The sage and pumpkin-colored entry garden hints at the glories inside the gate!

Patrick donned his “Aloe Orange” linen shirt so he could match his garden!  

I think I’ve established my willingness to drive, fly, walk, hike, take a train or ride a bicycle to get to a garden destination that summons me.

Last Sunday is a good example. I was staring at an invitation from Patrick Anderson and Les Olson, owners of a cactus and succulent garden extraordinaire (not to mention the most majestic dining pavilion in the universe – you can find it on page 126 of Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways, in my chapter entitled “Extravagant Gestures”).

“Sweets, Savories & Succulents,” read the invite. “Please join us to celebrate the New Year, and the glory of the garden in midwinter.”

This was the third time Patrick and Les extended an invitation to their winter party. And it was the first year I wasn’t traveling out of state. I first met the men in 2005 when they hosted a Pacific Horticulture Open Garden event for donors. I returned with Bill Wright in the fall of 2006 to photograph the dining pavilion and garden for our book. Practically hyperventilating with excitement about shooting such a cool setting, we rose before dawn and tiptoed out to the garden to get the very best early-morning shots (our task was eased, thanks to the offer of lodging in Patrick and Les’s guest bedrooms).

Last weekend, I desperately wanted to visit their exotic botanical wonderland in San Diego County. Not only did I want to say hello to my “Shedista” friends, but I knew the aloe display would be at its ever-lovin’ peak of perfection.

Who cares that going to the party meant a 300-mile round-trip drive on a Sunday afternoon? Husband and sons all fed and settled into their own activities, I hopped in the car after church and hit the freeway, heading south.

Oh what a treat I had! This is the very type of excursion that convinces a California newcomer that all her former Seattle blossoms have serious competition for her affections. It’s tough to yearn for my hydrangeas, peonies and lilacs when the intense, architectural aloe blooms are in my face.

Orange, gold, salmon, yellow, apricot, terracotta pink – saturated hues of the sun – on display like colorful fireworks hovering at the tips of erect stalks. Each bloom is composed of tubular flowers tightly arranged around the stem. And what diversity! Some are shaped like a red-hot poker Kniphofia bloom; others are short and wide, in the shape of a spinning top. Some tilt upwards; others are arranged like rays of the sun. These flowers are winter’s antidote to gloom.

According to Sunset Western Garden Book, aloes are primarily South African native plants:

They range from 6-inch miniatures to trees. “Showy and easy to grow in well-drained soil in reasonably frost-free areas, (aloes) need little water but can take more. . . . Highly valued as ornamentals, in the ground, or in pots.”

That’s not all Patrick and Les have in their 2-acre garden.

They own, of course, the enviable dining pavilion (I still marvel at my luck convincing my editor Doris that we could include this architectural gem.)

It is certainly an “elegant hideaway,” although a very distant relation to a shed.

Not a wimpy latticework gazebo, but a bold, manly garden house that can accommodate a quiet dinner for two or a raucous gathering of a dozen friends.

Here are the opening lines that appear in the Stylish Sheds chapter about their dreamy garden hideaway:

Patrick seized the chance to invent his own plant world here, spending the past fifteen years shaping the landscape with unusual spiked, whorled, spherical, and fan-shaped cactuses, along with succulents representing a color spectrum from maroon to bronze to silvery blue. “Every inch of this property is plantable if I ever get around to it,” he maintains. The garden’s finishing touch: a golden, open-air pavilion where Les and Patrick seek haven from heat and sun.

The neighbors jokingly call it the Taj Mahal, but the opulent pavilion situated at the highest point of Patrick and Les’s property has exactly the right degree of dramatic presence their flamboyant desert garden needs. Together the structure and plant collections embody Patrick’s two loves: theater and horticulture.

Patrick fell in love with aloes and other succulents and cactus forms years ago, as a volunteer at the famed Huntington Botanical Gardens near Pasadena. He learned to grow and propagate many varieties, including aloes. And I suspect his design sensibility (he studied theater and costume design in college) was also honed as he spent time in the Huntington’s desert collection.

When he began to transform the property nearly 20 years ago, Patrick wanted to plant a wide variety of desert-climate plants in a lush style that he describes as a “dry jungle.”

