The idea of a pocket park or small area with park like presence is not a new idea.  Small parks range in size the smallest recognized by Guinness World Record Book Mills Inn Park.  This tiny park located on SW Natio Parkway Portland, OR consists of a single planter with one tree planted inside. The slightly more practical small spaces like Paley Park in New York City illustrate the value small open spaces. Paley offers visitors a space to get away from the hustle and noise of the city.  The wonderful pocket park is defined by a large wall of water adjacent to a brick wall lined with ivy and a small coffee cart.  Visitors enjoy coffee or tea at one of the many tables inside the parks gate.  This Idea of the pocket park as an urban oasis has grown and transformed over time.

In 2005 a new type of small park was created as a temporary installation.  Parking days was born in San Francisco created by design firm Rebar who challenged others to think about the use of public space and the opportunity that lies in the transformation of a single parking space.  Participates in Parking Days take over single parking spaces and convert them into park like environment for a day.  The mission of Parking days is to start a conversation about the need for more open space.

Most recently these temporary installations have inspired a new breed of more Permanent Park, creatively termed “Parkletts”.  Often nothing more than a few benches or bean bags and a planter box, Parkletts are popping up in numbers around the city of San Francisco.  A feature article in American society of Landscape Architects magazine ASLA featured these spaces.  Designs ranged from outdoor café spaces like those seen along the most famous boulevards of Europe to modern sleek metal work and lighting outside a high end auto dealer. I challenge you to think what your downtown would look like if you replaced those surface parking spots with public open space.

~Matt Holt, BLA

Landscape Designer and Consultant

DeSantis Landscapes

This guest post is brought to you by Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking. Rick’s Fencing provides design and installation of pergola covers, decks & fencing in and around Salem, Oregon.

Pergola covers are known more for their Old-World charm than their ability to block out rain. Still, when you invest the time to grow climbing plants over your pergola, the results can bring you year-round color and a delightful garden escape. A pergola cover entwined with foliage creates an outdoor room that feels like your own secret garden.

Benefits of pergola covers include:

More outdoor living space. Use a pergola with a natural cover made of climbing plants to extend your home’s living and entertaining space. With this beautiful addition, you’ll create a getaway spot in your own yard that gives you a reason to spend more time outside.

Weather protection. When you add enough climbing plants to your pergola, they’ll form a cover that provides shade from the sun’s rays. Or you can add a polycarbonate roof to your pergola for protection from the rain – a popular option for many homeowners. In addition to building a pergola cover over your patio, you can make a “green” tunnel with a series of connected pergolas over a walkway.

Add value to your home. A pergola cover, particularly when covered with beautiful flowers, adds interest to your home, which can raise its value. More importantly, the scenery you create adds value to the time you spend in your yard.

Best Plants for Pergola Covers

When considering which vines to plant, remember to choose ones that grow well in your region. While some vines cling to structures on their own, you may need to train others with twine, stakes or trellises.

In addition to Japanese wisteria, grapes and climbing roses, the following are great climbing plants for pergola covers:

Clematis. With white, pink, purple and deep red flowers, the clematis is an early bloomer and is simple to grow and maintain. The flowers come in small, medium and large varieties.

Honeysuckle. If you love fragrant flowers, you’ll love honeysuckle. These climbers are simple to grow and maintain and come with white, yellow, pink or purple flowers. Because it’s a semi-evergreen plant, its foliage provides cover even during the winter.

Passion flower. The exotic-looking passion flower, or passiflora, has ten petals, radial filaments in a contrasting color and stigmas that protrude from the middle. This climbing flower is ideal if you want to attract hummingbirds, butterflies and bumblebees to your garden. While the passion flower looks high-maintenance, many varieties can survive winter temperatures as low as -7 degrees.

Jasmine. Delicate pink, purple, white and yellow jasmine blossoms fill the warm summer air with their iconic scent. The maintenance required for a jasmine plant depends on the variety you purchase; some do better in cold weather than others.

Solanum. Also known as the “potato vine,” the solanum has big purple flowers and can quickly take over a pergola. Pair this flower with other brightly colored climbers, such as deep pink roses, white passion flowers or yellow honeysuckles.

Lathyrus. The perennial variety of lathyrus, also known as the sweet pea, has sweet white, purple or pink flowers. Unlike its cousins, this sweet pea variety comes back every year. 

Material Options

The most popular materials for pergola covers are cedar and vinyl. Both can be equally beautiful, and each has its own benefits.

Cedar: Cedar is naturally resistant to insects, rot and weather. Since it is natural wood, you can stain or pain cedar in the color of your choice. Or leave your cedar pergola in its natural state and refinish it regularly.

Vinyl: Vinyl is a synthetic material that’s immune to insect damage, rot, water damage, fading or splitting. Consequently, you don’t need to stain or paint it. Because the material is so durable, many vinyl pergola manufacturers offer lifetime warranties.

