Extreme Makeover - Buffalo Edition

Here are some photos I took last night visiting the "set" for ABC TV's Extreme Makeover Home Edition, here on the west side of Buffalo, roughly walking distance from my house.

Lit up like a Hollywood production, work goes on around the clock.

On Saturday, Ty Pennington surprised the owners of the (now dismantled) house with the news they were getting a new house in a week. The winner here is a 20-year resident, single mom, originally from Jamaica, that has been a community activist, trying to help clean up her neighborhood, help others get into housing, and is a founding member of PUSH Buffalo (People United for Sustainable Housing). She's battled to keep her own home safe and up to code, but not always financially able to keep on top of it with two jobs and four kids at home (seven total!) as well. The family was shipped off to Disney World and the house was dismantled (in only 15 hours!) to its basement on Sunday & Monday morning by our local construction reuse non-profit group, Buffalo Reuse. The house started to take shape by Tuesday and this is how it looked on Wednesday evening.

Empty lots nearby are being transformed into community gardens.

It's in an area of the city that desperately needs the help. It's just spittin' distance from my first home. It's an old Italian neighborhood that now has more immigrant Asians, Africans & Hispanics than Italian-Americans. It's an area that's been shamefully ignored by the city for generations. There's crime, crackhouses, absentee landlords, vacant lots and boarded-up homes and lots of unemployment. There's also big-hearted, hard-working, devout, people of modest means that deserve a boost in life when they can get it.

City officials weighed in early and asked that the house fit into the existing lot, and also fit in with the neighboring homes -- hopefully to use as a model for future urban in-fill housing. It is going to be made with as many earth-friendly, sustainable features as is possible. I'm told it will have a green roof -- although I've yet to see that in anything published.

Last night when I was there, the siding and corrugated metal siding on the front of the house was being installed. Among hundreds of other tasks. The house is designed to fit in a typical, narrow, urban lot.

And the best thing about this project? They've had so many volunteers, by far the most volunteers the TV show has ever gotten (more than 5,000 -- average number of volunteers for each Extreme Makeover episode is between 700 and 800) - so many that the volunteer companies and citizens are renovating the neighborhood. They're replacing sidewalks and driveways up down and around the block (and around the clock). They are painting, roofing, raking, siding, gardening, and adding gutters, creating murals, adding fences and hundreds more projects for the adjoining blocks. Judges are cutting through red tape to allow derelict properties to be cleaned up. Buffalo ReTree is planting 120 trees. To me, this is the greatest thing they could have done - even more than building a house in a week for a deserving family.

While I stood there, a neighbor who's been volunteering since 6 a.m. this morning ( I was there at 6:30 p.m.) was jazzed because he was going to be interviewed by a local TV station. This is a big deal for him, one of the biggest events of his lifetime.

Another community garden takes shape.

Another neighbor stopped by, she and her crew of volunteers, not all spoke English, were going from house to house for blocks around replacing light bulbs in porch lights that didn't work. A local electrician, volunteering his time & services, heard that streets weren't safe because people didn't sit on front porches because their porch lights didn't work. He took it upon himself (and the expense) to make sure porch lights for blocks around worked. There are literally dozens and dozens of stories like this -- caring people, in positions to help, finally paying attention to homes & people they would never come across in their daily lives, and making an immense difference in those lives -- and this neighborhood for the coming generations.

The entire neighborhood is being transformed. Here, volunteers repair and paint a house almost two blocks away.

I've watched the show in the past. There are rumors of "quick" craftsmanship, cutting corners, things left undone, more expenses for the homeowners afterward than anticipated, and so on. But I am most impressed with US though. The energy and enthusiasm of the thousands of Buffalo volunteers is exciting and humbling at the same time. It's Buffalo contractors, construction workers, police, gardeners, electricians, landscapers, interior designers, stores, painters, roofers, restaurants, radio stations, and hundreds more, in addition to more than 5,000 volunteers that have stepped up to the plate to make this happen. The show is just a catalyst. It's Buffalo that is making this happen. Not our city leaders, mind you, but a TV show and ordinary citizens.

