[ Lost in the Landscape ]

colleen goes national

Colleen Miko, owner of the Pacific Northwest’s Colleen’s, a Land­scape Design Com­pany, has one of her gar­den designs fea­tured in the cur­rent issue of Organic Gar­den­ing Mag­a­zine. In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure I’m glad to say that Colleen also hap­pens to be my cousin through a cou­ple of for­tu­nate mar­riage links in the fam­ily. She’s received well-deserved regional notice for her land­scape work, but this is her first national print expo­sure. (Edit, May 19: Any­one with access to cable might have seen her on TV ear­lier, when she was the final­ist in HGTV’s Landscaper’s Chal­lenge program.)

Rah Colleen!

Here’s a peek at one of the spaces in her design. I like how the gen­tly sym­met­ri­cal plant­i­ngs helps focus atten­tion on the water fea­ture. In other gar­dens, foun­tains and other focal points some­times feel too small for the spaces they’re allot­ted. But Colleen’s strat­egy here gives greater visual weight to the bur­bling water and the area around it. The whiff of sym­me­try also brings visual calm that com­ple­ments the calm­ing sound of water. I’d love to spend some time in this space on a warm after­noon with a glass of North­west riesling.

Pick up the June/July issue and see more of her work!

And be sure to pop over to Colleen’s web­site, where you’ll find other exam­ples of her designs, as well as instruc­tions on how to build this fun bird­house with a green roof.

May 18 2010 | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: birdhouses • Colleen Miko • Colleen's • green roofs • water features | 3 Comments »

über-cool birdhouse

I love this birdhouse!

I was brows­ing the web to see what was out there in the way of bird­house designs that might be com­pat­i­ble with a home that doesn’t aspire to look like it was built in the 14th cen­tury. A few screens into the results, out popped this design by Den­nis Clasen that’s being mer­chan­dised by Man­u­fak­tum in Switzer­land [ cat­a­log page ]. Appar­ently the designed debuted at the 2008 Design Bien­nale in Saint Ettiene, France.

A bird­house mas­querad­ing as a closed-circuit TV cam­era: Yeah, it’s fun and funny. But to me it seems to be a bit of social com­men­tary, some­thing about our lives these days that are sub­ject to con­tin­u­ous sur­veil­lance and how peo­ple seem to be will­ing to give up their lib­er­ties in the name of some­thing they per­ceive as security.

Or maybe I’m over-interpreting and it’s just a funny lit­tle birdhouse?

January 10 2010 | Categories: art • gardening | Tags: birdhouses • surveillance | 7 Comments »