Holiday Giveaway from WherePlantsRock

Welcome to my first giveaway. I know! I have never done one before and I had a great opportunity that was presented to me by P. Allen Smith and the folks at Berry Family of Nurseries.

Do you like the wreath at the top of the is article? That is what you have the chance to win!  Its 20 inches and will be sipped directly from Berry Family of Nurseries to your home. Please follow the directions carefully at the bottom.  The winner will be chosen at random from those who have followed instructions, on November 28, 2012. To choose the winner I will be using Random.org.

Over the past two years I have gotten to know Allen and his hard-working staff and really admire all they are trying to do.

I have also gotten to talk with Heidi Berry on several occasions and learned a bit about the family business.

Allen shows a wide range of great decor in the Holday Collection

The Berry Family of Nurseries partnered with P. Allen Smith to create the P. Allen Smith Holiday Collection. Fresh greenery such as Noble Fir, Western Red Cedar and Douglas Fir along with berries and cones are hand assemble and tied to create the perfect accent for your holiday home. The Berry Family of Nurseries strives to be sustainable and gathers fresh greens from the lower branches of the trees, they strive not to cut trees down, but prune them. This makes me very comfortable offering this giveaway.

How I got the chance to offer this – Yes, I am going to spill the beans.

One of this year’s great highlights was a social media event I was invited to, Garden2Blog.

Allen started Garden2Blog in 2011 and he had the idea of gathering 20-25 garden bloggers or so and brought them together at his Garden Home Retreat outside Little Rock, Arkansas where they could meet with garden product representatives, ask questions, share experiences, and learn about plants and products available on the American market. His idea was that these bloggers would come away with information that could help strengthen awareness and help them to relate to a broader audience that is out there on the web, create dialog and share within the online garden community. It was truly one of the highlights of my year.

Here is the NITTY-GRITTY

My contest has a couple of hoops. To enter you must complete a few things. Yes, nothing in life is completely free.

Number One – You must follow the link to my Pinterest account. This first link is specifically to the picture of the wreath on my Holiday board.  http://pinterest.com/pin/174796029258844762/ Please leave a comment, if you have a twitter handle please sign the comment with it as it helps me contact you if you have won. Secondly re-pin this to your own Pinterest board and tweet it out attaching @PAllenSmith and @WherePlantsRock to the tweet.

Number Two. Please follow the link provided to my second pin on Pinterest.  http://pinterest.com/pin/90212798757283651/  Please watch and leave a comment. I think you will like what P. Allen Smith is doing with bloggers from around the country, but it also gives you an idea of what Garden2Blog is all about.

Hey Julia! Where’s the Boeuf?

Going into fall and winter meals tend to get a little more rich and little less health conscious.

I am finding myself going through recipes and adapting things. Recently, I found myself looking at a classic dish and how it’s made. Boeuf Bourguignon, the classic French dish we all associate with Julia Child and her renaissance of cooking in the late fifties and early sixties.

braise the beef first, remember to pat it dry before you do otherwise it will not brown

 

Use 1-2 Lbs beef. Usually a nicer cut of meat, but something reasonably priced.

Cut the beef into into “cubes” or nice healthy sized pieces.

Pat it dry and brown it in a pan. We all saw the movie and know this by now.

You want to seal in the natural juices this way and it keeps the meat nice and tender.

After the meat is browned pot on a plate and place it to the side.

I use one tablespoon Chile Olive Oil in the pan.

It has a good flavor without tainting the meat with too much olive.

 

 

 

 

getting your vegetables to start caramelizing is so important

Take at least a half a dozen large scallions and peal them.

Cut the top and the bottom off the scallions and peal the dry layer off.

Place the scallions into the pan just browned the meat in and start to get them caramelized.

At this time also add the 1/2 pound smoked bacon, get them both cooking. Personally I don’t like to have too much grease in the pot.

While the scallions and bacon are slowly sizzling clean the carrots. Use them as this a rustic dish, some people say no carrots. Use at least two pounds carrots. Scrub the dirt off and then quarter them lengthwise. I like to use a couple of colors of carrots as well.

