Still Here, on Pause

A quick update, as some have asked, “what happened to you?” – my last blog post shows as “09.28.15”!

I’m taking an indefinite break from my blog and other non-paying pursuits for good reasons. One – I’m in the midst of completing all the design work which I’m behind on – it’s all behind. 2014-15 brought a few horrid project / people experiences, robbing months from better work and pursuits.

I’m running on fewer cylinders than my engine requires!

Until it’s time to add back other things, here’s one last bit since 09.28 –

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The Guadalupe Mountains, namely McKittrick Canyon. I finally made it, each year unable to go, not that I was really able this year –

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Resuming plenty of design work, awaiting my mind and soul. At least 15 projects in design or construction, including an unusual-for-my-last-decade number of residences, and even an unusual project for most anyone (new buildings within an oil refinery) –

You see, I don’t look for work, as it comes to me, given my desert-centric convictions and experience.

Much of what I do is screen out the >90% who don’t really want what they claim to, so I’m able to do solid design work for the <10% who value and get it. Only giving presentations has netted worse odds.

I mostly need those universals of time and cash flow (always on it), plus a like-minded assistant versed in CAD and outdoor living design – and that’s who I’ll find, or I’ll move on. We’ll help each other, while helping the few. Moving past poor timing or so many who don’t have it going on – I’ll know!

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Nothing like seeing trees and other large plants with (3) arborists on a chilly fall afternoon. Or seeing a few sights out of town, while measuring another residential site / landscape renovation –

Before I finished college, I learned most people – even family and friends – get little about what I do, all that goes into it while hoping for the best, and that for 27 years. Even with clear answers when asked. Today, that’s even more obvious.

Yet, anyone honest knows I smile far more than not. Some even know why, and those are who I value the most.

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Finishing a conference, the lunch speaker toured attendees around her office’s work at UTEP (I forgot to get a picture of her and the others). I’ve kept up some of my indoor and outdoor workouts, too –

Hopefully, I’ll return to posting on my blog. The sooner I complete first things first, the more likely that will be. Yes, I’m doing just fine – maybe better than most?

In the spirit of these last few days, thank you!

Shrub Shaping

A recent drive to my trailhead, and Texas Sage / Leucophyllum spp. in bloom.

roundabout #1 – balls, mushrooms but still flowering

Of course, the public street’s roundabout planting areas are too small for a 6’+ shrub, or such a plant given the need for safety and visibility. (3′-8′ high is the zone many towns require to be clear at intersections)

And the shrubs are under 3′ – by force.

But the usual suspects do it anyway, over and over. Even the city, violating their own rules. Crazy! (at least I try to design appropiately and explain / educate)

roundabout #2 – a different form, only the trees safe

Now, here’s a private planting of the same shrub on the same street, but left in its natural form, with space to mature.

a 10′ wide parkway strip

Which form of shrub pruning benefits drivers and pedestrians more? Or the plants?

Marfabout: Gardens in 2015

A home tour followed the Marfa design symposium, so of course, I turned that and my trip into a garden tour. No photos were allowed inside, though there were many great ideas – I compensated outside.

Musical pairing from the Eagles – James Dean, of course! (unsure that album cover was designed by local Boyd Elder, but you can find out and why I picked that song…hint: Giant)

Some galleries of many things I enjoyed; hang on, it’s a big post –

miles and miles of Texas from a porch

how I like to start a day

rough study sketch, the first ideas for late afternoon shade and minimal containers…a little thanks to Billy for his place

Now, off to the actual design symposium and my other wanderings, when I should have been designing…..no way.

I paid dearly for this later…but it might pay off even more later.

I forgot to capture the presentation of the first speaker, both architects now based in Tucson (Dust).

But the next speaker was a fellow Carlsbad native, even the same high school, is now a Brooklyn-based architect. Kelly Armendariz went into his works, many are commercial renovations in the Big Apple, but not to be left out was his own Marfa home in progress.

