The Soft Dimension

The hot summer sun always seems to catch me by surprise after our long winters. That gentle spring light drifting in my south facing window is crowded with plants, until a week too late into summer. Since summer doesn’t hit here until after July 4th I really forget it is going to come at all. I only rush to remove them once the burns become visible. So there is the inevitable scorching of leaves which I am prepared to part with on most species.

But my bromilliad is different. Her symmetry is so intrinsic to her beauty and so hard to regrow once lost. Last year I couldn’t bare to part with one single leaf. So she sat for a while a reminder of my neglect. Tawny brown leaves fading into her healthy green…

While prepping for a mural one day the paint seemed more needed on the burned husks than the paper sketch pad in my hand. So I went to work. Added a layer of iridescent blue on top and then a purple layer below… The little bit of attention went a long way. She fits in to the window menagerie again, with her own beautiful twist.

The honey light through that one leaf… arg. I want that sweet substance poured on me right now. To whomever posted these down on Summit Ave this summer, you’ve inspired all sorts of musings with petals up and down cork boards at home. But nothing is as lovely as wearing sandals and sunshine and seeing these naked leaves…

Perhaps it was the unexpected snow storms and cold weather but the plants that didn’t add to the compost after this winter came back more robust than ever over the summer. Inside I felt stronger too… and for some reason what thrilled me most within this new found freedom was to take some chances, to be out in the golden warmth experimenting with new ways of seeing.

In my container designs I incorporated more perennials and evergreens than ever (in a tradition that favors annuals) and had some really delicious results. A few things stuck me as truly successful… A design for a local sculptor… The containers for the store front at the company I work for…

More than ever I was focusing in on texture. As always wanting a feeling of movement, the repetition of form, and the blurring of extended space and bold shapes with breathy and lacy embellishments. I didn’t seem to want a real separation between plants as much as a mingling of their voices.

In one of the images you see the soft plumes of pennisetum alopecuroides ‘karlyrose’ held up by the structure of a karokia ‘sunsplash’, nestled inside a hydrangea quercifolia pee wee’ and epimedium ‘caramel’, near to a sedum ‘autumn joy’, and the velvet and woolly leaves of stachys cascading down the side of a large glazed rose/orange container…

Soft was the sensation I saught to enhance. I wanted arrangements as welcome as a cashmere sweater on bare skin, plants you wanted to brush up next to. (Bold and sharp froms, in moderation of course, helped the airy and soft from floating away.) Imagine what fun it was making things that I thought we all wouldn’t mind wearing, or sleeping in. They were like the little dreams I have after I work outside all day among the flowers… you close your eyes to sleep but instead you fall into an echo of patterns and colors.