Garlic- my preference is roasted and minced. 1/2 teaspoon.

 

 

Mix one cup tomato bullion, one cube with one cup water. Some recipes call for one tablespoon tomatoe paste, but who wants to open a can of paste for one tablespoon? I also like that the tomato bullion has chicken in it as well. Meat flavors are great fused.

Get your meat rolled in flour.

Add the bacon to the bottom of the pan you are using. I would recommend Le Creuset 6 3/4 quart Oval Dutch Oven. Start to place the carrots around the edge like a nest. Pace some of the meat that you have rolled in flower in the bottom of the pan.

Add some of the scallions in with the meat and add the garlic sort of here and there.

simmer on the stove top

Add more meat and carrots, and then more scallions. Build this up. Layer it all.

At this point what you need next is 1 cup Madeira, 4 cups Burgundy wine, the 1 cup of tomato bullion, 2 cups beef stock and three tablespoons butter.

Place the pot on the stove and turn it on to medium high.

Pre-heat the oven at 325-350 degrees depending.

While the oven is preheating, slowly add the Madeira around the outer edges and simmer for about 5 minutes.

Next add the tomato bullion. Just get it in there and let that simmer 5 minutes as well.

Go ahead and add the three cups Burgundy, bringing it up to a boil and place your butter on top. (I add fresh ground pepper on top at this point as well.)

place the lid on and allow to simmer more before placing inot a preheated oven

Cover it and let it simmer rapidly for about 20 minutes.

Take off of burner and put into 325-350 degree oven for 3 hours.

At this point add the last cup of Burgundy and place back inot oven for another 45 minutes.

 

I had to peak at it in the oven…steaming hot!

Make sure to get yourself some nice crusty bread or rolls to eat with this. You will need it to wipe every little spatter off your plate!

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

2 lbs top cut beef

1 tablespoon Chili Olive Oil

1/2 pound smoked bacon

2 pounds carrots, get a good variety of colors.

1 pound scallions. Highly recommend those that are large with several cloves inside.

2 cups sliced mushrooms (no they were not mentioned because I did not use them, but you can)

1/2 teaspoon minced garlic

1 tomato bullion cube

2 cups beef stock

1 cup water

1 cup Madeira

4 cups Burgundy wine

3 tablespoons butter (your preference of salted or unsalted

Fresh ground black pepper

 

Good kitchen help is hard to find. LB likes to help clean up!

It’s the Annual Miniature Garden Contest!

Reblogged from The Mini Garden Guru - Your Miniature Garden Source:

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It’s the Annual Miniature Garden Contest!

It’s contest time!

We usually try to aim for July/August with this contest but because the summer weather here in the States has been extreme for most, we’ve put it off starting the contest for a few weeks, and we’re extending the deadline to the end of October, to give you ample time to get a miniature garden together.

Read more… 942 more words

A great contest from the the mistress of the small, the minute, the miniature.

Just a Little Bucket- Found It on Ebay

Could this be one of Empress Marie Louise buckets?

Alright, most of my friends know that this past year I have geeked about three ladies of another era. Marie Antoinette, Georgiana Cavendish, and Catherine the Great.

The past couple months I have been really researching the life of Marie Antoinette. She was a public figure, ridiculed, revered, scorned. I have been looking at her life, the way she lived and the objects she lived with. Marie was a girl who decided to ‘buck the system’ and she had style. Unfortunately she lived during a very difficult time during the history of France and she ended up loosing her head.

Marie had been given her own little hideaway, Petit Trianon, and used it as a place to escape the French Court at Versailles. This was a gift from her husband Lois XVI and is was all hers. Louis XVI did not build it for Marie, Louis XV did for Madame de Pompadour, and then was used by Louis XV and Madame du Berry. Now this was given to Marie and she used it to escape and created her own pastoral world. Country was on people’s lips and Marie had made country life very fashionable. Well, her version of it any how.

