more from the county fair

Let me share my favorite gar­den design from this year’s San Diego County Fair. If I tell you that I grew up on Sun­set Mag­a­zine and that I fre­quented the Sun­set demon­stra­tion gar­dens at the Los Ange­les County Arbore­tum in the 1970s, you can see why a gar­den like this pushes my but­tons. This space my North County’s Akana Design really embraces the Sun­set aes­thetic of com­bin­ing mod­ern design with liv­able out­door spaces. (Ignore the ugly black shade cloth back­ground that’s been draped over the plas­tic white lat­tice that the fair pro­vided for their displays.)

I’ve been known to grouse about out­door spaces where the gar­den has been sac­ri­ficed at the expense of adding yet another room to a McMan­sion, but the plants in this design seemed to be inte­grated into the results and not so much an after­thought. This space fea­tures a com­pact eat­ing space on gold-colored decom­posed gran­ite, with a whiter stone mulch used for most of the grow­ing areas. Two sim­ple wooden walls pro­vide some pro­tec­tion, at the same time they define the space and pro­vide a back­drop for plantings.

A sin­gle lounge chair sits off to one side at the end of a DG walk­way. A stone in front serves as an ottoman. When the chair is stored indoors for the win­ter, the ottoman stone could serve as an accent at the end of the lit­tle path. The seat is sur­rounded by fra­grant rose­mary and cleve­land sage, as well as plants that pro­vide visual inter­est and variety.

This detail shows some of the plants used to pro­vide tex­tural inter­est: loman­dra, phormium, aeo­nium, tea tree (I think), and–uh oh–Mexican feather grass. Well I had to find some­thing about the plant­i­ngs to cri­tique. Might I sug­gest using the native Aris­tida pur­purea instead? Sorry to quib­ble too much. Over­all I thought it was a really suc­cess­ful presentation.

Among the other dis­plays, Pond-Ology fea­tured a lit­tle yoga deck in the mid­dle of a trop­i­cal par­adise. It pushed my Sun­set but­tons a bit too.

I’m not into mak­ing a zoo of cap­tive angels in my back yard, but I thought this menagerie by Blue Pacific Land­scape Design was well done. I espe­cially like how the color of the blue pots echoes through the plant­i­ngs around them. The cas­cad­ing pink gera­ni­ums pro­vide nice con­trast. Pots full of blue flow­ers would have been way too matchy-matchy.

At this gar­den show, as at many oth­ers these days, one of the big themes is green walls. Anan­das­capes incor­po­rated this wall into a pretty mod­ern display.

Take four green walls and attach them side to side and you have a green obelisk. The Good Earth Plant Co. and Green­scape Build­ing pro­vided this 3D ver­sion of the flat green wall.

You could walk around it and look in detail at the var­i­ous suc­cu­lents that made the plant­ing possible.

Liv­ing in a near-desert I’m still not con­vinced that green walls make a whole pile of sense. Why not plant an easy-care vine instead? But you’ve got admit they’re spec­tac­u­lar, and “spec­tac­u­lar” works well at a noisy county fair with lots of distractions.

In my next and final post from the fair I’ll show you some of the things that inter­ested me most: Plants!

June 30 2010 06:30 am | Categories: gardening • places | Tags: • • •

12 Responses to “more from the county fair”

  1. ricki - sprig to twig on 30 Jun 2010 at 2:32 pm #

    This is all look­ing pretty sophis­ti­cated for a county fair…must be some­thing in the air down there.

  2. Arleen Webster/Camissonia's Corner on 30 Jun 2010 at 5:35 pm #

    I love demon­stra­tion gar­dens, James, and these look very invit­ing (espe­cially the yoga deck, which has a sort of Japan­ese aes­thetic). I have fond mem­o­ries of the LA County Arbore­tum back in the day when I would make at least a monthly pil­grim­age out there. It’s not a pol­ished as the Hunt­ing­ton, but for some odd rea­son I pre­ferred its envi­rons. Favorite attrac­tions were def­i­nitely the Sun­set demo gar­dens (cause for much day­dream­ing), the orchid green­house, the May­berg water­fall, Queen Anne cot­tage (hello, Fan­tasy Island!), and the pea­cocks galore!

  3. Loree / danger garden on 30 Jun 2010 at 7:44 pm #

    Great find on that first space from North County’s Akana Design…perfect! I could move right in.

  4. Garden Beet on 30 Jun 2010 at 11:36 pm #

    i have to agree…your coun­try fair’s are pretty hip and chic …bet you would not find the same approach to design in a UK or Aus­tralian coun­try gar­den fair…i may be wrong

  5. Garden Beet on 30 Jun 2010 at 11:45 pm #

    i mean county not country

  6. Country Mouse on 01 Jul 2010 at 11:53 am #

    I didn’t grow up with sun­set gar­dens. I grew up with gov­ern­ment issued pocket-handkerchief yards, which were a big step up from the gov­ern­ment issued apart­ments where I was born. A three-foot-square lawn with Liv­ing­stone daisies is vastly dif­fer­ent from three acres of wilder­ness and redwoods!

