I have to pull away from the radio show for a moment and comment on the business.  

As you may know, the hosts of Your Livable Garden run a landscape architecture company during the hours they don’t spend behind the microphones.  Yesterday, Shawn was out in the field to set elevations for a pool dig when he realized he was close to the house of a past client.  He decided to drive by to see how the yard looked these years later.

What can I say?  The plants were stunning.  Usually it’s the hardscaping that impresses me, but the paving in the front and back yards here were mere compliments to the luscious, sweeping beds of this rural property.

The client was home, tending to the horses (picturesque, I know!) and delighted to see her landscape architect walking up the driveway.  They laughed about funny aspects of the job, caught up a bit on life, discussed the plants that had thrived particularly well and those that might need some extra care.

But I was stunned into silence.  Clearly the customer had cared well for her yard.  But to see such full and thriving plants after such a terrible summer was just incredible.  The plants had grown and grown well, and to see how they complimented each other and the space around them in this mature stage was impressive.

And it was so obviously Shawn’s planting.  The way he combines the ultra-tailored look of several highly-pruned shrubs with the wild and huge presence of a tropical, or some of his signature combinations like the light green leaves of plumbago against the dark new growth of lorapetalum…it had his name all over it, and it was beautiful.

I’ll go back for photos, because you have to see how lovely these beds look.  These are plants that perform, and they are combined to look particularly beautiful as they mature.  It’s a design that continues to produce.