More than 200 varieties of aloes unify the garden. Against the pointed and thorny blue-green leaves, the brilliant aloe blooms remind visitors that there’s nothing dull about the desert floral palette.

Thank you, again, Les and Patrick, for sharing your garden with me and with so many of your admirers!

It was a long drive. But an inspiring day. And I am certain that by next January, when another invitation to “Sweets, Savories, and Succulents” arrives in my mailbox, I will clear my calendar and make the drive again!

P.S., One amusing photograph I just had to add.

For anyone who has been up close and intimate with an aloe, agave, cactus or other thorny plant. . . the “Caution” tape was a reminder of how careful one must be in a desert garden!

Technology being what it is, I am tickled to share a video review that GWA pal and Twitter goddess Jean Ann Van Krevelen just posted on Facebook and YouTube.

Of course, I love the plug about Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways, but you’ll also be interested to watch Jean Ann as she reviews some of her favorite seed catalogs.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p_YCwDfMSc&feature=channel

You can read more at her blog Gardener to Farmer.

 

Thanks, Jean Ann!

A modern-day dining pavilion, rooted in history [William Wright photograph]

This stately dining pavilion is the setting for the best garden parties. Start with impromptu dinner invitations for a few friends, add a bottle of wine, ripe tomatoes and bunches of basil harvested fresh from the garden. Joan Enticknap’s al fresco destination infuses her events with a carefree spirit. After dinner, guests usually wander off and enjoy her garden.

Bill Wright and I were fortunate enough to discover, write about and photograph Joan’s dining pavilion in 2002. She also owns the charming potting shed that graces the cover of our book, Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways, photographed by Bill. 

For Joan, a rare double city lot accommodated the construction of a two-car garage at street level. Above it sits her 12-by-22 foot, freestanding dining pavilion.

Designed by Seattle-based Bader Architecture, the inviting structure is connected to her restored 1914 home by a stone terrace. The architects incorporated accordion-fold glass doors across the pavilion’s width, linking it to an herb- and rose-filled garden beyond.

“The open doors allow Joan’s parties to spill out into the garden,” says principal Gregory Bader. Shutters cover 16 pair of windows, each of which opens via tilting or swinging hinges. The windows reinforce the perspective that overlooks the street-scape below and territorial views to the north. In fact, the building is situated perfectly to shelter Joan’s garden from northern winds.

Project architects Dan Umbach and Andy Salkin drew from local carriage houses and English conservatory influences to create the pavilion. “We loved the orangery at Kensington Palace in England and this really comes from that tradition,” Bader says.

Wanting her garage and pavilion to echo the home’s origins, Joan instigated an extensive search for vintage clinker brick.

“I placed ads in (local) newspapers and eventually found a fellow who had saved clinker brick from a Craftsman bungalow.” Seven thousand bricks, combined with the passion of a talented stonemason, constructed the carriage house-inspired pavilion.

When the weather is warm, Joan slides open the pavilion doors and encourages her guests to enjoy seating on the blue stone patio. A wide staircase descends into the fragrant garden below. And that’s when a wonderful meal and beautiful landscape conspire with the senses to lure the party outdoors, any time of day.

A version of this story originally appeared in Seattle Homes and Lifestyles, with text by me and photographs by Bill.

Read further to learn more about The Orangery or L’Orangerie, a new addition to the Shed Glossary.

I’m honored to be the featured “expert” on prefabricated sheds in Dwell magazine’s upcoming February 2009 issue. How cool is that? (In September I wrote about the photo shoot with the very talented Los Angeles-based photographer, Amanda Friedman. . . now it’s finally appearing in print).

I received a sneak preview of the article when associate editor Miyoko Ohtake mailed me a few complimentary copies, which arrived in yesterday’s post. The article is also available online; not on Dwell.com, but on the very cool digital magazine site, Zinio. Even though the hip “prefab issue” isn’t out on the newsstand yet (because the December-January issue is still for sale), you can order it for the $5.99 cover price at Zinio. Check it out.

I love what Miyoko wrote in the Dwell Reports feature titled “Out Back.”