Marie and Louis also had a few other hideaways, one was Rambouillet. Rambouillet was a château Louis purchased in 1783 because he liked the hunting in this area. He was a big sportsman and was up before dawn to hunt the stag. Marie thought the place was ‘a toad hole’ and loathed to be there. Louis in his ever appeasing way created something to make the ever needing to be distracted Marie happy.

Louis had a dairy, Laiterie, built at Rambouillet for Marie Antoinette as a little surprise. She was making country life fashionable, a statement, and being the queen of fashion herself, needed a place for her and her friends to hang. Now don’t go getting pictures in your head of her in a milkmaid outfit milking the cows. The outfit yes, her hands to an utter no.

This was not a dairy like we know it. It was a small but grande working milk house, or milk temple, a place for her and her friends to gather and sit. It had a cooling room with fountains in the floor, a grotto, and  was lit by skylight. Furniture was especially made for this “temple” as well as a large assortment of Sevres porcelain-a few pieces of the porcelain survive. I think I just found another. It had a very ancient look, more Etruscan in detail and coloration.

Let me a back up a moment. I have gotten ahead of myself in a way.

This past May I was invited to attend Garden2Blog12. This is the second time this event has been held and hosted by P. Allen Smith and his wonderful staff and sponsors. It is held in Little Rock, Arkansas at Smith’s Garden Home Retreat. Twenty to twenty-five garden bloggers, writers, personalities, or social media types are gathered from around the nation and flown to Little Rock. Sponsors are given slots to communicate their products, create events, or sponsor the meals. It is no small affair and not done on the cheap.

One of the highlights of the event was a trip out to a Marlsgate Plantation. We were bussed out on a warm sunny day across the Arkansas delta to view the gardens that Smith had designed and to meet his art instructor.

This is no little museum, but a home that someone lives in. It is a grand affair, and that is an understatement. The house, this is the 1904/1905 incarnation, is full of wonderful treasures amassed, accumulated, and unearthed by the family of David P. Garner, Jr.

David is an avid collector and very much a walking encyclopedia of the times, artwork, furniture, and bric-a-brac that fill Marlsgate to the gills. One thing David talked to me was about the several sets and pieces of Sevres. He knows the hallmarks, and who worked on the pieces by the way they were initialed. He is a definite authority and definitely entertaining.

Lately I find myself on Ebay looking at what pieces of Sevres people are attempting to sell. I just about geeked the other day. I am cruising around Ebay and here is this very unusual piece listed as “Gilded Porcelain Cachepot Jardiniere”. (see picture at top of posting)

OMG! This is something I have seen recently. No, not as a photograph, but a watercolor sketch in a book. I found the book I had seen it in recently and though this a sketch it is also spot on.

Original watercolor sketches for the Sevres porcelain by Lagrenee’.

This odd piece that someone is selling as a pot to put a houseplant in is actually a glorified milk pail. Now in my reading I also discovered that the Empress Marie Louise, Empress Josephine’s successor, had these reproduced in white and gold. It is not Marie Antoinette’s milk pail. So much was looted, broken, or just vanished when Louis and Marie were taken into the custody of the French people. One would find some of the objects remarkable if not mind-boggling.Even though several of the ‘wooden’ buckets were made only a few survive.

Questions in my mind: Could this be a one of those that were made? How many are still out there in existence? Does this item need to be returned to the French Government?

 

I look forward to returning to Marlsgate in the future and talking more with David about some of his extraordinary family pieces and those he has hunted down himself. When I talked to David he extended the invitation to come spend the day and talk about the furniture, art, and beauty that is Marlsgate. I may do just that very soon.

Where Plants Rock- Bruce Bailey

Bruce Bailey is the owner of Heavy Petal Nursery in Moses Lake, WA, or, as he likes to call it, God’s Country. With majors in art, art history, and history Bruce finds expression in the garden art he creates along with the customers he cultivates through an unconventional selection of gardening products that ensure a unique shopping experience. New varieties and surprising introductions of garden worthy plants, as well as old fashioned and unjustly forgotten favorites are all on display. His boundless energy and dynamic spirit are in evidence in all of his endeavors, whether through painting, his plant selections, garden design, home interiors or speaking at garden shows.

