Garden Design Magazine Will Cease Publication

Garden Design Magazine to cease publishing

After the April 2013 issue, Garden Design Magazine will cease to exist as a magazine.

The publication was established in 1982 and written for those interested in garden and landscape design for the home. 

I may not have the first-year copies of the magazine – I have to check my garden book and periodical library – (which is still in box storage until our home renovation is completed) but I’m sure I have copies of Garden Design magazine from those early years.

Whatever the magazine archive, I can say with certainty; I was smitten from the get-go. 

The magazine spoke to me.  It was all about a garden lifestyle.

It was sophisticated. It was glamorous. It was transporting. 

And there was never another magazine that came close to Garden Design.

Sure there were many horticultural magazines but all of them were focused on the hort community and the professional.

The hort “gotcha” community can be really tough on those that really don’t care to know the botanical nomenclature and all things plants.

Does that diminish the love of the garden?

To my knowledge, there is no other artistic genre that belittles its enthusiasts while professing to court them.

Well, maybe fine art painting- but not sure…

Garden Design magazine offered true romance about the art of the garden.   From the plants to the hardscape to the edibles and fine dining…

Garden Art is not dissimilar from other ephemeral art forms and Garden Design magazine celebrated the gardens’ provenance and exuberance and its designers—present and past.

Don’t get me started on the need to celebrate and understand Garden History.

How can one build on a body of art if there is no ready hub to stimulate and celebrate?

I contributed to the book, "The Pioneers of Landscape Design," because I had so much research material given my passion and my landscape design academic study that I wanted to share.

Garden Design magazine was aspirational. It was inspiring.

Coming home from pounding corporate travel and bruising meetings and joyful international garden visits as part of all that business, I luxuriated in perusing the garden glamour in Garden Design magazine.

Every page told a garden story.

Even the ads were powerful testament to an elevated garden lifestyle.

Heck, I even read those teeny, tiny, personal-looking ads in the back of the magazine.

It’s how I learned about a week-long garden design course taught at Filoli in San Francisco, hosted by the English father and son garden design team, Robin Williams. (Not the American comedian).

I even flew my sister to join me and we stayed in Sonoma and then Half Moon Bay while taking the course.

Good garden memories ignited by Garden Design Magazine.

Later, after I stepped out of the world of technology public relations and worked at The New York Botanical Garden and then Brooklyn Botanic Garden, I was giddy and privileged to not only work with the editors of Garden Design magazine on news stories but was able to count them as friends. To this day.

The loss of Garden Design magazine is not just a business environment loss.

The loss of Garden Design magazine is not just an “old media” loss.

The loss of Garden Design magazine is not just the loss of a gardening or horticulture media outlet as some of my hort associates have lamented.

The business decision to cease publication can be justified. 

It’s ad pages that aren’t there.

I tried a few times to post in landscape designer Susan Cohen’s postings (but due to tech issues could not…)

In response I tried to explain that one of the key inventory elements of garden design is plants – and outside of perhaps Monrovia, those growers and developers have zero history of advertising.

Why can’t the landscape designer’s hue and cry that Architectural Digest succeeds brilliantly see that without the limitless creative, design “stuff” support, the landscape sister to AD can’t cut it?

As noted by a previous Garden Design editor on Cohen’s Linked In page wrote:

A note about corporate publishing: circulation is controlled by the publishing company. Garden Design’s circulation was not reflective of national interest (or lack thereof) in exquisitely designed gardens. Circulation is decided upon based on formulas related to profitability (the printing and mailing of the magazines is the most expensive part of the business).

I had long suggested to my Garden Design friends that the magazine should position itself as the Vogue of garden design. 

It wasn’t competing with Fine Gardening, Horticulture or blogs. 

No. It was the arbitrator of the best of garden design.

It was the curator of garden design and the experts who gave us a garden design lifestyle.

Just like the fact that not many of us can afford or want to pick up on the Vogue or Harpers’ fashion of the moment -- are we really going to purchase the Alexander McQueen or the Marc Jacobs or Oscar de la Renta?
Those of us who read and loved Garden Design magazine sensed we’d never have that rill or orchard. 

But maybe some day we would.
Or maybe we could reinterpret it just like those fashion designs that are re-crafted at Target..

I also believe that the business model for Garden Design magazine was flawed,

Especially in a time of digital and social media. 

Why couldn’t Bonnier, the parent company, create a hub for landscape, design professionals to come together and meet the homeowner – the garden design enthusiast?

Garden Design Magazine are the curators.  

They are the experts.