By the end of this (Saturday, for the reveal) there will be new gardens in front of neighboring houses and a couple new community gardens. I'll get back over there sometime to photograph them. I'll be avoiding the neighborhood on Saturday. If they got more than 5,000 volunteers to work on it, I would assume they may be a crowd of as many as 10,000 there Saturday when they get yell, "Move that bus!"

Oh, and you can be sure I'll be approaching the owners of the new house to be on Garden Walk this year, and encouraging the neighbors to be on as well!

A Chagall and its meditation garden

"Great art picks up where nature ends." - Marc Chagall

As we were barging through France a few weeks back, one of our stops was to see Marc Chagall's Peace stained glass window in La Chapelle des Cordeliers, a 13th century former monastery in Sarrebourg, Mozelle, France. The impressive 130-foot-tall stained glass window was designed and installed from 1974-76. It was Chagall's largest stained glass window (more than 13,000 pieces!), which includes windows he created for Reims Cathedral and the United Nations building in NYC.

No Chagall goats and flying violinists in this window - scenes from the old testament in the form of a tree of life, centered on Adam and a buxom Eve, that looked more like a bouquet of life.

It's really a chapel (and tourist attraction) for meditation and reflection. There are only padded cubes to sit on and some subtle interpretive information on the design of the windows. The design of the window matches the theme of the UN windows, and of a tapestry in a museum almost across the street from this chapel - peace.

Chagall was Russian -- and Jewish -- but took on commissions for a few churches when requested. Sort of like Neil Diamond recording Christmas music. Though Chagall was so excited to be asked to create a window for such a large space -- and loved this area of France -- he gifted his portion of its creation. He was 89 at the time. He died in 1985 at the age of 98.

The plants pressing against the glass made these large glass boxes seem more like plant prisons.

Outside the chapel, in an enclosed area, not seen from the street, is a meditation garden, that legend has it, Chagall loved. I did not. As you can see from these photos, it was composed, mostly of trees, plants and bushes in large clear glass. They gave the appearance of being huge terrariums. There were benches to sit, quotes from Chagall spread around the garden and supposedly, on occasion, you could hear Chagall discussing his work through outdoor speakers (I didn't hear them it myself, even if I did, if they were in French, I'd have only understood every 16th word).

All the reflective surfaces made the garden seem distanced from any other plant life. In contrast the Chagall window seemed more natural than the garden.

I guess I didn't like the trees & plants inside the glass cubes. The bushes & plants at the base of the trees were up against the glass and I know I heard them tapping on the glass, begging to be let out. I liked the modernist, straight-lined, squared-off layout of the garden, but to have trees and plants to look at and not be able to touch, smell, watch shiver in the wind, or hear the rustle of, seemed kinda' strange, like some garden museum in the year 3009, when the only trees we have left are exhibited like this.

The garden was a complete contrast to the organic, human-created, colorful, stained glass window on the inside of the building. The only thing they had in common was glass. That was obviously the garden designers intent, but I'd have rather spent time contemplating the window than this particular garden.

If you'd like to see a short video of this garden, window and nearby tapestry, check out this bit I found. It's in French, FYI.

Japanese Garden Hillsides

Back in August, my wife was in Narita Japan, just outside Tokyo. She went running in this park (actually a cemetery) and went back with a camera to take these pictures. I posted on the headstones in the trees here. These are the other shots she took that day. Sorry for the quality of the photos. Young grasshopper does not know the way of the camera.

Photo on top: This hillside is populated with dozens of small statuary. You may have to click on the photo to see it larger. The statues are pretty small.


The mix of round hedges and rough rock in this hillside rock garden also have a smattering of small statures.


I don't know much about Japanese gardens and their ceremonial art. But I do like the very vertical elements often used.


There was a long path of these monuments.


This old tree looks like it needs to get along on crutches.


More hillside. I should have posted this on Gardening Gone Wild's Garden Bloggers Design Workshop on Coping with Slopes.


More tree crutches. What did these trees do before mankind was kind enough to prop them up?


