedding in the family. Or choose from among several color harmonies, such as yellow and blue, red, pink and silver, or blue, pink and white.

Cottage Backyard. You don't need a cottage to have a cottage garden. But if you do, such being a guest cottage, why not wrap it in shrub roses and climbers, plus those delightful English cottage garden plants like poppies, sunflowers and pinks. We also like to include plants to attract butterflies and hummingbirds.

Stream Backyard garden. Lucky you if you have an existing stream to be landscaped. At Cedaridge Farm we have a stream, but when we moved here it was overgrown with poison ivy and brambles. Today it is criss-crossed with bridges, and beds of moisture-loving plants like astilbe and h2o iris. If you don't have a stream, but would like one, we can create a style where the h2o is re-circulated along one that's man-made but looks natural.

Orchard. You don't need to have a lot of space for any productive orchard. By making the right choices, fruit trees might be grown in containers or espaliered against fences and walls to save space. Peaches and apples may be trained over arbors. Just a few plants of small fruits like strawberries and raspberries can be highly productive.

Bog Garden. Ideal for soils that tend to remain moist all season, bog gardens may be extremely colorful and highly imaginative, incorporating stepping stones and bridges to cross wet places, and growing some of nature's most diverse plant families, such as h2o iris, Japanese primroses, astilbe and waterlilies.

Japanese Backyard garden. The problem with several Japanese gardens is a tendency to use pseudo-Japanese elements such as Chinese dragons. Derek Fell has twice traveled to Japan, has written award-winning articles about Japanese backyard garden layout, and has the experience to style authentic-looking spaces in the Japanese tradition using elements of Zen or Feng Shui, or a combination from the two disciplines to create a magical space.

Italian Backyard garden. Although Italian gardens can be highly ostentatious, requiring steep slopes to achieve the most effective effect, like the Villa d'Este, near Rome, small areas can achieve the aura of an Italian yard. Derek Fell has not only visited some in the finest Italian Gardens, such as La Mortola on the Italian coast, and Boboli overlooking Florence, he has toured and photographed the Vatican Gardens.

French Formal Garden. The elaborate style of Versailles Palace and Vaux le Vicompte, may be beyond your means, but elements of French backyard garden style, such as a parterre yard, can be incorporated in small areas.

Monet's Yard. This lovely artist's backyard north of Paris contains a lot more than a hundred special planting ideas to create what Monet considered his greatest work of art. Moreover, his planting tips have undoubtedly inspired more new backyard style than any other backyard. Monet's arched bridge, his waterlily pond, his arches leading for the entrance of his home, and his color harmonies are just some examples of Monet's innovation that people today like to emulate.

Tapestry Yard (Trees & Shrubs). The nice French Impressionist artist, Paul Cezanne's backyard garden, in Provence, is composed mostly of trees and shrubs, not only being a labor saving device, but to provide a tapestry of color from leaf colors, leaf texture and leaf shapes. What could be much more appealing than to look out of a window of your residence at a rich foliage panorama, like all shades of green from light green to dark-green, plus blue, silver, gold, bronze?

Hillside Backyard garden. Even dry hillsides can make gorgeous rock gardens, with paths twisting and turning in a zig-zag to create a visual adventure from the top in the slope towards the bottom. They might be terraced and threaded with streams to create waterfalls and planted with some of nature's most lovely plant forms. Bridges, benches and belvedere are some of the structural elements that can add interest to a hillside.