They can create a compelling, viral, hub of garden art enthusiasts who will pay for the app.

There is downstream revenue to be explored for those that can marry the vision with the funding to make it happen. Seriously. With home gardening: edible and ornamental continuing to ahem, grow, there is an opportunity waiting to be cultivated…

Here’s to hoping Bonnier or someone with garden vision can make this work.

Maybe, just maybe – it could be us and our garden glamour community.

What do you think?

Here is the full Garden Design Magazine story as it appeared in Adweek:

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/bonnier-corp-folds-garden-design-magazine-147159

New York Winter Antiques Show Features Rare Garden Antiques from Barbara Israel Garden Ornament Collections

Tomorrow is the first day of the 59^th New York Winter Antiques Show.

The annual show at the Park Avenue Amory in New York City is the

“Most prestigious antiques show, providing museums, collectors, dealers, design professionals, and first- time buyers with opportunities to see and purchase exceptional pieces showcased by 73 renowned experts in American, English, European, and Asian fine and decorative arts.

Every object exhibited at the Show is vetted for quality and authenticity. All net proceeds support East Side House Settlement a non-profit institution in the South Bronx that provides social services to community.

The Winter Antiques Show’s 2013 loan exhibition celebrates The Preservation Society of Newport County, Rhode Island. 

Newport: The Glamour of Ornament showcases fine and decorative art from eight of the historic Newport Mansions.

Newport and glamour works for this Garden Glamour blogger: my husband and I honeymooned in Newport and well; glamour is a fundamental design element... 

Garden Design

Garden Design Antiques are front and center and represented by a premiere garden historian, expert and author, Barbara Israel.

Today being a crazy, day-before the show schedule, Barbara was kind enough to provide an interview. 

I know Barbara from my career at The New York Botanical Garden.

And from the research I do for my garden design clients. 

Her contributions to the three area-antiques shows she showcases her art at are memorable. 

Her knowledge and her collections are extraordinary.

She is an acknowledged expert and has written two books on garden antiques.

Here is an excerpt from the Q&A in advance of the 2013 Winter Antiques Show:

Q.  How did you get started collecting garden antiques?  Being a Garden State Frelinghuysen, I assume you grew up surrounded by such art…

A.  I grew up going to both of my grandmother’s gardens— one in Far Hills, New Jersey (Mrs. Frelinghuysen).  The other in Islip, Long Island (Mrs. Lawrance).  My grandmother Frelinghuysen lived near the Louis XIII style mansion in Peapack, NJ called Blairsden. 

Garden Glamour knows this Garden State property well. 

An early-in-my-garden-design career, fellow enthusiast, Barry Thompson, would take the time to share his garden and estate home history knowledge and pre-internet network connections to other passionate garden enthusiasts for my burgeoning garden history curiosity and writing. I cherished his keen research and undying devotion to grand estates and historical landscape architecture.

Thompson wrote the acclaimed book on the stunning Blairsden estate that so beguiled and influenced Barbara: New Jersey Country Houses - The Somerset Hills   

Back to Barbara:

As a girl I would sneak onto this property with my siblings and was in awe of the ornament there— including 12 monumental busts of Roman emperors that lined the driveway.  These excursions peaked my interest early on.  

Also, my grandmother Lawrance took me to visit the Gould estate in Lakewood, NJ called Georgian Court (now a college campus).  There I saw opulent marble fountains and urns.

Q. Why exhibit at the Winter Antiques Show?

A.  The Winter Antiques Show is really the best showcase in the country for art and antiques of the finest quality— you’ll find the rarest, most coveted objects here.  

We are the only garden ornament dealer at the Winter Show.  

The Delaware Antiques Show in November, a benefit for Winterthur, (www.winterthur.org) is another great show on our schedule (though smaller, more regional), but the Winter Antiques Show is sort of the grand dame of antiques shows.  

And, one of our favorite events of the year is the art and antiques show at the New York Botanical Garden (www.nybg.org) in April— where all the dealers are garden dealers.  That’s a gorgeous show, just in terms of aesthetics.   

Q.  How do you determine what you will show at the Winter Antiques Show – given the size of the garden art, how many pieces can you get to a show, plus the cost…?

A. We set aside objects all year for the Winter Antiques Show.  

This is the venue where we show our rarest acquisitions, our finest pieces.  Connoisseurs come from all over the country looking for the best, so we make sure to put together a really fine collection for this show.  

We like to have objects marked by rare makers, or statues of particularly fine quality, pieces with an unusual and desirable provenance, objects of grand proportions, for large estate gardens.  

