A few years ago the F & G Show began including small patio gardens under the title Living It Up as Display Gardens. Last year and this year I have designed one of these. Condominiums and townhouses offer small spaces for gardens, and the idea of Living It Up is to offer some of the possibilities of what can be done with perhaps 150 square feet.
Above is last year's garden: Phoebe's Opening Night. To me there is an extravagance in the look: the draped cloth, the pleated pillows, the green spilling out of the stone, the small white rock mounded in the containers and on the floor. I decided this year I wanted a simpler look, and one that would focus on the plants.
So this year there is less.
This year the focus is the plants, and their combinations, and the containers--in various shapes, some pale green, others in shades of cream. And on the very striking floor. This year the plants must do the work.
And I think they do. There are black as midnight AJUGA and mondo grass and willow catkins. There are greens: shiny camellia leaves and pale ferns and hellebore flowers. There is pink: the tiny but powerfully scented ABELIOPHYLLUM flowers and coralbell leaves swirled with black and pink. There are two wonderful pink hellebore, each plant bearing about five flowers, and not one flower of the ten looking exactly like any other.
The theme of this year's Show is "A Floral Symphony." The symphony in my garden is very much made up of the plants.
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