From city slickers to country bumpkins, homeowners have always longed for a special place from which to escape the toils of day-to-day life. In 1783, Marie-Antoinette notoriously commissioned architect Richard Mique to design a Petit Hameau (Little Hamlet) of small buildings on the grounds of Versailles. Feeling the scrutiny of the royal court, Marie and her attendants would run off to the mock farm, dressing up as milkmaids and shepherdesses and pretending to live “normal” peasant lives – which we can only assume involved eating cake.

Nearly 150 years later, British author Virginia Woolf heralded the benefits of a private abode in her 1929 book A Room of One’s Own with its famous phrase “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

A more modern, unisex version of backyard escapism comes in the form of miniature prefabricated outbuildings. “The traditional definition of a shed is a lean-to or stand-alone structure that provides shelter or storage,” says Debra Prinzing, a freelance garden and design writer and our expert reviewer this month. “I tried to come up with a contemporary definition: a space that contains whatever you’re passionate about.”

READ MORE…

About a month ago, while reading Alex Johnson’s wonderful blog, Shedworking, I saw his post about an artist named Sarah Lynch. She has spent 2008 posting an original painting EVERY DAY on her blog.

Alex had discovered one of Sarah’s posts from July, featuring a charming garden shed entitled “Shed with Hollyhocks.” It was enchanting and I immediately went to her blog and subscribed to receive her daily artwork. Sarah is an English-Canadian woman living in Southern Ontario. You can find her work for sale via her blog (where there are links to some online galleries also selling her art).

I don’t know her at all, but Sarah has brought me a small dose of happiness every morning. Opening the link to see her next piece is one of the very first things I do after making my cup of tea and sitting down to read email at the start of the day.

I think Sarah may love sheds as much as I do, because today she offers a charming piece entitled: The Lonely Shed (7″X5″ WC pencil on paper):

The year is almost over and I’m worried that Sarah may stop posting her artwork. I like reading her brief, personal artist statements that accompany each drawing, illustration or painting. She has alluded to her readiness for a slower pace, perhaps creating three paintings a week instead of seven. Get in on the last few weeks of the year and subscribe to this little piece of joy that will arrive in your in-box each morning. I, for one, am hoping for MORE SHEDS!

IN OTHER NEWS. . .

On Sunday (12/7) we received a mention in Irene Virag’s column in Newsday. She included Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways in her “Gift List,” featured at the end of her longer piece on Ken Druse. 

Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways (Clarkson Potter, $30): Author Debra Prinzing and photographer William Wright showcase 28 sheds from Southampton to Seattle. From clematis-covered potting sheds to writers’ retreats, these structures enhance lifestyles and landscapes.

READ MORE…

If you, like me, are enchanted with sublime and soulful backyard destinations once merely called “sheds,” consider yourself a Shedista. 

According to some Internet searches, the term Shedista has been appropriated (originated?) by the boutique wine industry. In France, these clever folks are called “Garagistes,” because they make incredible wine in their garages. Kind of an underground movement!

To quote Wordspy.com: “Shedista: A professional, low budget wine maker, particularly one who processes grapes in a shed-like building.”

I first discovered this term in Jay McInerney’s “Uncorked” column for (now defunct) House & Garden magazine: It was titled “The Shedistas.”

He wrote about a “warehouse gang” of Santa Barbara winemakers who “maxed out credit cards to rent a shed, buy a few tanks and a few tons of Syrah grapes, design a label, and make [their] own wine.”

Those who know me well know I have no desire to steal a moniker from winemakers. However, if you do an Internet search of the word, I bet you’ll find nearly three-quarters of the Shedista entries appearing are ones that I’ve generated. Yup, I’m out to change the meaning of this alluring term.

Here’s my definition: “Shedista: A person who creates and occupies a small-scale shelter in the garden for personal enjoyment and the pursuit of any creative passion.”

My UK shed friend, Uncle Wilco, who publishes a blog at his We [heart] Sheds site, calls himself a “Sheddie.” It’s a close cousin to “Shedista,” and we can all feel free to use both terms! Another friend coined the word Shedquarters to describe his backyard office. In other words, shedistas find shelter in their shedquarters. I like it!

If you wish to see some of the very best examples of personal escapes, aka “sheds,” check out my book: Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways. Welcome to all Shedistas!

