Create A Scene, Inc is celebrating its 25th year in 2011. We have worked in many of our clients gardens for ten to twenty years, developing them to fit our clients needs and tastes. We provide garden design, installation, and development. Our services also include regular maintenance, watering, and container plantings.
• Garden design
• Interior design
• Seasonal services
• Holiday décor
• Special occasions
Create A Scene offers a full service of plant and floral design including indoor and outdoor gardens and containers as well as seasonal decorating and party work. CAS designs, installs and maintains gardens to develop landscapes that are keeping green with timely horticultural practices.
Create A Scene Works closely with our clients to design, install and develop gardens in the Philadelphia Areas of the Mainline, Chester County, Center City and the Jersey Shore Area of Margate and Longport.
We have been working in many of our clients gardens for over twenty years since we started as Flora Design Associates in February, 1986.
The gardens have been on several tours and the shore gardens were the subject of a lecture called 'Showtime at the Shore' as part of the 'March Into Spring' event produced by the Hardy Plant Society/ Mid-Atlantic Group on Saturday, March 19, 2011 at the Delaware Community College Campus. See www.hardyplant.org
Michael Bowell has traveled and collected extensively since the mid 70`s. He has experience with many exotic and tropical plants and their culture. His two story conservatory and 2000 sq ft growing areas house plants from locations across the globe.
"Four Season Container Garden"
Saturday, April 9th...10:30am-12:30pm
Conceptualize your potted gardens as year 'round garden sculptures using dramatic three dimensional forms. Experience a live demo utilizing hardy and tender perennials, tropical’s, annuals and hardy woodies. Learn techniques for success with your year round creations. Bring your own pots or find some here. Soil mixes and plants available for sale.
"English Trough Gardening"
Saturday, April 9th...2:00pm
Alpine and miniature plants in movable planters.......Study of Soils and Design
-Registration 25.00 per person (both container workshops included)
-Pre-Registration required
-Pre-Register at jennifer_createascene.com or by calling 610.827.1268 or by
emailing mwb_createascene.com or jennifer_createascene.com
“"Philadelphia Flower Show”"
Our Exhibit garnered six awards including a Best In Show for both Plant Societies
and Exhibits under 1000 sq. ft.......also,
the PNC Peoples Choice Award for best exhibit in entire show on March 6 and 10
Michael and Simple designed and directed the installation of the American Orchid Society
Exhibit for the 2011 Philadelphia Flower Show- Springtime in Paris -
“Toujours printemps dans la conservatoire d’orchidees”
(It’s always springtime in the orchid conservatory)
Create A Scene works with Major Nurseries and Plant Breeders to create Trade Show Exhibits such as the MANTS show in Baltimore, Md., the PANTS show in Oaks, Pa. and the Philadelphia International Flower Show.
Create A Scene and Michael Bowell are involved in fund raisers for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (Philadelphia Flower Show and other activities), the Delaware Center for Horticulture (Rare Plant Auction at Longwood Gardens), the Camden Childrens' Garden and Rutgers University Gardens as well as several Philadelphia area charities supporting causes from land and water conservation to social welfare.
CAS has participated in scores of flower shows and orchid exhibits, winning many awards and accolades for their work since 1986.
Michael Bowell, Ellen Behrle and their cohorts from the Charlestown Cafe Club have raised close to $200,000.00 since 1999 by serving up dinners that follow garden and greenhouse tours in the CAS Gardens in lovely Charlestown Twp., Pa. See the history of the Charlestown Cafe Club and its vounteers here.
International Orchid Exhibition/Symposium and MARKET
at Longwood Gardens
Sponsored and Staged by the Southeastern PA Orchid Society
March 25-27, 2011
Create A Scene shall be exhibiting and selling
Many of those same plants can be purchased here on our open
Saturdays.... All Saturdays in April, May and June
from 10:30 am - 3pm
Special Sale!!! April 2nd 10 am til 4 pm
Come and browse our hardy perennial orchids and companion plants which include Bletilla, Cypripedium, Spiranthes as well as a large selection of dwarf conifers and miniature hostas...also, hardy trees, perennials, annuals, tropicals and exotics!
Winter is revealed as summer fades. Form and texture lose their veneer of color. The days grow shorter and the shadows grow longer. I eagerly await this seasons tired and drought stressed foliage to fall from the trees, returning some of that sunlight that has been sinking behind their canopy these past several weeks.