“Bruce Bailey does not let living in zone 5 define his gardening or his life. His adventurous style is evident in every plant he selects, and every garden he designs. When I met Bruce, my first impression was one of boundless energy, and a mind always at work. His careful observations of nature–and nature expressed in gardens–informs his plant choices, and once formed his opinions are not hidden. Bruce’s educational background in art history and design, and he is an accomplished interior designer/decorator in addition to his ability of paint pictures with plants. Even plants for sale in his nursery are presented in a painterly manner.”

Linda Beutler – Author and Curator, Rogerson Clematis Collection

Deborah Silver recently mentioned Bruce in her blog Dirt Simple http://www.deborahsilver.com/blog/?p=25116

Northwest Flower and Garden Show http://www.gardenshowblog.com/bruce-bailey/

Heritage Radio Network, We Dig Plants with Carmen Devito & Alice Marcus Krieg  http://174.129.224.107/archives?tag=Heavy+Petal+Nursery

 

Bruce’s speaking engagements for 2012

Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle, Washington

Portland Yard, Garden, Patio Show, Portland, Oregon

Arkansas Flower and Garden Show in Little Rock, Arkansas

Boise Flower and Garden Show, Boise, Idaho

Other regional speaking engagements are also on the calendar.

 

Topics

A Container Named Desire- Containers, Care, and Combinations

Pump Up Volume- Outstanding Plants for Summer Containers

Painting Your Desert Garden-  Using foliage to bring color into your high desert garden.

Harmonizing Your Home and Your Garden- Color, Balance and Enhancement
New for 2013

Upcycling into Your Garden- Found objects, trash to treasure, and creating follies in your garden.

County Garning as Fashion- Marie Antoinette, Marie Louise of Savoy, Yolande Martine Gabrielle de Polastron, Georgiana Cavendish and the flowers they loved.

Flowers of Downton Abbey – a look at Edwardian gardening

Follow Bruce on twitter @WherePlantsRock

Visit his nursery website www.heavypetalnursery.com

You can contact Bruce Bailey info@heavypetalnursery.com

Daffodils at Garden Home Retreat

It is spring once again and the harbingers of the season are just exposing their bright faces in Arkansas.

This spring I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak at the Arkansas Flower and Garden Show. I decided to stay an extra day to explore the beauty of the area and my host was none other than the hospitable gallant, P. Allen Smith.

Allen, as he likes to be called, picked me up at 7:30 in the morning at my hotel. He had just finished filming two segments in the studio and had a full day ahead of him. I was originally scheduled to have dinner with Allen on Friday evening, but filming had gone long into the day for him and his crew. Honestly, I was tired from my day of traveling but I did not want to admit it. Allen was wondering if I would care to come up to his Garden Home Retreat and see the farm and the early daffodils that were just breaking forth.

How could I refuse such and invite?

I quickly answered yes and Saturday morning could not come soon enough. As a gardener I relish spring and the earth awakening. As a designer I had been looking forward to the opportunity to see the layout of the farm, gardens and the interior of house.

Like a ride from “Wind in the Willows”, a half an hour to get to Allen’s home, set amongst the trundling landscape of Moss Mountain, and I arrived. Allen takes pride in welcoming the public into his home. He is very gracious and at ease amongst the padocks, meadows, Southern Shortleaf Pines, and oaks. Of course what caught my eye was the beginning of the daffodils. Now I have heard a couple of numbers, but it is an estimated 275,000 daffodils been planted in the meadow that lies like a carpet in front of the traditional Greek Revival farmhouse.

A glorious morning of sunshine, blue skies and unseasonable warm temperatures made for an impressionistic landscape. One could just smell the honey laden perfume of the myriad of yellow blooms as the day warmed.

I must admit I am very grateful for the time Allen took to show me his lair. Retreat is not just implied, but is modus vivendi overlooking the Arkansas River Valley.