    I enjoyed your word pic­tures from the show, along with the visuals.

    Those liv­ing walls are prob­a­bly some­thing we’ll look back on as part of this era, like hula hoops and gar­den flamin­gos, other fad­dish things. Pretty, though.

  7. Wendy on 02 Jul 2010 at 6:51 pm #

    It is def­i­nitely spec­tac­u­lar. Love all the detail of the succulents.

  8. Kristi/Akana Design on 04 Oct 2010 at 11:36 am #

    Hi James,

    Thanks so much for men­tion­ing my exhibit, and for your thought­ful analy­sis of it. It’s grat­i­fy­ing to get pos­i­tive feed­back on it.

    This is the 2nd year I’ve com­peted at the San Diego County Fair, and it’s always a learn­ing expe­ri­ence. It’s often kind of tricky enter­ing these kinds of com­pe­ti­tions, espe­cially for a small busi­ness owner such as myself. By small, I mean a com­pany of one. And by tricky, I mean chal­leng­ing. There’s always a theme we have to adhere to. This year, it was “Taste the Fun” so we were required to include edi­bles in our exhibit. As you can imag­ine, includ­ing edi­bles (often quite per­ish­able) that will not only sur­vive but look good for 5 weeks, was a bit daunt­ing. I spent a lot of time com­ing up with my con­cept (using edi­bles for bev­er­ages) so that, as you men­tioned, the plant choices wouldn’t be just an after­thought. Also daunt­ing was cre­at­ing a gar­den space on a shoe­string bud­get (hence the black shade cloth back­drop) that com­peted against some who had spon­sors and finan­cial back­ing. Also, I don’t always get the plants I want. Your sug­ges­tion for using aris­tida pur­purea is a good one. It just wasn’t avail­able at the 2 nurs­eries that agreed to rent plants to me.

    Why am I explain­ing all of this? Partly because I wanted to respond to your com­ments and partly because I’m always excited when­ever peo­ple talk about plants. Of course I love the fact that you liked what we did. San Diego is still a fairly tra­di­tional town so con­tem­po­rary design isn’t always embraced here. But I also love being a part of the process where peo­ple learn about gar­den­ing and design, dis­cover what they like and don’t like, and deter­mine why. That’s how we shape our tastes and opin­ions, and it’s just a really fun process. So thanks for con­tribut­ing to that. And thanks for giv­ing me a thrill. No one’s ever blogged about my work before, so it was pretty excit­ing for me.

    P.S. Thanks also to Loree @ Dan­ger Gar­den. I always enjoy read­ing your blog.

  9. lostlandscape on 04 Oct 2010 at 6:14 pm #

    Kristi, well THANK YOU for assem­bling what was for me the most mem­o­rable dis­play at the fair! I appre­ci­ate all the back­ground you pro­vided on the deci­sions you made and the lim­i­ta­tions you were work­ing against. I real­ize the fair is a chal­leng­ing site at best, and doing an exhibit isn’t exactly the same as doing a real gar­den space. Your com­ments help me fur­ther appre­ci­ate those dif­fer­ences and to even bet­ter appre­ci­ate what you were able to do. My quib­bles with shade­cloth and feather grass are pretty minor ones: sim­ple black shade­cloth is a huge improve­ment over the off the shelf plas­tic trel­lises, and even most spe­cialty native plant nurs­eries would have only juve­nile spec­i­mens of the Aris­tida. Thanks again for your com­ments and the nice words on the blog.

  10. Kelly on 10 May 2011 at 8:27 am #

    Hey there… I LOVE your yoga deck… I’ve been look­ing for decks to build in my back­yard and this is exactly what I’ve been look­ing for !!!!!

    Any ideas on what type of wood and or fin­ish it is? Judg­ing by the plank size, they look like 2“x10“s but it’s hard to judge from the photo…

    Thanks !!!
    Kel

  11. Kristi on 10 May 2011 at 2:30 pm #

    Hey Kelly,

    The yoga deck you men­tioned was in the Pon­dol­ogy exhibit, http://www.pondology.com/. If you con­tact Shawn, the owner, he should be able to answer your questions.

    Thanks,
    Kristi

  12. lostlandscape on 11 May 2011 at 8:18 pm #

    Kristi, thanks for help­ing answer Kelly’s question!

    Kelly, if the teak of the deck winds up being too ridicu­lously priced you might explore an option like ipe. I’ve used it exten­sively the last five years and really like its looks and dura­bil­ity. I haven’t priced them lately, but the last time I looked at them the ipe was less than half the cost. One draw­back is that it’s fairly dif­fi­cult to work with as far as need­ing to pre-drill all your holes. (The stuff is incred­i­bly hard and nails are not an option.) If you dont’ do the work your­self the labor might inch the cost of ipe closer to teak.

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