We also try to have a range of pieces and a range of price points.  

We also like to bring pieces that make sense with each other— we sometimes have a theme, like a woodland, where we’d bring mostly animals, etc.

We generally bring anywhere from 20-36 pieces to a show.  

Some of these pieces will not be on view right away but instead in “vetted storage,” meaning they’ve been approved by the Vettors, or experts, but are being held back to be put in when something else sells.  

This year, we are bringing pieces of such monumental size that the number of objects was a bit lower than usual.

Yes, it is expensive to move these pieces, but luckily we have a very experienced and knowledgeable team.

Q.  Do you promote or advertise or alert the show attendees prior to the show so that the audience comes knowing what you will offer. Or do you unveil and surprise with your offerings?

A. We do a fair amount of advertising and promotion. Generally a couple of ads in antiques magazines and/or newspapers.  

We send out a postcard to people on our mailing list.  

We send out an e-blast to our email mailing list.  

We send a select number of photographs via email to particular clients who might collect this or that.  

We have clients who like to know in advance so that they can make plans to be there early on opening night.  That said, we don’t let everything out of the bag— there have to be surprises in the booth.

Q. Do the customers come pre-disposed to your collections or do you meet new fans all the time?

A. Many of our clients are long-term clients whose taste we know and understand and of course we have them in mind when we acquire pieces.  

But we also meet new people all the time— every year brings new clients and new enthusiasm for antique garden ornament.  

Working with clients to find the perfect piece for their garden is one of the best parts of the business.

Q. How have tastes changed over the last 10 years?

A.  Tastes have certainly changed a bit through the years.  

We are seeing more people responding to modern pieces now, or pieces that are rustic enough to be at home in a spare modern landscape.  

But there will always be clients for classical, traditional ornament.  

Q. What are trends? What’s “new” in garden antiques?

A.   Classical garden ornament mostly defies trends— the desire for exceptional examples of classical ornament remains steadfast. Sometimes we have a flurry of requests for armillary spheres, or a wave of interest in simple stone benches, but generally I wouldn’t even define these as trends.  

Fairly recently, many clients were interested in a more rustic look, but this is not across the board. 

Q.  Where do you source from and does that impact “style?”

A. We do most of our overseas buying in England— with occasional pieces coming from the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, or France.  

We have favorite sources that we are in contact with in those countries.  

We also do a lot of buying here in this country— we receive photos every week from people looking to sell beautiful things.  

It’s hard to say how it impacts styles.  So many of our pieces can fit well into a traditional English garden or an Italianate one.  

We usually advocate working with the architecture of the home— finding ornaments that work with the style of the client’s house.

Q. What’s the future of garden antiques – in pieces and interest?

A. We see interest growing in garden antiques.  

And just when we wonder whether we’ll be able to continue finding great pieces, something truly magnificent comes along.  

Also we’re just getting going on our research— even after writing the book and the guidebook, there are still so many new discoveries to be had.  

This makes it all a great deal of fun.

Q.  Who is your “typical” customer?  Young/older? Do people buy garden antiques as gifts?

A. Our typical client is probably 35-65, but really a vast range of people. Yes, people do buy garden ornaments as gifts!

What the recent buying interest, especially given the recent financial downturn that we now emerging from?

A. The last four years were certainly difficult for everyone and we definitely felt the downturn.  However we have started to see the market pick up tremendously.  

We were aware that garden ornaments were bound to be one of the last areas to recover— since people tend to focus more on the interior of their homes when times are uncertain.  But we have turned the corner.

Q.  Tell us about your books – are they still in print and continue to sell?

A. We are still selling the 1999 book.  It is out of print, but we buy them up where we can and you can find it on Amazon.  

I see two left!  Antique Garden Ornament: Two Centuries of American Taste 

And with a Forward by the legendary Mark Hampton makes this book a favorite in my Garden Glamour design library.  

Hampton’s daughter Alexa has picked up the family’s design magic wand to much success. 

Don’t miss out.

The guidebook, A Guide to Buying Antique Garden Ornament, is self-published (2012) and there has been a lot of interest.  I’d like to think it’s required reading— I hope designers would agree!

Q.  Where can the public see some of your garden antique art?

A. Clients who would like to visit our Katonah, NY location can make an appointment by calling 212.744.6281 or emailing Eva Schwartz at eva@bi-gardenantiques.com.

Q. What category of garden antiques are your best sellers or most popular?

A. Probably the hardest to keep in stock, as good antique ones are so rare, are armillary spheres.  

Exemplary figural statues and benches are probably the things we are asked about the most.

