Sage Outdoor Designs » landscape design

This is a fireplace by Landscape Architect Christy Ten Eyck in her own home garden. I love it! I think she hits a wonderful note (well, maybe more like a chord) by combining the typically modern rusted steel with the typically traditional Texas limestone. The result is something that I find very comfortably “now”.

I came across the fireplace on garden designer Pam Penick’s wonderful blog, Digging.  Make sure to drop in on her blog and see what’s new!

  

Its the middle of winter in San Diego right now… and the best fall color I have ever seen here. Something about the weather this winter (early cold, lots of rain at just the right time) prompted all of the trees that change color to put on their best show. The Liquidambars were bright red flames, the Mulberrys were gorgeous lemon yellow, the Crape Myrtles were a rich rust and even the Chinese Elms (which I would never never list as a fall color tree) had a lovely yellow cast to them.  All of the photos included are ones I took around town… really!

So a quick list of great fall color to include in your garden if you live in Southern California:

– Liquidambar (Palo Alto is very popular but there are a lot of these to chose from, primarily red and burgundy)
– Pistacia chinensis, Chinese Pistache, bold red
– Ginkgo biloba, light lemon yellow
– Crape Myrtle, rust red

   – Mulberry, lemon yellow
   – Chinese Tallow Tree, red orange and yellow all at once
   – Fruiting peach, orange red
   – Japanese Maple (or Silver Maple if you live inland), bold red
   – Boston Ivy (vine) bright red

 A Sage project was featured this Sunday in a special section in the Union Tribune (our main newspaper in San Diego) titled Distinguished Digs, by Lou Shook. I have worked with a few magazines before, but this was my first newspaper article. I was surprised by how different the process was. In the magazines, they may photograph a project and not print the story for two or even three years (especially in the national publications). One person photographs the project, another person acts as art director and yet another person writes the copy.

So to me, the process of working with Lou to put this together just flew past, about two weeks from him picking my brain for an article idea to the actual printing. The other thing that surprised me, but shouldn’t have, is that the newspapers don’t send you the story ahead of time to fact check. The magazines do this religiously to avoid lawsuits but the paper enjoys a level of freedom of the press that makes it unnecessary and way too time consuming. It makes working with the papers much more intimidating, since you don’t really know what they’ll print.

I’d say the magazines are more of a marathon and the newspapers are more of a sprint.

As any of you who read my blog know, I love love love tile. I’m not sure where the obsession comes from, but if you want to make my day, all you have to do is show me a fabulous tile company that I haven’t heard of. So today my day was made. I was lucky enough to get to visit the not-quite-open showroom for BDG Design Group.

There, I found Syzygy Tile, and I just had to share with you. I am not sure images do this tile justice. The glazes have a wonderful Craftsman look to them, mottled and very earthy. The colors are gorgeous! I think it was the mosaics that appealed to me the most, but I had to throw in one of their deco tiles just to show you how fabulously three dimensional they are, like little pieces of architecture.

So visit their website, but more importantly, when BDG opens in January make sure to drop in! While you are there, check out their very own line of concrete oversized tiles. They are very retro-chic, sort of Frank Lloyd Wright meets Mad Men.