Serious Desert SW representation!

let the symposium and tour begin

someone gets miles of far out west TX and the Chihuahuan Desert

inspired by place – physical geography

the borderland to Colorado – cultural geography

his own home

his courtyard admired by Martina the architect and Cherie the architect, two happy El Pasoans

I’m glad the hard work of Tucson’s Brad Lancaster defining what should underpin all our work, continues to become mainstream in urban and landscape design. He’s the same smiling and fired-up / yet laid back guy who I shared ciabatta bread and vino at my old ABQ house years ago, in my other life.

And some homes on the tour…

Brad nailing down economic benefits

tour home – wrong trees, but cool rock house

not on the tour, except mine – appealing home of designer Marlys Tokerud, who I’ll collaborate with soon…I can see her Montana roots in this

Tour home – could this Soapberry thicket benefit from water harvesting?

the back patio and oasis from inside

tour home – Jim Martinez is an LA, too

out back, towards those low, chunky mountains of the Trans Pecos

potted Dasylirion wheeleri at the end of their carport

a housing contest was put on by Design Marfa, with over 100 entries…Parisian designer Paul Vincent won, speaking with accomplished Dallas architect Sharon Odum

tour house – random planting out front with some wild west choices

the back patio…durable corrugated fencing, place to sit

young but hopeful plantings…spiky plants do seem to attract litter

Brad at the Friday party

The panel of architects, interior designers and engineer involved in a promising hotel being built by the railroad tracks in Marfa…the Hotel Saint George. A hotel actually stood on the same site decades ago.

Carlos Jimenez, Nunzio De Santis and Mary Alice Palmer, Larry Rickels

Mary Alice on the new 4 story hotel…I’m there once it opens

Nunzio on the variation of room layouts. plus the sunny community and bookseller spaces downstairs

giant Sapindus drummondii in front of retailers

famous boot-maker, cactus and desert grasses

the old Chilopsis linearis (R)

tour home – Kathy’s casita

out back, relaxed and appealing

Ratibida columnaris

nice, random grouping

Kathy’s own house not on the tour…fine ranch architecture, simple use of wildflowers and unified by mown native grasses

Inde/Jacobs gallery only on my tour…worth spending time inside…some very unique works

plant choices not my taste, but they work

negative space in back, then the finale of grasses and a clump of black pines

Carlos is someone I’ll collaborate with to a degree on an upcoming residence, while it turns out that Nunzio and Mary Alice are 2 of the 1200+ firm HKS whom I’m working with on health care projects in El Paso. A small world.

I’ll close out on parts of the symposium and my own tour related to being more bike and pedestrian-friendly…and upping the economic bar for any great place that’s proud of itself and its place. (pay attention El Paso and NM: no more wannabe, learn to be)

Gina Coffman is a west coast-based planner, landscape architect and cyclist…starting from the start

the new bike share prototype from Bike Marfa

and the bike stand out front of a fun project I’m working on, where we all decided the best place to park some of the shares

a small planting strip with native plants, some medicinal

nice arrangement being cultivated…

…by Freda, the nice woman working inside

Gina extolled home-grown places to walk, bike and linger – and not without tough plantings

next door to Marfa Public Radio…a contemporary take

I hope to post photos of the gardens from two years ago, at the last symposium, but the “day” job calls.

corner planting in the “cram-it” style…some *careful* pruning needed

one of the pocket parks in town

what do I spy?

happy Nolina nelsonii

part of a new project I was just awarded by a very interesting Houstonian

Opuntia lindheimeri…thinking how or if this might be pruned a touch

such character for he and his guests, soon

old Texas in a new way…a stately Pecan tree, grasses, yuccas

even more locals and near natives

yep!

See anything you like, or that could benefit from water harvesting and other best design practices?

I hope you enjoyed this mega-post, too!

Color Spots

I like any garden style – when thought-out, appropriate to its location (with little input), and not done because it’s popular (no grounding or conviction). Many can pick out the latter…no thanks.