Photos: (c) William Wright; top left: taken in July 2007 in Atlanta – in the doorway of Betsy Hansen’s beautiful potting shed. Lower right: taken in May 2007 (as a joke) at an abandoned child’s playhouse in Connecticut. We were on location at author Amy Bloom’s property and noticed this “shack” on a hill near her property. We couldn’t resist!

A Post-Script, Uncle Wilco just tipped me off to his December 14, 2006 post “What is a Shedista?” in which he quoted the same Wordspy definition I’ve used. I like what he wrote after that:

sounds great, but who is someone who brew beer in their sheds, maybe a shedbrewhaha

As I wrote in a reply to him: Of course, while I was running around the country trying to find sheds to photograph and write about, there he was . . . steps ahead of me! Thanks Uncle Wilco!

 

Welcome to my 101st post on Shed Style. I guess it’s a bit of a milestone, and I have been wanting to do something special to mark the accomplishment. For bloggers who post constantly, finally passing the one hundredth installment may not be that significant (some of my pals could do that in a month or two!). But for me, a relative newbie to blogging, reaching Number 101 is an exciting benchmark.

By moving into the triple digits as I document my little corner of the blogosphere, I realize how much I enjoy this writing venue. There’s a lot of freedom when a writer can sit down and compose her thoughts unhindered by another’s deadlines, tone, or style. No editor, no word-count restrictions. Sure, there’s no pay, and the circulation (readership) is certainly a lot smaller than the traditional print media that usually publishes my words. But even still, the presence of this blog in my life fills a personal and creative need that my other outlets don’t always satisfy.

A BIT OF BACKGROUND

I originally started this blog in March 2007 to document the creation of Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways, the book that photographer Bill Wright and I produced and published this past April. The early morning, “on-location” photo at right is from our year-long odyssey to discover and document the stories of the most creative and inspiring shed designs around the country (not to mention their inspiring owners).

[As an aside, the idea of writing a book-in-progress blog didn’t really take off until AFTER the photography and manuscript finished in the fall of 2007 . . . best-laid plans, and all that!]

Bill and I talked about this book for a long time (we’ve worked together since 2000). But by the summer of 2005, we got serious. Bill had just started to taste the sweet and satisfying flavors of the book world by collaborating with interior design writer Brian Coleman on a book called “Window Dressings” (Gibbs-Smith Publishers). I had worked on four previous books and in June 2005 I traveled to NYC to meet Sarah Jane Freymann, with whom we signed on to represent us as agent.

We began with a fairly decent catalog of shed photography, images Bill and I produced earlier for my articles in Seattle Homes & Lifestyles and Romantic Homes magazines. We created a book outline, gathering up bits and pieces of ideas, including some concepts I played around with in 2002 when Gary Luke at Sasquatch Books and I briefly toyed with ideas for a shed book.

Bill and I sat at the island in the kitchen of our (former) Seattle home, joined by our friend Marcy Stamper. A talented writer, editor, and photographer in her own right, Marcy introduced the two of us when she was art director at Seattle Homes and assigned Bill to photograph my first shed design piece for the magazine in 2001. Now freelancing and living in eastern Washington, Marcy was back in Seattle for a few days. We asked her to meet with us and come up with a design concept that we could use to “sell” our book to a publisher. We called our project “Shed Style.” The resulting 12-page mini-book she designed was called a BLAD (which stands for: book-layout-and-design).

Our meeting took place mid-day in early August. The conversation was punctuated (interrupted) with the screaming, ear-splitting, sounds of the Blue Angels flying overhead. It was a few days before Seattle’s popular Seafair Festival and the Navy jets were in town to perform. Their practice runs and actual performances occur over Lake Washington in Seattle.

Um, yes, right over the rooftops of my former neighborhood in Seward Park. We could barely hear ourselves speak and eventually, we gave up and went out front to witness the spectacle. (Well, Bill and I did. I think Marcy was hiding under the table, reminding herself that it was noise like this that drove her over the Cascades to the solitude of the town of Twisp.) Bill took a great photo of the jets flying by (seen at left).

ON THE ROAD WITH BILL AND DEBRA

With the book successfully sold to Clarkson Potter/Random House, we began this journey. Although we had a few sheds “in the can” when we started this project a summer later, in July 2006, Bill and I had no idea what kind of momentum we’d soon experience. That same month, even before the contract was actually signed, we photographed five chapters (five shed locations) all around Washington state.

