City Gardener

City Gardener

111 East 70th Street

The street pit or planter in front of the house is an opportunity to express oneself, while also giving some beauty and pleasure to the neighborhood and people passing by.

This is the fall planting using melange of classic mums and cabbage plants with some left over impatiences and moss from the summer. I liked that the color spectrum changed as your eye moved across the surface. I also liked that it was irregular and more like an abstract painting.

Winter Keeping the colliflower from the fall, Christmas wreaths were integrated in each corner, and then filled with garland and more holiday leaves and eucalyptus.

Spring The idea was to create a moss garden that was peppered with a variety of flowers and leaves, including firns. The idea here is also insplired to feel like a painting.

Bali Roof Garden We started with a basic roof with a black substrate. The roof was not so large, however I wanted to create something that was a bit magical with pathways so that it would feel a bit more like an adventure.

I started by building the roof decking at each of end of the roof edge to edge and then two pathways in between, leaving empty spaces which would then be filled with potted plants and flowers. We build arbors at one end and in the middle for plants to grow on.

Building planters would not be a possibility for this roof, so planters was the only way to go.

135 East 15th Street Transformation of an empty plot to a lush garden. There was little sun, so I worked with a variety of tropical ferns. I also brought in 40 bamboo plants that enclosed the space from the neighbors and outside world.

As the gravel subsurface was less than desireable, I brought in river pebbles to create more dimensionality and a little more easter inspiration.

To start the garden was an empty plot with gravel and one large evergreen bush in the left corner. Here I have begun to bring in some plants, but it’s just the start.

As the garden was not going to be permanent, all of the plants were kept in teracotta planters. This also helped break up the gravel feeling.