My husband, mother in law, a friend and I all went to view a garden of a local artist/gardener in Berkeley a couple of weeks ago. I’d seen this woman’s work at the San Francisco home and garden show and had perused a couple of her books. I knew I’d be seeing lots of color as well as fanciful statuary but seeing them “in the flesh” is a whole different experience. Keeyla Meadows truly has not met a color she doesn’t like but more importantly she makes effective use of these colors. I also love her use of art work as well as a variety of different materials she uses in pavings and planting structures. She has a web site and if you love color check it out here http://www.keeylameadows.net/home/home.html
Her color suggestions are very similar to those used by various quilt instructors over the years. Alas do I ever follow these principles? The short answer is no. If I try to combine several different colors my garden tends to look, at best, disordered and, at worst, muddy. However, I’ve become so enamored of her style that I’ve decided to totally redo my back garden in the hopes that I might obtain a pale version of hers. Regretfully for the spouse this means lots of physical labor. Last weekend we started looking for boulders and found some. My husband’s valiant little four cylinder Nissan hauled the rocks home. Himself, with the help of a hoist, got the rocks off the truck and in the back yard in the approximate position that the rocks will ultimately go. Did I metnion that he moved over a ton (literally) of rock?
This past weekend I then got it into my head that we needed to amend our very clay like soil. Keeyla also has a recipe for “good soil” so we set off on a quest for the various ingredients. We discovered that commercial establishments such as Summer winds and Home Depot do not carry “loamy sand” 5/16”” lava and rock nor do they know what rice hulls are much less were to purchase them. It has finally warmed up in California so driving around in the truck looking for these things got a little “heated”. One lady in Osh was pretty sure the spouse was in trouble but I can assure her we were simply discussing types of sand. After a very hot 2 hours in the truck we came home disheartened. I, information specialist that I am, then turned to the internet. We have discovered where most of our ingredients are and next weekend I hope to obtain them. Stay tuned….