The stairs again, from another angle showing the pool & fountain at its base.

There's grass in your basket...

On our recent trip through the Alsace-Lorraine area of France, along the German border, every town we visited had gorgeous planted baskets along bridges, canals and on light posts, not to mention the ubiquitous window boxes and street side planters.

Other than geraniums, the most ever-present plant we saw in these, were grasses. I've not seen too many basket-planted grasses here in the U.S. The photos here show the grass baskets very late in their season, that's why some look kinda' sloppy, but I'm sure throughout the growing season, they look smashing.

I may try more of this next year. I'm happy with any grass that doesn't have to be mowed. The grasses provide the the thriller in the French version of thriller / spiller / filler -- écit à suspense / flaque / remplisseur. Doesn't really roll off the tongue now, does it?

Gingko drop watch

Did you know that a ginkgo tree holds onto all its leaves just to drop them at the same time (within an hour or so)? No dithering here.

I read that in a magazine recently. I have a VERY young gingko tree in the backyard planted a few years ago. Our big October surprise storm three years ago (which we call Arborgeddon because it either killed or defaced the majority of our city's trees) snapped my first ginkgo tree in half, but this one popped up in its place and seems happy.

And in the background is my pear tree diamond-shaped espalier. Half is tree, half is the heavy-gauge wire structure to train them on. Two trees called it quits on me last year, so I'm starting half the espalier from scratch. That's Solomon's Seal at the base of it. And, yes, I know, I have to get that planter put away before it freezes.

I'm going to keep an eye on the ginkgo to see if it drops its leaves all at once.

Metropolis magazine Garden Walk mention

In the current (October 2009) issue of Metropolis, writer Kerry Jacobs writes of Garden Walk...

"...the Buffalo I discovered when I finally made my first trip there this summer was a pretty and vibrant place. The annual Garden Walk filled the city’s more gentrified residential neighborhoods with throngs of strollers determined to drop in on as many luxuriant backyards as possible."

The article, titled, Wright-ish, is mainly about the restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House and Toshiko Mori's newly constructed Greatbatch Pavilion. Jacobs questions the building of demolished historic structures and proposed-but-never-built structures - and issue of no small importance in Buffalo. To read the article, visit here. She suggests buildings remain part of history, and if something needs to be built, it should be built for the future, not the past.

What do you think? Should buildings that were designed and never built, as well as buildings that were built, but destroyed, be rebuilt?

Does the same hold true for gardens? Should old gardens be restored? Both Frank Lloyd Wright gardens (Martin House & Graycliff) here in Buffalo are on the planning stages to be restored from their original plans. I can't see any reason why we wouldn't restore them, even though nothing of them remains today.

Big ball o' burning bush

Hard to miss the big red ball in the front garden this time of year. The Burning Bush (Euonymus alatus) gets a good trimming a few times in the summer into its ball shape. I've not trimmed it in months. After being away for a week, came back to find it had morphed into a great big red clown nose dropped in front of the house.

Here it is, back in September. As a green ball, it blends in with everything else and you can barely tell it's there.

There's a more detailed post on Burning Bush and its invasive tendencies to be found at May Dreams Gardens. I don't have to worry so much about it being invasive in this setting.

It is one of the few plants that was here when we moved into the house. It covers up a good chunk of the ugly concrete porch & stairs. Eventually, I'd like to design a front porch that would complement the 1897 gambrel-roofed Dutch Colonial Revival house. I don't think the concrete, cinder block and black wrought iron fence are too historically accurate. Or good looking.

Oh, to be a geranium salesman in Colmar, France...

When I retire, and want to make some REAL money, I may settle in the city of Colmar just south of Strasbourg, France, and sell geraniums. Seems every window box and rail planter in the entire city has geraniums. Tens of thousands of them. Reminded me of our trips to Switzerland and their ever-present, window-box-trapped geraniums on medieval half-timbered houses.

If not for the canals, lock houses, and medieval villages, the terrain and trees look like parts of New York State at this time of year. The paved path to the right follows the canals and was great for walking, biking (and for my wife to run). It was cool all week, starting off in the 50s and getting down to below 32 at night.