Q. What is your favorite piece or category?

A. I would say that the pieces I get most excited about are the really good figural statues.  They are so easy to connect with, there is usually a fabulous story to tell, whether it’s a mythological figure or historical...the faces tell the best stories, too.  Over the years, I have owned some truly exceptional figures.  

Having a great Winter Antiques Show sets the tone for the whole year.  We look forward to this year’s show being truly stellar!

Thank you, Barbara.  

What better way to spend a cold, cold winter weekend in New York? 

Inside, at the Amory, with antiques that are sure to warm your heart…

Barbara Israel Garden Antiques:

www.bi-gardenantiques.com

The Winter Antiques Show:

www.winterantiquesshow.com

 Do you have a garden antique or vintage story to share?  

How to Establish an Espalier & a Sweeney Todd Encounter with Firethorn

Pre-Haircut: Hort team working on espalier 

I included an Espalier in a favorite garden design client’s transitional side garden room about ten years ago, no doubt, for it’s expected drama. 

The espalier design concept packs a punch in less space. 

While the process can take years, depending on how quickly the plant grows, it is handsome garden art throughout the maturation or development of the garden installation.

According to the lexic, espalier is “latticework used to shape or train the branches of a tree or shrub into a two-dimensional ornamental or useful design, as along a wall or fence.   

Espaliered trees are often managed for decades.

Historically, populations planted and grew espalier in countries that revered their food and didn’t have space for growing fruiting and stone fruit trees. 

For example, the French, Italians, Egyptians and Japanese, to name a few, grow apple, peach, fig, and plum trees along house or barn walls where the tiered, flat tree stems produce delicious fresh fruit without requiring an orchard’s acreage for the full tree petticoat.

Of course, these same country’s premiere gardeners and horticulturists couldn’t leave well enough alone – and before too long were “torturing” their trees into ever more grand and complicated patterns!

In the United States, our curse and blessing remains that we have so much space.

Espalier never really took off in America for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the space issue. 
There was also a perception that espalier was a “fancy-pants” kind of horticulture – (mon dieu -- it even sounds fancy-pants French!)

Not meant for the ethnic, emerging immigrant population here and in the burgeoning suburbs. Best left to the old-European aristocracy and the botanical gardens.

Truth be told, espalier is rather easy-care, sustainable, garden practice we should revive as a more common way to grow fruit trees and enjoy the beauty and bounty of growing our own food.

And there remains a place for the ornamental espalier too, adding unexpected design wonder and awe.   Plants as art, the espalier is strikingly beautiful, especially because admirers recognize and appreciate the patience and love that goes into nurturing this “two-dimensional” tree.

The espalier has ben called one of the most impressive visual achievements the craft of gardening has to offer.

Typically, you will need to spend an hour or so two or three times a year trimming away wayward stems and shoots and encouraging the plant in the directions that please you.

The best time to prune is in late spring after the plant flowers or in the late summer/early autumn. 

The plant material I chose for the now decade-old espalier is pyracantha, commonly referred to as Firethorn.  With an emphasis on the “thorn” part of its name, it’s no surprise that the pruning is more of a gladiator’s match up!

I selected the pyracantha angustifolia or Firethorn (in the rose family) because of its hardiness and strength, after all. 
But also for its all-season interest and a Mediterranean – inspired look. 

It is good for native pollinators, especially birds and bees. 

It also tolerates alkaline soils that dominate foundation soils of suburban homes.

We had friends who used it as a “living fence” fronting the barrier fence that enclosed their pool. It was like viewing an ever-changing art tableau as the plant changed its wardrobe accessories, if you will, from lacy white to glowing, fiery red.

I wanted the spring white flowers – commonly referred to at the “bridal veil.”  It’s pretty and light – almost ethereal -- which is saying a lot and belies the tough-talking reputation of the Firethorn.

The orange berries in the late summer and autumn are like a top-heavy necklace over the purple caryopteris and blue grass that bow at the foot of the espalier in its bed, lending the color palette of that Mediterranean look.

The espalier leads the eye -- paralleling the seashell path.  And the horizontal lines draw the eye onward to the incredible bay beyond – and link the viewer to that part of the “borrowed view.”

The stem patterns are limitless.  You can direct or train the stems to grow into any shape or style you want. 

The various traditional ones include Candelabra, Belgian, U, Fan or horizontal. I chose the latter for the directional, triggered element of movement. 

And beauty, of course.