But there’s something about classics, which always fit and look good, transcending trends or fads. Fashion.

Great bones, simplicity, and just the right amount of color from Marfa TX –

roof, chairs…and the dreaded duo of desert phobes…

Cactus and yuccas. Oh no…and “the children”!

Seriously, this place uses the southern coastal Spanish Bayonet / Yucca aloifolia and native Spineless or Cacanapa Prickly Pear / Opuntia ellisiana. The former is named appropriately and has the sharpest leaf tip of anything I know of, but it’s smaller size provides a more tropical effect…the latter is almost cliche here, but I still like it.

chairs, roof, and a gray Leucophyllum spp. vs. green Rosmarinus officianalis

Mescal Agave / A. neomexicana nested in (cliche) feathergrasses

Marfa is clearly of the surrounding Chihuahuan desert grassland. Understated, yet grand.

Color too, and not just whites (the sum of all colors), used discretely as opposed to a floral print.

green is a color too, more Opuntia ellisiana as a hedge

hidden tile bench, Blue Nolina / Nolina nelsonii

bluish form of Beaked Yucca / Yucca rostrata…flaming red of Anisacanthus quadrifidus var. wrightii, Vauquelinia corymbosa var. angustifolia behind

Want to come here, and just walk around with your camera? I can relate…

A Place to Sit

I’m in Marfa again, this time for a design symposium. I splurged for little more than this town’s boutique “hotel”, but I have lodging with immense privacy and space, which I really miss.

Curiously, the front garden area is completely walled in with my favorite landscaping must-have, built-in: the seat wall.

restful and simple, but my design brain is revving up

finally, a durable hipster-panel fence / gate…steel

There isn’t one plant growing around these walls; I think it needs something discrete and to shade the hot NW evening sun. (29N latitude, 5000′ elevation sun) But planted so a group can still be comfortably accommodated inside.

Possibly add a few low-key containers?

morning has broken

Note there’s only one way into the graveled front area, via the steel gate. At 6′ tall and being a guy who wears jeans to dress up, no problem for me to hop over the seat walls.

While Marfa is informal, I would rather provide a space for the maximum types of guests. Had this been a Quercus project, I would have included 3 gaps to better access that space, each 3-4 feet wide – a pair at opposite ends of the portal (covered porch), where the lower walls meet it; the other gap stepping down, aligned with the front door.

a new day

After seeing Brad Lancaster speak at the end of the first day, before any planting occurs, we need to first build in passive water harvesting. I haven’t seen him in years, maybe since he was hanging out with a bunch of plant nerds at my old house. Loads of free resources on that – here. (both his books are a must, though)

With an adequate depth of mulch and planted, the soil acts more like a sponge, optimizing plant root system health – just like what happens in our arroyos. Low water-use, indiginous plants coordinated with water harvesting thrive and reproduce, because that now-moister soil in the plant root zone extends cooling and moisture into dry periods, that simply doesn’t happen without it.

Caveat – the uber-minimalist direction of gardens in Marfa, or other modern gardens, need to bend some, on being kept too neat. That perfectly clean ground plane is best left for the floors inside the house; some organic matter is necessary where plants grow. I hope my former home landscape of 15 years was proof of having such a balance.

great coffee…is there a better time of day?

With all the above in place, then we can sit back and enjoy the view and serenity just a little bit more.

This place is great to stay at, by the way. And the owner / host happens to host the Thursday night show on KRTS called Rockabilly. A fitting musical pairing from my high school days, which he and his sister play – here.

Desert Landscaping: Maintenance Fails and Fixes

If only I could be in charge of each of my projects’ maintenance, but then, who would design them? Just a few adjustments are needed in the below areas, looking at the big picture and then close-up.

Musical pairing, little to do with Las Vegas except it has a great beat and is about nightlife; I hear that city to the west has some of that – here

Photos from 6/24/2015 –

Do you see what the Honey Mesquite in front needs?

1 thing: prune off the 1″ branch growing low and into the building wall. If only I still had loppers, and I had driven there instead of flown.