Time does not stand still, but is certainly savored at Allen’s Garden Home Retreat. Daffodil Days will be starting soon. March 9, 16, 23, and 30. I would book sooner than later because of the unexpected warmth.

Thank you Allen and staff. I look forward to the Garden2Blog event in May and experiencing yet another season of Arkansas.

The Place to Bee in Chicago—Lurie Garden

 

Prairie plants such as
Echinaceas and grasses dominate at Lurie Garden.

Bees are busy and hard at work at one of the best kept
secrets in Chicago. Hidden away in Millennium Park is a quiet
oasis–Lurie Garden. Consisting of 5 acres and tended by one paid
staff person I was impressed by how natural the setting was.
Another great thing about Lurie Garden is that it rests atop the
Millennium Garden parking structure. Yeah, it is also a rooftop
garden! Is that making the most of your space and hiding an eyesore
all at once?

 I met garden writer Helen
Yoest (gardeningwithconfidence.com) and garden photographer
Christopher Tidrick (fromthesoil.blogspot.com) at the
symbolic  ”Cloud Gate” (Anish Kapoor, 2006).
With its mirror like finish, this  giant sculpture
lays between the vertical and the horizontal; the organic
omphalos refered to by citizens as the “Bean”. On this
glorious August morning, sun shining bright, the mood of
the trio was festive and we were hungry to bite into what Chicago
had to offer. Helen looked forward to seeing this piece as she had
never been to chicago and has a penchant for gazing balls. The
‘Bean’ is one big gazing ball that’s for sure. A few pictures
snapped and off we went to the one garden the three of us
wanted to see. What made that sharing more of an event is the
company I got to share it with.

Christopher Tidrick is
always on the lookout for a great garden shot. Screens or
scrims of grass create great layers and afford the photographer
endless possibilities.

Helen
Yoest- Spendor in the grasses. Textures of stone, plants, wood and
water were awaiting our discovery. This is one garden Helen did not
want to miss in Chicago.

Upon
entering through the armatured hedge the three of us were
amazed at the insular world before us. Textures of stone,
plants, wood and water were awaiting our discovery as we walked
through the small hedge opening, a snicket almost, but I could
be mistaken. Through the hedge we went and momentarily I felt that
we had stepped through the looking-glass. As a big fan of
the natural garden, I could easily glide through meadows and along
the shorelines taking it all in. Lurie Garden is right up my alley
that’s for sure.  Prairie perennials, grasses and great
textural plants from the plains mix well with other plants. OK,
Stop! 

I am describing it as a
jumble, but its more like a series of rolls. Screens or scrims
of grass created great layers while Echinaceas,
Hemerocallis ‘Chicago Apache’,
Veronicastrum virginicum and
Eupatorium maculatus
‘Gateway’ stood tall and proud showing the world their
colors. Calamintha,
Pycnanthemum muticum,
Eryngium yuccifolium,
and
Amsonia hubrichtii
providing contrast and
interest. Layers and screens, screens and layers. More movement
seems to happen while everything is standing still in this
space.

 

Just one
August morning is not enough for this garden. It must be visited
several times throughout the seasons. This is a great garden to
study in, have lunch, meet a friend for intimate conversation.
There is an other-worldliness about it. NO place in Chicago feels
like this.

A visitor to Lurie Garden will be
treated to not only a slow quiet pace, but a feast. The bees
certainly are. The bees in Lurie Garden don’t pay visitors any
attention. They are far too busy gleaning what they can and
collecting up what they need to survive the winter. Busy, busy,
busy bees. This is sort of ironic to me. The bees are much like the
humans who work around or outside the garden. I am not talking
the park employees, but those working in downtown Chicago. Outside
the shouldering hedges is a busy area of downtown. Thousands of
people are working and doing their thing so they can survive as
well.

Triple Threat Garlic Bread

As some of my friends know I am quite the force in the kitchen at times.