This area of France, being just the other side of the German border has influence from both their German & Swiss neighbors, architecturally, culturally, and agriculturally. Their history reads something like this:
12 BC - Roman
1200s - Free city
1400s - Free Republic
1697 French
1700-1800s German
1918 - French
1940s - German occupation
After WWII - French once more

Colmar was a beautiful town that was just one of our side trips while cruising the canals on a barge for the week. If you are ever in need of a unique vacation I highly suggest a Barge Canal Cruise in Europe. This barge, the Lorraine, sleeps 22 max (there were only 17 the week we were on board, mostly American, a few Australians) and has a crew of seven (captain, deckhand, two stewards, a tour guide, one manager and a chef).

Our home for the week. Cruising through France at walking pace for six days. A slow pace you just can't find anyplace else.


The chef made gourmet meals for us, including homemade foie gras, a local Alsatian specialty. The meals were nothing less than spectacular, made with local produce bought in the towns we visited along the canal, highlighted with local specialties, two area wines introduced with each meal, and two French cheeses (they take their cheeses VERY seriously) introduced after the meal, before dessert.

Another favorite basket planting was sweet potato vine, but curiously only in its familiar chartreuse form. The darker sweet potato vines were not to be seen.

The barge travels at about 4mpg for the week. You can easily get off at any lock (there are many) and walk or ride a bike up to the next lock or two or three or four. You walk faster than the barge. A bus driven by the tour guide meets us at each stop and takes us on a tour or two each day - a crystal glass factory, medieval towns, a brewery beer tasting, a wine tasting, a Chagall stained glass window, a museum, a Strasbourg tour, and a covered (touristy) boat tour of Strasbourg.

The owners of the Boat, Ed and Ona, were on board. They've just purchased another boat that needs refurbishing before it settles its life on a Burgundy itinerary. The Lorraine may be hosting a "French cooking school" theme week next year.

As much as the flowers add color, so do the colors of the Alsatian half-timbered houses. Did you know the plaster between the timbers is made of clay, straw and fur?


He's also got lots of ideas for other "theme" cruises - including breast & prostate cancer weeks (they've both had bouts with them) complete with knowledgeable medical doctors on board to meet and ask any question. This week, it was filled with retired pilots, getting the rest they so well deserve and don't necessarily get on the job.

A four day garden tour? Good grief!

After a week of barge canal cruising through the Alsace-Lorraine area of France - along the German border (posts to come), I come home to this.

It's a letter to the editor of the Buffalo News suggesting Garden Walk Buffalo be extended to four days. And to also do an event in Spring. And the Fall. Made me laugh. You can read the full text here.

It's not as though the Garden Walk committee hasn't had these thoughts in the past, it's just that it's a lot of work to put on the event for two days already. From selecting art for & designing posters; soliciting corporate sponsors; lugging water bottles; schlepping merchandise around; dragging displays; counting money; doling out yard signs; heaving piles of maps from location to location; mailing shirts; answering the same questions over 10,000 times; managing databases; inputting donor info; planning gardener parties; doing bookkeeping and accounting; manning booths; figuring out how to distribute Beautification Grants; coordinating 20-some committee members, 75 weekend volunteers, and 340 gardeners–what we do as a group is already a large undertaking. As a garden group - you can see we do little gardening. As president of the group, my head reels at the thought of how much this group of twenty-some committee members already accomplished each year.

Not to mention all the work it takes to get your garden ready for 50,000 visitors. And what gardener would have an extra two days to take off work to standing their garden? Most of us work (when we're not canal cruising in France).

Buffalonians "...drunkenly sharpening their Felcos..."