WINTER. The very thought may conjure up those desperate feelings caused by lack of winter light on the psyche. This past ‘never ending’ summer actually has me longing for the shorter, cooler and hopefully less moisture stressed days ahead.
The winter landscape reveals itself from under the layers of summer color. I see the shapes and forms of evergreen and deciduous plants, many of which started as ‘plant materials’ in my containers. As I remove the once colorful, but now distracting layers of annuals, perennials, and tropicals, I can see that the winter landscape has grown in size and morphed in shape. These areas are the same that I view from the windows of my living areas and from my automobile as I travel each day. These are the areas where groupings of containers provide focal points and dynamism throughout the seasons. It is time to reevaluate our container gardens for the changing season ahead.
As spring already has more garden activities than I can possibly squeeze into my working hours, autumn has become the time that I reshuffle lots of my plants and containers, pulling them apart, rethinking the areas, the pots, the plants, the design as a whole. As nonhardy plants are removed to hold them over in the greenhouses, cold frames and pit house, hardy trees and shrubs that have outgrown their areas need to be relocated into the ground or root and top pruned to go back into a container. Perennials might be divided and moved back into the containers or into the garden. Of course, there are new plants ‘waiting in the wings’ that have been collected over this past gardening season.
The pots that I am using year round have also morphed over the many years of gardening. Fifteen years ago, all of my year round plantings were contained in whiskey barrels. They were tough (lasting up to ten years}, inexpensive and available. Since then, many other types of containers have come onto the market and into my gardens. These include pots made from wood, resin, metal, fiberglass and some varieties of ceramic or composition concrete planters. Terracotta and most types of ceramic pots are poor choices because they tend to crack or exfoliate due to ice and snow. (Some varieties of low fired, highly colored Mexican ceramic pottery even exfoliate at temperatures near freezing, when there is neither ice nor snow.) High- fired and frost resistant terracotta such as those manufactured in Italy (‘Impruneta’) and Crete and cast stone or composition concrete pots manufactured locally by Campania of Quakertown, PA, have fared extremely well in our relatively mild Zone Six ‘Philadelphia area’ winters. The key detail in preserving these pots is to keep them perfectly drained and level. Setting these containers on pavers, slate or crushed stone and other flat level surfaces does the trick, as does placing them in areas where snow and ice does not accumulate, or at least drains away quickly during times of thawing and refreezing. Less winter hardy ceramic containers can be utilized if staged under a roof, away from the precipitation, and on raised surfaces where water, ice and snow cannot accumulate. Also, those same ceramic containers can be double potted, using a plastic pot as a liner that is set within the ceramic container and making sure that both the liner and ceramic container are perfectly drained.
Drainage is important year round, but even more so during the winter months. Since the plants are not actively growing and utilizing water, they are more prone to damage from poor soil drainage. The containers are also subject to damage from poor drainage as water expands when it changes from its liquid form to ice. As I tear apart and rearrange my containers and plants, I make sure that the drainage holes are fully open, free of roots, mud, and gravel. Pots sometimes sink below the soil grade with time. Tree roots can clog the drainage holes growing in through the bottoms of the pots. Before I replant, I make sure that the pots are level. Plastic and other light weight pots may require extra ballast or even a rebar stake driven thru the base of the container to keep the container upright during harsh winter winds. If I am using large evergreen trees and shrubs, I tend to supplement their soil with compost and a soil based potting medium, as opposed to the lighter weight peat based mixes. Another local company, Organic Mechanics of Downingtown, PA, is producing a heavier, peat free soil mix that is excellent for growing large trees and shrubs in containers.
Some other containers that I have found useful were created out of need. I wanted to plant some evergreen trees several years ago and I could not get them into the ground in the spots that I desired because the ground had been so compacted during the construction of my house. I also could not afford to purchase the very large pots that I would need (due to same house construction). As ‘necessity is the mother of invention’, I manufactured my own containers over the hard compacted gravelly soil using materials that were at hand in the nursery. I used twelve foot lengths of four foot wide green plastic coated turkey wire, bent them in half to create two foot deep round and oblong frames, wired the ends and lined the walls with weed mat. I filled these makeshift planters with heavy ‘used’ potting soil, peat based potting soil and compost. I planted Lace bark pine and Dragon’s eye pine. The dragon’s eye Pine is still thriving twelve years later, now accompanied by the perennials Hedera helix ‘Goldchild’, Hellebores orientalis and Spiranthes odorata, along with coleus and other summer color in season. The lace bark pine also thrived. I sold it a few years ago and planted an Abies conclor ‘Candicans’ in its place along with Athyrium Japanese Painted Fern.