Setting up Espalier and Care

For the first few years, the firethorns -- four of them -- were allowed to just grow – like a child – it was allowed to be carefree…

The central trunk was surely established after perhaps four or five years, which might have been too long a time – we started the firethorn onto a formal, constructed framework.

The first team to do this was comprised of experts who were or had been students at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) and its School of Professional Horticulture (SOPH)

It was a working, paid, learning assignment.

The students were already hort magicians, dedicated to their passion for the world of plants. They respect good garden design and in this case, the work that would go into making the espalier a remarkable and sophisticated joy to behold.

All of that team, by the way, has gone on to become directors, managers and working arborists and horticultural professionals at the Parks or botanical gardens in the New York metro area.

For that first framework, the team used wire trellis and aluminum poles. The wire stretched the length of the house that is the backdrop for the espalier and the mechanism to create and manage the space intervals of the branches – or lateral buds that in turn create the pattern.  Here that pattern was the horizontal shape.  From stem to stern – approximately 38 feet.  And it is almost 13 feet tall.

This framework worked for a number of years until a few things happened: the plant material got heavier as it got older, putting extra pressure on the wire supports; and a squirrel’s nest and babies added weight to one are. 

At one juncture, this combination caused a cratering.

While there have been lovely bird’s nests perched on the tiers, the squirrel’s nest might have added weight, especially with all that scampering they do…

We tied and wired it back to rights just in time. 

There is a rather funny aside story I will share with about this chapter of the espalier.

From heavy duty rosarian gloves to opera gloves

Never thought those two kinds of hand ornaments would be, ahem, joined at the thumb, did you?

I was gently pruning – and I do mean gently – almost holding my breath. It was the year the last quadrant was sagging a bit. 

I wore long, over-the-elbow, heavy-duty rosarian gloves for this venture. 

While snipping, all was good.

The “crime” must have occurred, as best as I can piece together, while I was merely holding the branch up so that my garden assistant could better tie the lateral branch on to the wire.  I had given her the rosarian gloves to use as she was in the thick of things.

I changed to standard garden gloves. Further, I wore two layers of long sleeve shirts and a jacket.

I gave the encounter no thought.

Later, after heading back into town, to enjoy an NYBG lecture as part of their ongoing Fall Lecture series, me and two favorite garden and hort friends were enjoying an after-lecture supper when one of the ladies points to my arms and exclaims, “What is going on with your arms?!”

To my horror, it was a bit of Sweeney Todd mixed with some religious crucifixion condition. 

Besides some blood, the arms were swelling up.

Well.  Needless to say – I called my dermatologist the next day and he removed thorn shrapnel with a high tech eyepiece guiding him to the itsy, bitsy shavings that were embedded the length of both sides of my arm. I was sent home with a prescription, too.  Sigh..

I knew it was the plant’s adaptation. 

No big thorns had strafed me. Rather it was the plant protecting itself.

Still, I had a wedding to go to that Saturday and didn’t want to have to listen to whispers noting what they might imagine as “abuse,” nor to dominate a conversation pod with that aforementioned Sweeney Todd look.

So, I determined to secure some sexy, long opera gloves to wear and turn a negative into a plus. 

After some rather unexpected research, I found a designer who makes the gloves.  The big department stores and boutiques came up empty for me. They said ladies don’t wear dress gloves anymore…

I went up to the garment district and had a ball buying no less than a dozen vintage – and new gloves. Long, short and 7/8’s length.

When the two Vogue magazine stylists arrive to pick up their leopard print velvet, fingerless kitten or half-gloves, I discovered the glove maker had made two sets. I grabbed the second pair. Big score.

The other big score was that post-wedding; my girlfriend gave me her coveted and glamorous evening and dress gloves that had belonged to her mother who had just passed away.  This was a gift of love.  And I am still weepy when I think about being the steward of this glove cache…

And the best part of that glove gift?  One pair was still sitting in their plastic store bag with cardboard fitted into each finger. Frozen in time. 

The name on the bag was:  Duchess.  It was destiny…

In the end, I don’t blame the firethorn.  I tried to look at the escapade as not only a learning experience but also one that brought joy and love and extended garden glamour.

Next up – how we resolved the Espalier escalation and brought it to a secure, safe place, with an improved, groomed look. (how-to videos and images)

In fact, its Hollywood-like splendor evokes that “I’m ready for my close-up” moment to the extent that the garden clients installed outdoor lighting so that neighbors, passerby’s and garden lovers can admire its pin-up glamour all through the night just like on the red carpet…