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Some gardeners have to cultivate their green thumb, others are born with them. Molly Sedlacek is in the latter camp. The founder of Landscape Design and Outdoor Product Studio Orca Orca, Molly, spent a large part of her childhood in her wild family garden in the Oregon forests and learned first -hand from the attempts and mistakes of her garden designer Lisa. But faithfully the old saying has everything one season and Molly's parents now go to another house that better suits her current lifestyle. Before you officially took to the streets, we caught up with the mother-daughter duo about your favorite memories in the room, how important it is to use what you have and why a good garden design process begins with the pulling out of your socks.
How long do you have the room for and why do you leave it?
Lisa: We have gardened here since the purchase of the house in 1980, 45 years. It makes me sad, but we are building a new house a little from here. A new garden will need and I'm happy about it. The sadness of saying goodbye to certain plants, blooming rituals and harvest times is more adequate by the joy of creating something new, something that we want at this point.
Was there an existing garden when they moved here?
Lisa: There was a huge overgrown laurel hedge and a small lawn in the front yard. I think we had a purple bush in the house. The rest was Woods, brush. Cutting the huge laurel preservation … is not a fun memory, but it was satisfactory to take control of the farm.
Molly, what is your first memory in the garden?
Molly: My earliest memories run in the garden and feel the mushy floor and grass between my toes, then the smooth and solid pea gravel path along the berry stain, which resulted in a small foot massage. The feeling that the garden under my feet connected me with the country, and to this day I go barefoot in my garden and always encourage customers to take into account materials that feel good.
What other lessons have you learned from your parent garden that you include in your work today?
Molly: The beauty is in chaos. My kindergarten had hardly any drifts of yearbooks and perennials, mixed with a strangely shaped rock koi -pond and a huge rhubarb over the water. Old Redwood ties lined our increased beds. The brush pile always filled up and then burned down. There was a persistent cycle of life and death and constantly created chaotic beauty.
Lisa: [The garden] It is over the years with moments of “Let us give us a new bed, it's really sunny!” And the clumping bamboo was moved to block privacy because we have changed the house form and structure. The house used to be much smaller; With adding and building projects, we had to move and change the landscape so often.
What are some of the greatest successes you have achieved? What about the greatest mistakes?
Lisa: We have achieved some great successes with vegetables and some failures. In a year we had the best vegetable spaghetti pumpkin, in the next two years we had a total pumpkin failure due to mildew. Last year we had the most beautiful purple rod beans and sunflowers; The garden was a joy to hike. They celebrate their success and learn to continue from their mistakes.
The structures and the hard tender they made are fascinating. Did you make them yourself and did you have a reference point to design you?
Lisa: We would look in garden books or magazines and see something that liked us and then create it. Many of the structures apply to humans and dog traffic control. Others should support plants. I always loved Arbors and created goals and entries in a garden.
Molly, how does this find out about the hard tender that you do with Orca in your projects?
Molly: My parents used Uppycled Stone, wood, bamboo sticks, found pools. Materials used for the landscape of the garden were not glossy, but already found and already with a patina that was often native to the country. My father built all the gates from the dried bamboo poles and then made the bars to keep the deer away from the shorter broken parts.
Can you point out all other areas in your personal garden in California that have been inspired directly from your parents' garden?
Molly: So many! I have two lumps of bamboo from my father's collection and cut flowers with which I can bring friends, wise and wolf milk for pollinators and a large laurel hedge. We have a large Sycamore in front of our bedroom window where we hear birds singing in the morning. I think my parents built their garden for the birds.
When I see my Australian plants, I think of my mother because I know how much she loves her, but she can't grow in Oregon. Some of me have the feeling that I can grow her for both of us and my garden is an expansion of her.
Lisa: I am always in love with zone 9 and Australian plants and desperate to grow here.
Lisa, plan to take cuttings or seeds with you?
Lisa: I took cuttings of my arose roses. I grave plants that I love, and that could not be valued by new owners: my Rodgersii, heirloom roses, unusual onions. There are some who are too happy where they are and I have to leave them.
What do you expect from being the most difficult part of saying goodbye to this garden?
Lisa: The last time we get out of the entrance and wonder if the new person knows where the light bulbs appear in spring, whether they feed the wild birds or know that the swallows come back in May to divide themselves. I know that most people will not appreciate the care and work we use in the care of the plants. We have to let go.
Why was it important to you to catch and photograph the garden in this way?
Molly: You can't grow time, but you can grow a garden. It is important to document this sacred and symbolic space, create people and tend to do so. The history of a person's garden is a story of his life.
We shot it in autumn because the autumn -uregon garden really demonstrates this coexistence of hard resistance and decay with gentle beauty and late flowers. There is nothing better than filtered October light that filters through a cedar tree and gently lands on the Eupatorium Purpureum. Then next to this lively and lacey texture the brown paper-like life after the death of cascade hops.
Do you think gardens continue to exist, even if the people you made have disappeared?
Lisa: Oh yes! My favorite moments, when we go hiking, are forgotten plants for the homestead. The houses and people are gone, but the apple tree and the flowering quinze call out every spring with the urge to grow and live.