In this month's issue of Fine Gardening Magazine, (December 09), the editor's asked garden writers and professionals from different areas of the country to list their "Three Garden Wishes." The California representative, Amy Stewart, wishes for "Heat" (she lives by the air-conditioning ocean), "Salvias" (she doesn't have enough) and "Neighbors with better gardens than mine." And about neighbors gardening, she writes:

"I want to be surrounded by gardeners with more imagination than I can conjure up. I need motivation–and company. It was not until I experienced the extraordinary Garden Walk held in Buffalo, New York, that I realized that some people live in neighborhoods in which everyone gardens. Plants get traded over the fence, and there are garden parties that last long into the evening, with gardeners drunkenly sharpening their Felcos and stumbling into the perennial border, cocktails in hand, to finish the weekend's work. It sounds dangerous but thrilling."

Methinks she's spent a fair amount of time in the Gardening While Intoxicated garden. But in a city where the bars don't close till 4 a.m. each night, it's inevitable we'd have a reputation for drinking and gardening.

You'll have to pick up this copy of Fine Gardening magazine (available at fine magazine retailers near you) to see what the other garden "gurus" from around the country each wish for. There's also some great bits on pros & cons of different types of composting, unique fall plant suggestions, sustainably-oriented garden design, conifers for shade, and an article on grasses with some great photos. Oh, and a quick interview with Paul James.

More Canandaigua Lake "cozy cottages" & gardens...

Not quite the little cozy cottage, but this three-car garage behemoth is among the newer cottages along Seneca Point Road. Can you imagine having this as your SECOND home?

Last weekend we were in Canadaigua, NY - the fourth largest of the 11 Finger Lakes and home to our state wineries and grape pies. Canandiagua Lake is the second-most expensive lake property in the country (according to tax-cost-per-foot for lake frontage) after Lake Tahoe. The cottages here are not quite the quaint image of a little place on the lake. But I'd kill to own one of them just the same. As long as I didn't have the tax bill to go along with them.

The Weather Channel recently named the Finger Lakes region the No. 1 Lakeside Retreat in the world. We took a short walk along Seneca Point Road, probably the most exclusive, toniest part of the lake. Here are some of the "cottages" and their front gardens/landscapes.


The natural-look yard - no cost, no mowing, no chemicals.


The not so natural yard, costs, mowing, and chemicals.


Nice landscaping. Pretty place. Its site setting and breaking of the mass of the building belies its size.


The water side of this place must be spectacular.


One of my favorites on the lake.


It gets hilly fast along the roadside. Many have found unique ways to deal with hills, plantings and architecture.


This place always reminded me of a New Orleans vernacular.


This is a 1,180 sq. ft. garage with a one bedroom, one bath unit on top. This was built, and a matching boathouse across the street on the lake was constructed. It is for sale, along with the architectural plans for the not-yet-built matching house. It can be yours for $1,009,900.


Another favorite. Used to be a factory of some sort. In past years, it's been rentable.


This one belongs to folks we know, another flight attendant that works with my wife, commuting to Newark from Rochester. It's a home passed down through her husband's family, now shared by his siblings and their families.


The bear sits (stands?) in front of the house at the very top of this post. It's carved from a tree cut down to build the house.

Off to Wegman's... the cottage, not the store...

One of the Wegman's cottages on Canandiagua Lake.

Last weekend we were taking a walk along Seneca Point Road on the west side of Canandaigua Lake as we often do when we're visiting my wife's parents. This time I had my camera.

I've always admired these "pot holders" they set out each year. But in my neighborhood, I'd have to set them in concrete and find a way to lock the pot in the stand and still hope no none steals them. They, repeated, like in the photo below, are quite impressive.

Here are some shots of the Wegman's place on the Lake. This is the cottage of Mr. Wegman, the founder of the Wegmans grocery store chain. He passed away a few years ago. His widow currently spends her summers here. Each spring you can find an army of gardeners out working on the property getting it in tip-top shape for the season. Many others in the Wegman family own other places on Canandaigua Lake as well. This home is large, but understated, with many Frank Lloyd Wright qualities about it -- low to the ground, in natural materials and wide eaves, helping mask its size.

Wegmans is our local powerhouse of a grocery store. It's based in Rochester and has a reach throughout most of New York State, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia. It's constantly in the top five of the best places to work, according to J.D. Power and Associates.