When it comes to cooking I learned more from my father than I did my mother–she is no cook.
My folks were born and raised in California–my father was born in Santa Maria and grew up in a strange fashion attending high school in the Santa Ynez Valley and college at Cal Poly, SLO.
His love of California rustic cuisine is still present in the amount of garlic, green onions, and overall flavor he enjoys on or with his food.

So onto the bread!

This recipe is not for those with low cholesterol diets. The butter will he running from the corners of your mouth or dripping from your chin.
You have been warned.

I start with slicing the loaf of bread length wise.

Pre-heat the oven to 425F and put the bread on a cookie sheet face down.
Let cook till outside is hard and at the crunchy state.

In a sauce pan-
Use 3/4 to one pound butter and melt it in the sauce pan adding 2 heaping tablespoons minced garlic–fresh or from a jar. I like to use roasted minced garlic as the flavor is full and rich. Let it melt on low heat- we are not browning the butter but fusing the flavor of the garlic to the golden substance.(Butter has this magical quality to it. The fats absorb or take on flavors, organic compounds and chemical compounds.)After 10 or 12 minutes bring bread out of oven and turn cut side up. It, too, should be crispy and very light in color.

At this point turn the oven on broil and toast the cut side to desired shade.

Pull out of oven and ladle half the butter on the two halved of the bread. Place back under the broiler and let it come to a bubble and remove.

Ladle second half of butter/garlic on bread. Yes! More butter, more garlic.

Repeat steps again with broiler and remove.

Fold buttered faces of bread back onto each other and slice bread into small one inch thick, or thicker, slices.

Serve hot!

The New Southern Casual

The Park Hill Collection just keeps catching my eye. Yes, I have to walk by it. Yes, it draws me in.

Elegant reclaimed wood pieces, stylish and paired down mixed with vintage feeling prints, rustic metals and those dang sheep I got to have.

Truly, these are great! They are cast from molds of old/vintage pieces in a nice featherstone and given a weathered finish–just awesome.

Lanterns, framed mirrors, and other accessories that blend equally from the outside to the inside. All compliment a savvy sense of finish and presentation that can hit a wide rang of price-points.

Helen Yoest, garden writer and Raleigh, North Carolina resident commented to me, “A combination of contemporary south and old plantation before the days that were gone with the wind.”

I would have to agree with Helen that southern style has never looked better.

The New Indie Garden Center Owner

Today was very enlightening. Walking around the trade show floor one just never knows what could catch an eye. She was seen. What I had hoped to find and don’t seem to at trade shows.
This girl is an edgy, goth/alternative type, but right on track. Girl? She just turned twenty-nine and today was her birthday.

Approaching her I asked if I could talk to her for a minute and see how she was enjoying the show and what she was looking at.

The conversation was very relaxed- footing was equal and she appreciated my candid and direct questions as much as enjoyed her esprit decor.
Much was learned quickly–she was here with her mother, a veteran of the garden center trade who had worked for someone else the past 20 years. The mother, with her daughters, had decided it was time to take a risk on something they could call their own. Risky indeed in this economy, but a risk worth taking.

Organics, sustainable, natural were words that came from both these women’s lips. They plan to raise and sell their own eggs- the young woman herself was a bee keeper and planned on having honey as something that was sold at the nursery. Chickens were also part of the package…an odd, but very thought out plan was being related to me and how they would do this in a town with a base population of thirty thousand people.

I feel at times very alternative, very not fitting in with the nursery crowd–too indie. I sell plants to people like this bright young woman when I go to shows and lectures in Spokane, Seattle, and Portland. There is an untapped market of brilliant younger people–couple, singles, families–that are educating themselves online. They are becoming the new plant geeks in the garden sphere.
Nothing like meeting a 22 year old peony collector who is plopping down a hundred dollars on an Itoh peony you have at your show booth. You read that correctly, too sweet to make that kind of stuff up.

Be aware of your customer base–it’s not all ladies 45-60. The base is becoming younger, way hipper, and highly savvy. Just because you have read the cover of a book seldom do you know the story at all.