Need presented itself once again a few months ago. A number of containers that we (Simple and Create a Scene) were planning to use at ‘Fashion In Bloom’ (a September nursery trade show hosted by the Conard Pyle Company at their growing facilities and Wholesale Nursery Yard Site in nearby Jennersville, PA) ended up on backorder, and we had to think…er, ‘Create’ FAST. We used several large galvanized livestock watering tubs that we purchased at the farm store, Tractor Supply. These containers are durable, winter hardy, lightweight, and inexpensive They are available in various ‘oversized’ shapes which allow for volumes of plants and creativity. (They were quite a hit and several garden center owners and landscape designers assured us that they would lift that idea for their own projects). This last minute idea came from our own use of an old galvanized watering trough that Simple rescued from his parents’ farm. We drilled this eight foot long, three and a half feet wide and two feet tall trough with several holes and set it on soil that was packed and leveled. We filled it with stones, rocks and a sharply drained potting mix comprised of sand, turkey grit, compost and potting soil. The soil is eight to fifteen inches higher than the lip and is planted as a rock garden, complete with dwarf conifers, evergreen and herbaceous perennials, a bog area and a pond with live ‘feeder fish’. This was planted in early spring of 2006 and is thriving with very little care.
Once the planted containers are in place, maintenance is a bit different from the summer. The greatest pests are not insects of any sort, but the deer. Plants that the deer might never take a second browse at during the growing season might be fair game when there is not much else to eat. Regular spraying of Liquid Fence or Bobbex certainly slows down the munching. The use of the antidesiccant, wiltpruf, not only helps to keep needle and broadleaved evergreens turgid and fresh throughout the winter, it also seems to slow deer munching as well. We have noted that the plants that were treated with Wiltpruf, usually several sprayings beginning in early to mid November and ending in January, certainly had less deer damage. Fertilizing is not much of an issue since most of the plants are not in their growth cycles and do not require regular feeding. Compost in the soil mix will be sufficient for everything except for pansies, kale and any other actively growing plant which can be supplemented with compost tea, liquified or a mineral fertilizer solution. Fish emulsion also works, but can be an attractant for kitties that dig.
Watering your winter containers can take some thought and planning. Always soak everything thoroughly once they are planted. This not only provides moisture to the roots, but it also washes the plants and helps to settle the roots in place. Generally, while the temperatures remain mostly above freezing and rainfall is at least an inch per week (and there is no overhead obstruction to the rain), the containers should be just fine. You will need to water the plants that are under cover, checking them weekly. Once the temperatures, especially the daytime temperatures are below freezing, the broadleaf evergreens might be subject to drought and wind damage. This is especially true if they are subject to bright sun and wind and the temperatures remain below freezing for more than a week. The wind and sun continue to pull moisture from the plants and the moisture intake is slow to nonexistent in the frozen soil. The antidesiaccants help, as does watering with warm (tap) water as opposed to hose water which might barely be above freezing. The warmer water can unfreeze the root balls long enough to allow for some uptake. Obviously, it is best to do this when you are experiencing a warm spell and the daytime temperatures are above 40*F. Excellent drainage is mandatory so that the water drains away quickly and doesn’t add to ice around the pots or on walking surfaces.
Develop a color scheme. I find that the winter gardens need not be as colorful as the summer. The winter mood is much different, more of a time to pause and reflect than to keep the wheels spinning. I tend to keep the winter color schemes as basically one of blue greens or yellow greens, filling in with brighter hues in the growing season when they are readily available. There is a variety of ways to add color, which I’ll review after discussing the main plantings. The container plantings are grouped to create focal points from the main views in my living area. These areas include my office, front porch and entryway, kitchen window, picture window, workroom window and the landing on my stairwell, where I pass dozens of times in a day. Each area has groupings of pots located within the larger garden. There are from three to a dozen pots in each grouping, all complementing the adjacent garden spaces.