From my last posts on how I wish I had designed something differently, you can tell how important I view even our smallish desert trees – which old guard definitions from cooler or wetter places refer to as “shrubs”.

this Desert Willow is in a prominent spot, but no pruning, or checking why the cistern-fed drip line isn’t working…with one tree, this could be hand-watered 1X a week

this Desert Willow line is healthy, but needs some lifting of the base for visibility, which will still allow the west wall to be shaded as it matures

Screwbean Mesquite next to a walk and parking, where shade and visibility is the intent

yet this Screwbean Mesquite several parking spaces away is pruned nicely

Rabbits. Yet, there reaches a point when the wire cages can be removed, after the plants established and are no longer salad.

Angelita Daisy…given how this plant spreads when not dormant, are volunteers being sprayed?

this Creosote Bush is growing far outside the cage now

White Bursage…Nevada must have some rugged jackrabbits who would eat these even when young…BUR-sage

While the creosote bushes are growing, some are growing less so than the others. Such a difference, a simple light prune of taller stems back to the main stems is all that’s required to create a more appealing look, while maintaining some individuality in size. Even some of the lower, more dense creosotes could be thinned 10% to blend in some.

Balance, instead of unkempt or given the treatment.

Creosote Bush / Larrea tridentata

Just imagine a little attention to some of the creosotes. While you imagine the few plants that die to be replaced by the same or similar plants.

see anything missing between both panels of windows?

A Joshua Tree once stood there.

position the Joshua Tree replacing the one that died, just like this one

I really enjoy the solar parking lights the architect specified. They fit the modern, space-age look there, with the sere Mars-like scenes beyond. But something else lurks…

if only they hadn’t switched Indian Ricegrass to Indiangrass…mine native, and fine on desert rainfall…the latter is the state grass of mostly humid Oklahoma

a subsurface irrigation issue on the edge of this Bermuda lawn (shhh…I do use lawn when the need arises)

Was there another Deergrass? Did it die because the drip wans’t working here? Or??

Overall, I’m happy with much of what I see. Anyone who works outside in their heat should be thanked, even if one has to be insane to be in that line of work there… Though I forgot to mention in the last post, plant changes are often made without me – we cannot rule that and the other pitfalls.

But don’t you wish someone would step back, and pay a bit more attention to important areas of a planting, as I do this one?

Desert Landscaping: Design Fails and Fixes

Some have the idea I or any designer think we’re above reproach. No – some of us are actually our biggest critics, and that’s not being a perfectionist – it’s simply wanting to improve each time.

At the end of a long desert road, southern Nevada, late June 2015 –

that Joshua Tree should have stayed a Desert Willow…shade!

I’m unsure why I didn’t revisit Mike the architect’s suggestion (namely a tree for the L-shaped seat wall), but if only I stepped back and visualized summer – especially in Las Vegas!

too sparse…and plants at the gas meter, let alone agaves??!?

Now imagine a sunken swale down that planting area splitting the sidewalks. Catclaws, screwbeans or desert willows filling in the canyon created by both buildings, the entire length. Maybe some grasses or shady plants under, maybe just gravel.

Also, when I designed this in 2009-10, I hadn’t yet seen Loree’s blog to become more indoctrinated like today, so there’s no excuse for such an act :-)

and…should be trees in basins, not Joshua trees

While many of the above plants no longer get permanent drip irrigation due to the LEED Gold rating, basins and some hand-watering in summer could keep some going. Though perhaps not desert willows…

the bursages another foot from the curb, for easier car in-out

the agaves further from the walk, to grow out of the gray bursages

Where can people sit? Is there room once the plants grow in, those the contractor wants to substitute over the plants and alternates that I specified?

should be something smaller than the Brittlebush / Encelia farinosa

A favorite quote is from Antoine de Saint-Exupery, “a designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

As I continue on a few designs, that plus starting with the big idea like shade, might help force the rest of the design how it needs to go.