~ sigh ~

Intoxicating ...

Gorgeous place, and a greenhouse tucked in as well!

WOW! Everything looks wonderful. You've put in a lot of hard work and it definetly has paid off. Just think each year will get better and better : )

Jen

I am in awe...Helen.

Gorgeous, gorgeous, GORGEOUS!!!!!

Can I come live with you? :o) Seriously, very nice, David. Although you're teasing us with glimpses - can you post a picture of your house? It looks beautiful and I love looking at pictures of homes and gardens to see how it all fits together.

Superb! What are the red flowers reaching out to get into the picture-the 6th pic down?

Hi David!

Thanks for sharing the great photos of your developing garden. It is wonderful to see all of the progress in such a short time, and as gardeners, we can appreciate all the love, passion, knowledge, and hard work that goes into creating all of those lovely spaces we enjoy seeing. You should be very pleased, and proud!

John

Everthing is beautiful and so well thought out and alot of work and enjoyment as I well know. Thank-you for sharing with us. Tricia

Thanks everybody. Well Nancy I don't have too many pictures of the house as such, and it is a little difficult to photograph as a whole because it is big and has a 'footprint' which is pretty spread out. It IS a beautiful house, if I do say so myself, and I think really well integrated with the site and the landscape. The house is built along the edge between the sunny open areas of the garden and the woods. One of the best, maybe the best feature of the house is the terrace on the back of the house which has a big outdoor stone fireplace, a screenhouse and a pergola.

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The whole house has this handsome stone base which took the stonemasons about 4 months to do.

The red flower in the pictures above is Crocosmia Lucifer. It is making an ever enlarging clump at the center of the hot color border. One of my favorite plants of the past few years -- I could never get it to thrive in my old garden but it seems very happy here

Your eye for form, color and texture...just top-notch! Bravo, and I'm so happy for you that the new place has come together so well in just two years. I've been 16 years here, and am nowhere close to that kind of "finished" look. The fern grotto is so cool and inviting-gotta hand it to Mother Nature, she knows her business!!
Thanks for sharing your home!
Brenda

David,

What is the plant you have with Crocosmia Lucifer...the purple...and the (I think Clematis) in the picture with the hyssop...which clematis? And as usual, such an inspiration to all gardeners......just wish I had the space to create gardens like yours
thank you
wild

The purple blue plant in the picture with the crocosmia is a somewhat floppy (growing too damp...) Nepeta sibirica. That picture was taken late in the day which is why the blue looks more intense(not because of post processing -- there ain't none).

The clematis in the other picture is the hybrid 'Blue Boy'. If I could only grow one clematis, that would be the winner I think, or at least tied for first place with a few others. In its second year at my old garden, that plant bloomed nonstop for a solid 12 weeks. It survived a move and then summer of drought and neglect competing with weeds, and then bloomed profusely again at its new spot last year and this. I think of clematis as just overgrown vining perennials, and that one performs like very few other plants, especially in the blue-lavendar range. It is a 'clamberer', not really a climber, grows beautifully on a 6' obelisk where it sprawls and mingles with adjacent plants. Far better and very different than C. integrifolia selections themselves which are more prostrate and for me make much less of a splash in the garden for a much shorter period. That one is growing with Agastache Black Adder which is one of the great newer hyssops (though not as good as 'Purple Haze'...)

I wondered if it was a crocosmia. I don't grow lucifer, but I need to if it looks like that! Thanks for letting me know. You have such nice combos.

Wow! wow! Wow! DAvid, your home and gardens are spectacular! That's it, I'm planning on a visit ASAP! LOL I absolutely love the outdoor fireplace. I've been thinking of trying to incorporate a fireplace in my new outdoor room at the top of the hill and that is exactly what I'd like to have there. I'm in awe at how much you've accomplished in two years. Bravo!!!! I must see this in person before another year is out.

PS I got my Inta sculptures from Monique and Les last weekend and they are wonderful! When are you going to get your pieces?

Deanne

These look like professional magazine pictures. WOW! Good job!!!

Brilliant ! You've achieved the look we're all after. Something for us to dream about !

Carol

You must have had a blast building the house and the garden. Great job! Love all your photos and will enjoy seeing them anytime you have more. My favorite is the fern grotto and I love the way you sited the greenhouse. It almost appears as if there was an old house on the property and you built the wall where the old foundation was and placed the greenhouse within the footprint of an old house. It is very ingenious to have the greenhouse just disappear into the property that way. Very nice. :-)

Hi All. Thanks for the kind comments. I thought perhaps that people would enjoy the last part of the garden -- the greenhouse, and the one I suspect will be the main part for the next 6 months. I have always aspired to have a winter garden. Heck, what gardner who lives in my climate wouldn't. I have tried this on some level for a number of years, but it mainly became a place to grow plants on benches, and not really a plant room. Part of the reason is the plants I chose to grow were adapted to cool greenhouse conditions. And partly because I just didn't have the time and energy to maintain it as a warmer garden conservatory-room. But last spring, I decided to plant out and abandon a lot of my cool greenhouse plants, and over the past few years I have started to grow more houseplants and orchids. And so, my partner Jim and I decided we were going to group these plants together in the greenhouse and rotate some of them up into the house from here.

So, here is how the greenhouse looked yesterday, after we finally moved the outdoor plants in over the past few days (and after one of the mildest Octobers anyone here can recall I am sure).

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I am forcing amaryllis and paperwhites and other cooled bulbs to grow too. Bring on the winter!

Love the greenhouse and what you've done to the grounds. The setting your in seems charming as well; where in Michigan are you again?

I plan on having a greenhouse in our next house, perhaps similar to yours: a place to pot up seeds, but also a winter hangout. Perhaps I'll be picking your brain in a few years!

Planting any clematis seeds this year? If you'd like any, pm me!

Hi Mike. I live in Ann Arbor. And the setting is about as sublime as you can get around here -- 2 acres of sun, sandy soil, 4 acres of old growth woods with huge trees, great native plant diversity, few invasives. A beautiful woodland creek carpeted with ferns and spicebush, pagoda dogwood, carpinus, skunk cabbage en masse, woodland wildflowers. About as pristine a residential site as I ever saw in these parts. And the great this is that we were able to site the house at the edge of but not in the woods and the woods remained intact. Idyllic place to plan and build a house and garden.

David, your garden is an inspiration! Thanks so much for taking the time to post these pictures. BTW, what is the pink rose growing in the Wall Bed--Is it an Austin?
Sincerely,
Kathy

Hi Kathy. That rose is indeed an Austin, 'The Mayflower'. Its flowers aren't as 'wonderful' as some Austins, but it seems to be a good recurrent bloomer here and is cane hardy which not all Austins are. I am experimenting with roses at the new place. I grew lots of Austins and other modern shrub roses in my old garden, but the ones that made the cut are those that can tolerate being planted closely with other plants -- and that sure ain't all of them. At the new garden most of the roses have not taken off yet, a function of sandier less developed soil, a hard winter last winter, a great deer love of roses at the new place, a horrible JB infestation last summer, etc. We'll see how they do...

Hi David,
Your garden is enchanting, as I knew it would be.
(I well remember the wonderful photos from your previous garden. As a matter of fact I've been enjoying the beautiful, long blooming clematis 'Betty Corning' in my garden thanks to you. Now, after seeing your 'Blue Boy', I'll have to give him a try as well).

Thanks!
PattiOh