Sage Outdoor Designs » landscape design

I have always thought of Cepac tile as a company that made tile for commercial and institutional installations, so I never paid much attention to their line, until now. Have they gotten wildly more interesting recently, or was I just not looking hard enough?

These tiles are tiny mosaics- each tile is about a half of an inch long. The glazes are wonderfully mottled and the colors are lovely. They remind me of leaf litter and mushrooms, seashells and pebble beaches, cloudy sky and rain puddles. I’m especially fond of the herringbone pattern. Wouldn’t they make a wonderful kitchen backsplash?I don’t think I’d ever get tired of looking at the wonderful colors and wondering what exactly in nature they remind me of the most….

Cepac tile is distributed by the really helpful folks at DAL tile. Have you been to their showroom off Convoy to look at everything they have? DAL is a great resource because they often have designer tile at not-quite-designer prices.

© Kate Wiseman 2012. In San Diego? Want your own waterwise landscape design? I’d love to help! Please visit www.sageoutdoordesigns.com for more info.

I’m going to tell you something absolutely unbelievable:  the stream in this photo is man-made. Really.

It was designed and built by an incredible and awe-inspiring English artisan, Anthony Archer Wills. He is the maestro of naturalistic water gardens. A wizard with rock, an artist with water, a painter with plants. This is taking the creation of a water feature to a whole new level. And I for one, and truly amazed.

Please take a moment to look at his website– it is very worth the visit!

© Kate Wiseman 2012. In San Diego? Want your own waterwise landscape design? I’d love to help! Please visit www.sageoutdoordesigns.com for more info.

Please don’t do this….

In a wonderful rant on Apartment Therapy this week, I came across Master gardener and author Margaret Roach’s confession: she abhors red dyed bark mulch. As a professional landscape designer, I have to say I second that motion wholeheartedly!

After the article, readers were encourage to comment and I was surprised at how many people rose up to defend the stuff, claiming that it could look good in certain situations. I dare anyone to find one of those situations (and email me a photo- I’ll post it!)

I was surprised, also, that so many people also tried to take black dyed bark mulch down a notch. Unlike its gawky red cousin, I think the black mulch can look wonderful, especially in a modern garden. Can you see it here to either side of the fountain? I love how it speaks to the inky black of the reflecting pond.

Another surprise was how many people objected to white gravel, saying it reminded them of their grandma’s front yard. Okay, yes, I admit that I did like to steal the sparkly white gravel out of my septuagenarian neighbor’s front yard when I was six, but it has made a real come back since then! It can be wonderfully clean and classic, like this elegant Mediterranean garden by AMS Landscape, or oh-so-minimalist-modern like this funky firepit/fireplace patio by Grounded (whose Mid-Century inspired work I just adore).

© Kate Wiseman 2012. In San Diego? Want your own waterwise landscape design? I’d love to help! Please visit www.sageoutdoordesigns.com for more info.

Every once in a while, I stumble on a design firm that just stops me in my tracks, and I find myself digging through their website until I’ve seen every photo they have to show me. Rees Roberts and Partners, out of NYC, are one of these firms.

It was this tiny urban garden that first caught my eye. They have pulled off everything you can hope for in a tiny city garden: it is verdant, peaceful, livable, comfortable, seasonal, and stylish, all in about 300 square feet! I adore the all-green color palette and how it makes you focus your eye on the texture of the plantings, the long draping Boston Ivy, the delicate bamboo, the big-leaved hostas.

Altogether nice, nice, nice. This is an urbane garden, if ever I saw one.

© Kate Wiseman 2012. In San Diego? Want your own waterwise landscape design? I’d love to help! Please visit www.sageoutdoordesigns.com for more info.

On Kate Presents, I try to make an effort to stay positive, so I don’t usually post very often about things that I really dislike. It is a belief that I hold very strongly that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

That said- there are a few things that I am quite happy to be outspoken about disliking and this is one of them- I hate the way water slides look. In my mind, they fit into two categories: ugly, and horribly ugly. The worst offense of all is when you don’t have a hill to slide down, so you just build one…. in the middle of nothing… and then you label it naturalistic. They don’t look natural! In nature, water runs downhill, end of story. It doesn’t magically get pumped up to the top of a pile of rocks so that it can tumble down.

And, as much as I do believe that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I believe something else even more strongly: things that look like they violate the laws of nature, like you tried to copy nature’s work and just did a bad job of it, those things can never be beautiful.

(Normally, I link to the photos I use as examples. In this case, I’m sure you’ll all understand why I’m not doing that).

What do you all think? Water slides, really fun or really ugly?

© Kate Wiseman 2012. In San Diego? Want your own waterwise landscape design? I’d love to help! Please visit www.sageoutdoordesigns.com for more info.