Sorry, no shots from the front of the house -- could only take photos from the road.


Along the roadside, the "pot holders" serve double-duty as they stop cars from pulling over onto the grass.


Masses of Fall colors -- plantings are changed throughout the year. I always thought these lightposts look like the same ones you'd find in a Wegmans parking lot, just shorter.


It's a downright park-like setting.



Even the mailbox has a hanging basket.


Coleus are the main source of color in these gardens.

Dogtag Garden

The Old North Church, in Boston, MA, has a "Dog Tag" Memorial Garden. On a recent visit to Boston, coming across this memorial garden was a sobering stop on an otherwise fun day.

There is one dog tag hanging for every man & woman in the armed forces and civilians who have lost their lives in the Afghanistan & Iraq Wars. There were well over 3,000 tags. The saddest part? They left space for more.

The Old North Church, built in 1723, gained its fame when the church sexton, in 1775, climbed the steeple and held two lanterns as a signal from Paul Revere that the British were marching to Lexington & Concord by sea - and not by land. This event ignited the American Revolution.

Not too impressed with the heirloom tomatoes

They're pretty, but not too productive. This is the bulk of the heirloom tomatoes we harvested this year. It was the first time trying heirlooms. Not so sure I'd do it again. When I was kvetching to our local garden guru, Sally Cunningham, about the poor turnout this year, she told me that it was a bad year overall for tomatoes, and as far as heirlooms go, there's a reason why most people plant disease-resistant, consistently-productive, hardy, hybridized tomatoes.

The best looking of the bunch were the Green Zebras. The quality of taste wasn't significantly different from the normal tomatoes we plant.

The tomatoes seen in the top photo are Garden Peach (small yellow salad tomatoes with a peach-like skin), Green Zebra (pretty, small green & yellow), Dr. Wyche's Yellow (the large yellow one). They all tasted good, but we had to buy tomatoes from a local green grocer to get some decent BLTs and caprese salad. The Kentucky Beefsteak tomatoes planted (not shown) were nice and velvety in texture, but didn't taste any better than other 'maters we've grown in the past. The Copia and Williams Striped never produced any tomatoes. Next year less heirlooms and more of the regular tomato plants!

Which leaf is which?

One is from a Redbud, the other from Dutchman's pipe. They're not too close to each other, but the Dutchman's pipe vine is crawling closer to the Redbud each year. Had to take a second look at the soon-to-be-interweaving leaves to distinguish the two.

Rows of sharin'

Okay, it's really only one row of Rose of Sharon, but that wouldn't have worked so well for the post title wordplay.

These are the the Rose of Sharon trees that separate my mother's lake property (outside of Binghamton, NY) from her neighbors (my aunt & uncle). I missed peak flowering of these trees this year, though I'm told they were spectacular (and late!).

Before.

After.

I put in a small "strip" garden for her last year, separating the gravel "patio" area of the yard and the grass that leads to the lake. My brother had put a wimpy landscape timber there to separate the two. I added a step down in the middle and symmetrical plantings on each side. It's still on the wimpy side, but makes for a more definite division between the two. Being on a hill, neither patio nor yard are level. The stone is too large really for its purpose as a patio, but it was originally added to facilitate construction of the small cottage built last year.

The strip has all deer-proof (supposedly) plantings - silver mound, hibiscus, lavender and some grasses. I'm hoping to add to it a little each year with divided plants from my own garden. There's plenty of room for more beds, though the stone you see is more than a foot deep - so it has to be dug out as best as possible and topsoil has to be added. Stone sucks to dig in.


Different angle of the same thing.


Different angle of the same thing. Mom's added decorative balls, which, surprisingly, end up in the lake when grandkids visit.


Lavender is very happy here and lasted the winter. That bodes well for its future.


Taller grasses cap the ends of the strip.


First-year hibiscus blooms portend well for the future also.


The view the plants have. Generally, the chairs are either full of people or not there - not looking so much like zombies patrolling the yard. It was a busy weekend.