Begin by visualizing your containerized area as a unit. Consider it as a sculpture It shall be expressed in height, width and depth. Place your tallest containers at the rear left or rear right of center. Use the medium height pot or pots in the central area and the lowest in the foreground
start with my evergreen selection. Do I go with yellow greens or blue greens, cool colors or warm colors? Then I consider light and wind. Remember that the soil freezes in the winter and broad leaved evergreens are easily damaged by drying winds and the plants inability to absorb moisture from the frozen soil. If the pots are placed in the garden area, you may use broad leaved evergreens to better advantage planted in the soil as part of your composition. On a porch, you can coddle these same potted evergreens with weekly doses of fifty to sixty degree water over the winter months. Most needle (pine, spruce or yew) or scaly (juniper or chamaecyparis) evergreens are much better adapted to winter pot culture than broad leaved evergreens as they are less
likely to desiccate due to lack of available water. Complementary evergreens include Korean boxwood (many forms, all extremely hardy) and the ever colorful varied forms of euonymus.
Plant the tallest woody plants or those with the most linear outline in the largest container, either at rear or mid depth. Add a contrasting shape, more rounded, into the next largest pot, again at the rear or middle area. Use a trailing form with contrasting texture in the lowest container and if space allows, repeat this same plant into one or more of the other pots. Contrasting evergreen form and color can be provided by the same plant such as yucca or acuba. (Although acuba, camellia, cryptomeria and even leucothoe are sensitive to winter cold and desiccation in containers, they serve well from March through December and can spend the balance of the year in the ground or in a protected location.) Evergreen plants and dwarf conifers that have a successful track record for me include sciadopitis, variegated and dwarf pines, most forms and colors of chamaecyparis, abies, ilex and juniper. Deciduous plants include blueberries (flowers, fruit and red winter stem color), azaleas, hypericum, taxodium, dogwood, holly, cotinus and the many colored foliage forms of sambucus and forsythia. A great flowering plant is Rosa ‘Peach Drift’ a new introduction from Star
In March plant three pots using a five foot Chamaecyparis obtusa in the largest pot and a Chamaecyparis pisifera filifera aurea nana in the foreground pot. Plant a coral twig Dogwood Cornus in the center pot. Add Euonymus fortunei ‘Moonshadow’ to both front pots at the base of the Euonymus and dogwood, respectively. Add solid yellow pansies, red pansies and golden variegated ivy Hedera helix ‘Goldchild’ Plant Narcissus ‘Hollywood’ bulbs in one of the pots and fill in empty areas with pansies.
In December, cut some of that coral twig dogwood Cornus and add those branches to your pots with an assortment of cut greens and branches of Ilex verticillata’ Winter Gold’ along with some gold and red glass balls…..you can easily replace the browning branches of cut greens and holly over the winter months and add a white flowering hellebore in late winter……it’s back to Spring and another reread of your march 2007 newsletter
Author’s note: This article serves as a companion to the article in the HPS March 2007 newsletter…..Please have a reread of that article as a background for this one.
Winter Container Gardening
HPS 10.10.07
Looking back, it's hard to believe there was a time when I wasn't passionate about gardening, when I didn't spend too much time tending too many plants, sometimes to the exclusion of other important activities, such as eating. But like everyone, I had to start somewhere; and like many of us, I had a special teacher, or mentor, without whose guidance I never would have become the gardener, or the person, I am today. The man I have to thank, or blame, for my current obsession with horticulture was an older neighbor in West Philadelphia, Eugene E. Smith. Gene patiently taught me the names of all the flowers in his garden. He consulted with me on my first order of seeds, and helped me sow them. He gently coached me as I planted my first garden bed, in the community garden he had convinced me to take over after the previous gardener went blind. It's ironic that one of the first plants Gene gave me was a forget-me-not, because soon after I met him, he died.
Since Gene I've found other gardeners, who have taught me other things. But I think many of us reserve a special place in our hearts for the person who got us started, who encouraged us to keep going when we might have quit, who transmitted to us their love of plants.
There are millions of stories about gardening mentors, at least as many as there are gardeners. The following are just a few of them.
MICHAEL BOWELL and PAT FITZWATER
Most people wouldn't consider blue-collar Gloucester City, along the Delaware River in southern New Jersey, to be a hotbed of horticultural activity. But to hear horticulturist Michael Bowell, 41, talk about his childhood there, he seems to have been surrounded by gardeners, and being an inquisitive child he managed to learn from them all.