I still remember the euphoria I felt on July 5, 2006 when we came back to Seattle on the last ferry from Vashon Island where we’d photographed Edgar Lee’s magical little chapel-shed, fully lit with votive candles from his former business Votivo (see Bill’s photo, right).

I laid awake half the night replaying the thrill of the setting and the joy I felt looking through the lens of Bill’s camera as it framed the scene we’d created.

The following month, in August 2006, I moved with my children and dog to join my husband in Southern California (he preceded us by a few months). A week or so later, Bill and his wife Pauline welcomed their brand new baby Ella into the world. How many more life-altering things could we manage in such a short period of time?

We got back on the road by November ’06 when Bill flew down to Burbank to spend a few days before Thanksgiving photographing San Diego area locations with me. After the holidays, we started on an intense marathon of travel to scout and photograph sheds, sheds and more sheds.

FAST FORWARD

Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways was published in late April. Since then, Bill and I have pursued our own projects, but we continued to scheme about how/when we could again collaborate.

In the six months since our book’s release, we’ve had some great adventures – together and individually. Bill continues to photograph GREAT projects and I continue to write design pieces for national and regional magazines and Southern California newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune. Recently, Bill nailed two great covers, which I want to share here:

Left: Fall 2008 cover of Arts & Crafts Homes (for a Brian Coleman story); Right: Cover of Rejuvenation Lighting’s Fall catalogue. [William Wright photography]

LAST WEEK

Our work has appeared together in several recent magazines, including stories for the October 08 issue of Alaska Airlines/Horizon Air magazines, the November 08 issue of Seattle Homes & Lifestyles, and others, but since completing the G-R-I-N-D of our “year of the book,” Bill and I had not been able to find the time to create any new stories together.

That opportunity finally came last week, when Bill flew from Seattle to Southern California. We drove up to Ojai, the historically famous town located east of Santa Barbara near the Topatopa Bluff, to photograph a 1908 bungalow, its grounds and interiors, for Arts & Crafts Homes. See Bill at work, right.

We enjoyed two days of hard but gratifying work, thanks to owner Kathy Couterie (an ace stylist in her own right!).

The article about the home she owns with her husband, Emmy-winning director and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Bill Couterie, will appear in 2009, but until then, here is a preview of our photo shoot:

 Lights, camera, action….the Couterie dining room, styled, lit, and ready to photograph.

 Kathy Couterie (foreground), followed by Bill Wright, as we finalize the garden shot for Arts & Crafts Homes.

 The sun is about to set, we’ve photographed the garden, and we’re ready to call it a day.

Our friend Linda Lehmusvirta, producer of the very popular Central Texas Gardener, has begun to post her segments on You Tube. Bill Wright and I appeared on the show a few months ago with host Tom Spencer and we had a lively conversation about our favorite subject: Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways.

Here is the segment:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMpbg8Cg2dg

A FURTHER INSTALLMENT OF THE SHED STYLE GLOSSARY. . .

Look far in the distance. What do you see? Is there a destination at the terminus of this path?

In September 2006, after living in Southern California for only three weeks, I had the fortunate experience of joining many of my Seattle friends on a Northwest Horticultural Society tour led by Gillian Mathews. It was an introduction to the awesome plants and landscape beauty of my new environs . . . an inspiring and encouraging few days, spent in the company of kindred (Seattle) spirits who kept telling me how fortunate I was to be living here amidst “paradise.”

One of our stops was to visit Casa del Herrero, a fantastic Spanish Hacienda-style estate, built in the 1920s in nearby Montecito. After touring the magnificent home, completely restored down to the furniture and artwork, we moved on to the garden. At a particular stop on the tour the vantage point shown above appeared. The decorative stucco-and-tile wall, at least 10-feet tall and 18-feet wide, stood nestled at the base of a gently-sloping ravine. Built-in benches on each side face the center.

“Oh, look,” said one of my friends, a landscape designer. “It’s an Exedra!”

A Spanish-inspired Exedra: Standing apart from the dwelling and lying widely open

To learn more about the classic “Exedra” as a landscape design element, visit my glossary, where I’m compiling photos and definitions of unique garden architcture.