Messing with young minds

Yes, they do look something like you might find in the Gardening While Intoxicated garden before you hit the dirt, but alas, you’re seeing them as they are – warped classic pedestals and planters. The are a clever nod to the winds coming off Lake Erie. To hallucinogenicly-prone students, these probably appear perfectly straight. They certainly make you do a double take when you see them for the first time.

These way cool planters are in Founder’s Plaza, on the north campus of the State University of Buffalo (UB). The plants in the urns, which seem a bit uninspired in these photos, are intended to change with the seasons.

For the gentle wind doth move Silently, invisibly is the name of the instillation by artist Brian Tolle. The installation is on a two-year loan. It was commissioned by Cleveland Public Art and was most recently displayed for two years in downtown Cleveland. The artist came to Buffalo and actually studied wind patterns in the plaza to site the pieces.

This is a favorite old post, created before I was on Blogger. I repeat it here to save & catalog it on this new site. Sorry if you've read it before.

A garden party with Frank Lloyd Wright

Toshiko Mori's Greatbatch Pavilion - a building that has been called a "technical tour de force" to parallel Frank Lloyd Wright's revolutionary design for the Martin House.

This year, being our fifteenth anniversary, the Garden Walk Committee threw a party for the gardeners, volunteers, and committee members of the Walk in the brand new Darwin Martin House Greatbatch Pavilion.

First group of tours finishes up and are ready for drinks.

Not only did we throw a two-hour wine & hors d'ouvres party, but we also provided free tours of the Wright's Martin House, the design of which Wright considered his "opus." The facilities manager, also the owner of a local popular garden center, Arbordale Nurseries, was on hand to show historical photos of the original gardens on the grounds of the compound and was able to not only talk about the restoration -- but drafted a few volunteers to help with the effort!

The Greatbatch Pavilion is a special building in that it almost disappears. From the floor-to-ceiling windows to the absolutely silent mechanical services you barely know you're inside a building. It looks onto and accentuates the horizontal aspect of the Martin House.

It was no small task to coordinate tours for 160+ people through a large house with many opportunities for traffic jams. Volunteers were stationed to help the flow of the roughly one-hour tours. As soon as a group of twenty were gathered, they went on the tour, next twenty to gather were right on their heels. Everyone was completely done in about and hour and 45 minutes. All went swimmingly, thanks to the great tour guides and tour coordinators.

Being inside the Pavilion even looks like you're outside.

Due to overwhelming response, and tour & room capacities, some RSVPs after the RSVP date could not be accepted. We apologize to those gardeners and volunteers that really wanted to come. And for the people that RSVP'd and didn't show (and we still had to pay for)? We'll be sending the gardeners we had to turn away over to YOUR house.

Every year, within a few months after the Walk is over, the organizing committee throws a "Thank You" party for the gardeners that are so gracious to open their gardens each year. It started off many years ago with cases of beer and bags of chips in a back yard.

That's my Senior Assistant Junior Garden Supervising Groundskeeper (and garden financial adviser) acting as traffic manger at the front door. To my knowledge, there were no tour group accidents, mishaps or emergency room trips. Though she is defibrillator-qualified.

As Garden Walk has grown, so has the party. Past years have seen the parties in church halls, bars and more recently, in different gardens around the Garden Walk area, hosted by the host gardener and the GW Committee (gardeners don't often get out to see other gardens!).We also did a block party, closing off a street allowing gardeners to peruse a block of gardens they might not ever have the chance to see otherwise.

We tried to keep the comments & announcements brief, but we've never had a captive audience this large AND had a microphone.

This was a big deal for us in time & treasure and it went off without a hitch -- special thanks to the support for the event & tours. Schuele Paint, a Buffalo institution; and JCharlier Communication Design (me) picked up the cost of the tours. Gates Circle Liquor, another Buffalo institution, donated the wine. The Martin House Restoration Corporation was generous with use of the Greatbatch Pavilion and discounted tours from their excellent cadre of volunteer docents.

We encourage all to take the 2-hour In-Depth tour when you're able to be able to see the upstairs of the house, the Barton House and Gardeners Cottage which are all part of the Martin House compound.