Mrs. Colletti grew 8-foot tall tomato plants from seeds she saved year to year, and taught Bowell that not all seeds come out of a paper pack. Mrs. Rowe grew a double orange daylily that he admired, and she thrilled him by giving a piece for his garden. Mrs. Percival's garden next-door included marigolds, hollyhocks, roses and what she called "zee-nias." Zinnias were one of the first plants Bowell grew, when he was nine, and decades later he still grows them, and still gets a kick out of watching them come into bud.
The most influential of Bowell's gardening neighbors, Pat Fitzwater, had a wonderful garden at the end of the block. She became Bowell's main mentor, as well as a good friend and confidante. She gave Bowell plants for his own garden, and took him on buying trips to area nurseries. Each year they'd make a late-winter pilgrimage across the Delaware, to the Philadelphia Flower Show. She brought him to the garden of her cleaning lady, Zelda, where he saw, for the first time, a garden with interesting flowers, perennials and biennials along with more familiar annuals.
Fitzwater taught Bowell many things about gardening: about cultivars, and the usefulness of Latin names, and how to prune roses--and most important, how to enjoy it. "For Pat, gardening was never a chore," Bowell says. "She was always happy when she was doing it."
By junior high, Bowell was already fretting over where to place the plants in his garden, and he was secretly reconstructing other people's flower arrangements. His father bought him mail-order plants if he agreed to care of them, and in this way he got strawberries, lilacs, roses and gladiolus. "Gladiolus became a big deal," he says, "planting them out, then digging them up and drying them. I liked the planning part of it. It gave me a feeling--I wouldn't say of control, but that I had a part in it."
After high school, Bowell attended Rutgers University, where he received a BS degree in Plant Science. From there he headed to North Carolina for graduate studies that he never completed, leaving academia to enter horticultural work full-time. For the past 12 years he has been proprietor of Flora Design Associates in Kimberton, Pa., which includes garden design, installation and maintenance jobs along with a small retail shop. He is also an avid orchid grower, with thousands of plants in a greenhouse bigger than the home attached to it.
Bowell found other mentors as his interests expanded, including Doug Ruhren, a horticulturist in North Carolina who taught him many things about plants and design, and his neighbor Joanna Reed. "Joanna taught me how to use of large masses of things, colonies of plants as opposed to this little gem or that little gem," Bowell says. "I have five acres, two of which I garden intensively, so a couple of plants here and a couple of plants there just doesn't cut it."
Through the years, he kept up his friendship with Pat Fitzwater, though as time went by their roles were reversed, and he became her gardening mentor. When he bought the land on which he now lives, he and Pat talked about the possibility of her moving there when she retired.
Before that came to pass, Pat died of cancer, and Bowell is still trying to forgive her, for leaving too soon.
Create A Scene is open to garden and greenhouse visitors on the second and fourth Saturday of every month from 10:30 am to 3pm, later by appointment. We are here most other Saturdays as well in April, May and June....Please call in advance.....
Come and stroll our lush and exuberant gardens and greenhouses located on Bodine Rd. on five acres of wooded hillside in lovely Charlestown Township, Chester County, PA.....
You are welcome to bring a picnic lunch to enjoy at the many resting places in the gardens... Facilities are available. Bring along some extra treats for the many ducks, chickens, peafowl and 'wildy tame and funny native turkeys' who free-range the gardens. They are all most fond of canned sweet corn as well as assorted seeds and of course, scraps of bread and that great summer delicacy, japanese beetles!.....the Native Quail (Bob Whites) favorite treat is STINKBUGS!
There are water dragons ( Dino and Norma), frogs, a red slider and a Henkel's Flat tailed Gecko named Mr. Henkel, all who are quite fond of crickets...along with the more conventional species of nine cats and three canines.....Note Beware of Dog Signs...She is quite friendly when we are expecting company...
and reacts as a guard dog when folks "drop in" unexpectedly on days we are not open...Go Figure
100 ils of Giant Schnauzer who loves children but is wary of unexpected adult guests.
Create A Scene, Inc.
2148 Bodine Rd
Malvern, PA 19355-8617
Phone: (610) 827-1268
Fax: (610) 827-0110
Email:
mwb_createascene.com
or
jennifer_createascene.com
