Category Archives: The Intimate Landscape

The small details, shapes, and textures that catch my eye.

Late Fall vs Early Spring

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Woodland Path in Late Fall

Woodland Path in Early Spring

I love the four seasons. Above is one of the reasons. In early spring the red buds are bursting and the daffodils are blooming. Leaves on the woodland maples are just starting to emerge. Six months later, the leaves on the red buds have dropped and the leaves on the maples have turned brown and are just starting to drop. The foliage on the perennials have turned brown and are starting to die back. As winter moves in, the branches of the red and yellow twig dogwoods along with the red winterberries will provide winter color to the woodland.

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Winter Is Coming Early

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Winter Color
Heatherwood Lower Garden

Even when the ground is covered with snow, the color of Heatherwood shines through. This is one of my favorite intimate scenes in our lower garden. The bronze of the sawtooth oak, the red of the oak leaf hydrangeas, the yellow of the yellow-twig dogwood, the the grey-blue of the blue spruce, the purple-brown of the nine-bark, and the background orange and green highlight the winter garden.

This image was taken during our first snow about a week ago. Today we are getting our second snowfall of the season. It looks like it will be a big one. The good news is that I have my tractor back from its seasonal maintenance check up to plow the driveway. The bad news is that we have not put on our snow tires yet.

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An Eastern Washington Blue Sky Winter Day

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Looking Up to Selah Ridge
Heatherwood, First Snow

We had our first snow of the season a couple of days ago. After the snow flurries stopped, the sky opened up to this beautiful blue sky. Off I went with my camera! The remaining late fall color created a nice contrast against the fresh snow. It will be several months before we will have a morning cup of coffee here in one of our little garden hideaways.

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Driveway Welcome

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Looking in from the Driveway
Heatherwood Autumn

This is one of the several views that we have designed into our Heatherwood garden. Its purpose is to create an interesting view into the garden from the street as walkers stroll past our driveway. Late autumn provides beautiful color contrasts with the whites of the birch limbs against the reds of the Autumn Glory maples. The foreground of grasses, perennials and evergreen shrubs give it a little extra punch.

It is our pleasure to share the garden with our neighbors to brighten their days as well as ours.

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Thanksgiving Colors

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Path to Center Circle
Heatherwood Autumn

Oranges, reds, yellows, and browns are the colors of Thanksgiving. Heatherwood, in the late fall, displays these colors throughout the garden. We cook our Thanksgiving turkey outside. So even with all the football games going on, we venture out every half hour or so and enjoy the fall colors around us.

We have so much to be thankful for, including this little spot of Eden. We wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving as you enjoy it with family, friends, loved ones, and each other!

K & M

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Brightness on a Dreary Late Fall Morning

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Winter Garden Color in the Lower Garden
Heatherwood Autumn

We designed Heatherwood to have color throughout all four seasons. Color provided by the Midwinter Fire, red-twig, and yellow-twig dogwoods complements the brightness and textures of the ornamental grasses. In a few years, the evergreen trees will get taller creating a nice green background. Together they all provide brightness to a dreary late fall day.

This part of the garden is three years old. We have enjoyed watching the plants grow from one gallon pots to these mid-sized shrubs and grasses. It will take a couple more years for them to fill in and mature into “garden-sized” plants. By then, the evergreens will have grown several feet taller. Watching a garden grow provides so much enjoyment for Mary and I!

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Buddies

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Chief Joseph Lodgepole Pine & Sester’s Dwarf Blue Spruce
Heatherwood Autumn

I woke up this morning and read the news headlines. My spirits were down in the dumps. To bring my spirits up, I started reviewing my images of our garden that I created earlier this week. I stopped when I saw the image above and started to contemplate. Here are two completely different species growing up side by side, complementing each other in complete harmony with the other trees and plants in the landscape around them. Why can’t we do the same?

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Look up!

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Japanese Maple Leaf
Washington Park Arboretum, Seattle

As I walk along a trail, it so easy for me to focus my vision looking forward. I frequently just stop and look all around, up, down, side to side, and backwards. When I am with others, it drives them crazy … there he goes again! All I can say is that I see and enjoy what surrounds me much more.

I created this image when I glanced up and saw backlit maple tree leaves fluttering in a gentle breeze. I stopped along the path and watched the branches and leaves waving back and forth, surrounded by rays of light flickering through the canopy trees above. Before I raised my camera, I had to move aside on the path to let several people whisk by not realizing what they were missing.

Now the work began, I looked and looked to find that perfect leaf. After several minutes, I again realized that nature is not perfect. I closed my eyes and re-opened them, looking for something that caught my eye. I found this one fluttering leaf, moved around to get a good background, then just waited for the breeze to position it just right.

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Light, Shadows, and Nature

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Japanese Maple Collection
Washington Arboretum, Seattle

Light, shadows, and nature in a beautiful garden setting instills excitement within and brightens my day! As I round the bend from the access road, I face this scene. Tall canopy trees filter soft light from the sky. Beyond the Japanese maples, lies a quiet pond in the shade. It is a wonderful welcome to the Arboretum’s Japanese maple collection.

These trees are special to me. They remind me of a family happily congregating together.

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Looking Northeast from the Neighbor’s

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Selah Bluff and Lower Garden
Heatherwood Fall

A neighborhood garden should be designed to be enjoyed from the outside looking in as well as internally. As we designed Heatherwood, we wanted to provide a separation between our property and our neighbor’s. At the same time, we wanted to present a pleasing view from our neighbor’s back yard through our garden up to the hills rising above. In this section we kept the planting height down with ornamental grasses and mid-sized deciduous shrubs. For winter interest, the yellows, reds, and oranges of the Midwinter Fire, red twig, and yellow twig dogwoods mixed between the ornamental grasses will provide a textured and colorful winter foreground for the bluff above.

During our design process, we reviewed our concepts with our neighbor over a glass of wine or two. They were happy with what we envisioned and we were happy that they could enjoy it as much as we would.

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