A tour starts outside the building. The neighborhood was laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted, with curving streets so as not to see the busier streets that bookend the neighborhood. The Martin House is so close to the Buffalo Zoo that you can hear elephants & lions at night.

If you're part of a local company looking for a unique party/holiday celebration/treat for employees, I highly recommend considering the Martin House tour and a party in the Pavilion afterward. The more local people to tour the house, the more advocates the house will have out in the world. If you're coming to our neck of the woods, the Falls are a must, but so is this house (it's actually more of a mansion, albeit a Wright version of a mansion).

The house still has a ways to go before it is 100% complete. The exterior grounds will be restored to its 1904 original.

You can find photos of the event here, taken by photographer Don Zinteck of Photographics 2, on the events portion of his website.

Japanese cemetery in the trees

My wife was in Tokyo recently and took this beautiful photo of this moss-covered cemetery in the trees. Most Japanese cemeteries are Buddhist and are located around a temple. I'll post eventually her photos from the temple grounds.

In Japan, cemeteries are generally considered spooky and gloomy -- Japanese visit graves of loved ones on few occasions yearly, usually just on the anniversary of a death and during the spring and fall equinox.

I just thought the setting here was beautiful and worth sharing. When your typography reads from top to bottom, it leads to tall & narrow headstones for a totally different aesthetic than we left-to-right readers are used to.

Window box at peak

The window boxes on the front of my house are filled mostly with coleus, Persian shield and potato vines. Right now it looks the best it's looked all year.

Left, in 2004. Right, in 2009. You can see how the baskets & boxes bring the garden right up the side of the house, integrating both house & garden. If I were even smarter, I'd have some of the plants from the baskets & boxes repeated in the garden itself.

The window boxes (there're two boxes side-by-side, giving the impression of one long window box) are made of recycled plastic deck boards, the kind of stuff you'd build a deck with. I built them a couple years ago. They were a bit more expensive with the plastic deck stuff. I knew, built of even pressure treated wood, they'd rot and get weak at points and I'd have to just rebuild them. And pre-made boxes would not fit the width of the window, nor be the right scale for the house. The plastic ones are so wimpy, and can't easily be painted to match the house colors.

I'd love to put a window box on that very top, small, oval-topped, attic window, but I know I won't be good about watering it. And nothing looks worse than dead plants in a box.

From the office window. Blends in nicely from this view of the front garden. There are also more boxes (the cheap plastic kind) attached to the railing of the front porch with the same coleus, Persian shield & potato vines..

They're put together with bolts. No nails. Nails would just pull from all the different weights and forces on such heavy planters. They're up there on cleats that are solidly attached to the house. The brackets you see are purely decorative.

The flaw in my plan? That recycled plastic wood is friggin' heavy! It took all my might to get both planters up there. I did it though, all on my own. Inch by inch up a ladder. Twice.

Cone baskets on either side of the door. A couple neighbors up the street had their front porch baskets stolen. Idiot robbers tried selling them to people down our end of the street. I was paranoid someone would steal these, so they're pretty wrapped with wires on their hanging brackets. Whoever wants to steal them will have some work to do to un-engage them from their holders.

I like coleus because I get constant color without having to worry about bloom times or deadheading. And they are pretty transparent about when they need water. And they bounce back quickly if I haven't watered them for a while. Watering is pretty easy from my office window. Overflow usually gets the baskets below a good soaking. And any mail in the mailbox.

The cone-shaped planters just below the window boxes on either side of the door are planted with the same things, with the addition of a brown spiky grass for even more height.

The lightning-shaped lightning rod is now a few years old. I drew the shape of the lightning and a local sculptor built it for me. Hard to tell here, but at the ends of the splayed wires are very large colored glass marbles.

In the last three years we've had a new roof, new windows, new lightning rod, and this summer, a new paint job. Same color green, but with the addition of a dark green & the purple. Wish we'd pushed the purple a bit more. I may go back next summer and paint the window boxes and a few other surfaces in the purple color.

Do you have window boxes? What's your experience?