Call and talk to one of our designers today to include a pergola and plantings in yoru next landscape project.

503-364-8376 Salem

503-639-0151 Portland

photo and post courtesy of Rick’s Custom Fencing

I often talk to clients about dreaming and imagining their perfect landscape.  The place they want to relax or unwind with a glass of wine in a comfy chair.  As I reflect I feel this is a question I rarely ask myself, what is my ideal or dream landscape?  Living in Portland in an urban environment you begin to cherish the open space and parks that have been protected for us by those prior.  When I walk around my neighborhood and the waterfront I often think about what this place looked like prior to development.  It likely offered a tremendous amount of habitat for flourishing flora and fauna to develop and thrive.  It makes me question if we are maximizing the way we use our land.  I understand the realities of the world and people need space to live work and play, but I often see so many unused nooks and crannies that could be rehabilitated to foster environments of beauty and natural habitat for plants and animals that have been removed from the urban environment.  The roof tops of dilapidated industrial buildings, the corridors between on ramps highway spaces under bridges and along waterways.  Imagine a neighborhood that instead of fences, walls and gates had interconnected front yards.  The yards could become a corridor filled with native plants, rain gardens, nurse logs and foraging ground and cover for bird’s insects and amphibians.  How great would it be to sit outside and watch migratory birds, or establish an environment for a child to catch his or her first frogs, salamanders and toads right in your front yard.

~Matt Holt, BLA

Landscape Designer and Consultant

DeSantis Landscapes

Plants are the major element used to define the boundaries of outdoor space just as walls, ceilings, and floors are the elements that define space indoors.  In planting design, shrubs become walls, groundcovers, turf grass, and hardscapes become floors, tree trunks become columns, and tree canopies become ceilings.  These are referred to as the ground plane, the vertical plane, and the overhead plane.

You can create spaces with any one of these planes alone, or create rich layered spaces through the combined effect of all three.  For instance:

•  1 tree can be a column to lean against, an overhead canopy that provides shelter and creates shade, and a marker for a place on the ground plane through its shadow.
• Different patterns of groundcovers, turf grass, and hardscapes can create spaces just like rugs, carpet, tile, and hardwood can be used indoors.
• A row of shrubs can create a wall that separates one space from another.
• A 3 foot tall shrub creates a physical barrier (you can see into the space but can’t physically walk into it) and an 8 foot tall shrub creates a physical and visual barrier (you can’t see into the adjoining space).
• Trees of different heights can create a vaulted ceiling affect and spaces between them can act as skylights.

Planting design becomes much stronger when thought of in these 3 dimensional terms.  All of these elements should be combined to create a space that you want to be in, rather than an object that you want to look at.

~Trey McBride, BLA

Account Manager

DeSantis Landscapes

Looking for a cost effective option to create “useable” space in your landscape? Concrete pavers can provide the perfect solution for a “get-a way” area.

Pavers are manufactured in a variety of colors, sizes and shapes and can be selected to provide everything from an “old world” cobblestone to environmentally sound permeable types.

Installation costs are typically just slightly more than traditional concrete but provide more opportunity for creativity and they will never crack!

Check out the attached links for material samples from a few manufacturers.

http://belgard.biz/collections.php?section=0&ind=3

https://www.mutualmaterials.com/sites/default/files/docs/products/Paleo_Tech_1.pdf

http://www.westerninterlock.com/products/paving-stones/roca-camino-stone

Give DeSantis Landscapes a call and we can recommend a paver solution for you today. We can design and install driveways, walkways and patios for any situation.

~Kyle Glynn

Landscape Designer/Estimator

To create mood with plant choices, you not only have to define the boundaries of your space, but you also have to think metaphorically about the character of the space and how it will be interpreted.  To do this, you must relate the elements of the space to their context.

The elements that we generally think of when we talk about mood are lighting, color, shape and position.  Moods of spaces can range just like moods for people: funny, somber, relaxed, excited, scared, angry, etc.

•  Two large, colorful hydrandgeas on either side of an entrance gate can be inviting, but a barberry with thorns can say to stay away.
• A shrub pruned into an ice cream cone would make most passersby laugh.
• A square courtyard with tall Italian cypress trees all around, a fountain in the middle, neatly manicured grass and shrubs, and amber lighting close to the ground would make the space feel very sophisticated, serene, and proud.  That same space with cherry trees around the outside would feel a little more cozy and a little less formal.  The cypress trees would create a place to entertain,  the cherry trees would create a place to sit and relax.

The great thing about creating a mood with your landscaping is that you suggest that same mood to the people using it.  So if you have a high stress job and want to relax, you can create a space in your home that can constantly suggest that you relax a little bit.  Any number of moods can be achieved with your landscaping and can begin to silently suggest that you feel the same way yourself.

~Trey McBride, BLA

Account Manager

DeSantis Landscapes