Gardeners Connect
Garden U: Container Gardening
Tuesday, May 21
6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Garden U: Container Gardening.
Loose Park Garden Center
51st and Wornall
Kansas City, Missouri 64112
Come learn about summer annuals that work for our tough Midwestern summer. We will talk about annuals for the for the sun and the shade. We will talk about how to keep your summer beauties sparkling all season long. We will create a container during the class and one lucky class member will get to take it home.
This class is taught by Anne Wildeboor, horticulturalist for season displays at Powell Gardens.
One-session class will meet May 61 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Cost: $25 (Gardeners Connect members $18), includes class materials.
You can register at the start of class in person.
Gardening in Small Spaces: Lauren Mackin, Garden Designer
Thursday, May 30, 2013
6:30 p.m. program
6:00 p.m. refreshments.
Loose park Garden Center
5200 Pennsylvania
Loose Park
51st and Wornall
Kansas City. MO 64112
Lauren Mackin has always loved both the outdoors as well as design, so a career in landscape design was an early and natural decision. She studied horticulture and landscape design at Kansas State University as well as environmental studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She’s worked as a designer in her hometown of Kansas City ever since, and her projects can be found from southern Leawood up to Parkville, and from Cedar Creek over to Lee’s Summit. The majority of her work, however, has been focused in older, more established neighborhoods like Brookside, Mission Hills, Fairway and Prairie Village.
Lauren enjoys working with two design styles: modular and clean-lined, and more organic and curvilinear. When given the opportunity, her designs often incorporate natural stone materials like cut bluestone or weathered flagstone, as well as reclaimed or antique brick pavers. If natural stone isn’t a good fit, she likes to use Belgard pavers and wall systems for hardscape materials.
Mass plantings with evolving seasonal interest are one of her trademarks, and whenever possible she includes boxwood hedges and at least one variety of hydrangea—a combination she absorbed from friend and noted local designer Kristopher Dabner.
Entertaining is a passion, and she always keeps this in mind when working with clients, sometimes helping them select or even designing outdoor furniture. Her outdoor living room designs often incorporate container plants, and if the client is willing, fire and/or water features.
Lauren’s work has been featured locally in Spaces Magazine and the Kansas City Star, as well as nationally in the Better Homes and Gardens Stylemaker Issue. This winter she accepted a position as creative director and lead designer for Stonebridge Outdoor, a company specializing in the design and installation of distinct outdoor living spaces and custom designed gardens.
When she’s not in the design studio or on a job site, Lauren loves trying new local restaurants, attending sporting events and concerts, traveling and entertaining. She lives in the Crossroads Art District with her husband Todd and their two dogs.
Thank you to Gardeners Connect members that make these programs on others available to the public for free.
Garden Party 2013: Zahner Garden
Saturday, June 15, 2013
10:00 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Garden of Deb and Bob Zahner
15704 W 80th Terrace
Lenexa, Kansas
This is a members only event. Please have your 2013 Gardeners Connect membership card ready. Members may bring a guest. Members may join at the garden to gain admittance.
At this year's Gardeners Connect Garden Party, take advantage of the opportunity to talk about garden design with a professional and also get to know one of the group’s newest board members by viewing her garden.
Members of Gardeners Connect and their guests are invited to Deb Zahner's garden from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, June 15.
Deb worked for 13 years with three landscape companies as a garden designer. One of the benefits of working for a landscape company is that you are always in close contact with plant material and get to see the latest and greatest plants that are on the market.
At Red Oak Landscaping the owner would allow the designers to have the plant material that was left over at the end of the year. Some of the nicer specimens in her garden she acquired for Red Oak, and Deb said she will always be grateful to the company for those special plants.
When Deb and her husband, Bob, moved into their home in 2003, it was a blank slate. There where three things in the back yard; a pin oak, red maple and a pussy willow. The front yard had an ash that was beautifully shaped. The rest was sod from fence to fence.
The bed around the front of their home got her attention first. She came up with a plan and incorporated elements of design such as line, color, texture, repetition, form and focal point. Even though she kept a design in mind, she had a lot of fun with her home and put things in her landscape bed just for the fun of it. She wasn't trying to please anybody but herself. "I remember being in a nursery and finding something that I just could not live without and because of that I do have plants thrown in here and there" she said."But isn't that a true gardener?"
She started off building the foundation of her landscape methodically. "Just like a builder, I put in the bigger foundation plants first: Dragon Lady™, dogwood, ‘Riverside’ Serbian spruce, arborvitae and others. Then came the shrubs, and then my perennials,” Deb said. “I tried to get a nice mixture of evergreen and deciduous plants. Also I wanted spring, summer and fall color so there was an interest every season."
The center bed in the back yard came to be about five years ago. "The long stretch of yard needed a resting place for my eyes, but in reality I ran out of room in the border!" Deb said. This bed has a couple of bird feeders in it as well as a bird bath and a fountain. She planted a Harry Lauder's walking stick under the bird feeder so birds could sit and rest. Also the center bed is a showcase for lilies. The ends of this bed are bookcased with two globosa blue spruce on standards.
“My husband's favorite shrub in the landscape is my ‘Red Sprite’ winterberry. I now have six of them with a ‘Jim Dandy’ close by to keep them full of red berries. They are exquisite in January against a white blanket of snow,” Deb said. Deb said her favorite plant is the ‘Riverside’ Serbian spruce. “It's elegant and regal and seems quite content in my backyard landscape. Its little pinecones emerge red and then turn a shade of blue as they mature,” she said.
Some things you will find in Deb’s garden in June are ten kinds of hydrangea, hinoki cypress, ‘Brackens's Brown Beauty’ magnolia, crape myrtle, Tiger Eye™ sumac, dogwoods, five kinds of boxwoods, four types of Japanese maples, grapes, bananas, a vegetable garden and a cold frame for starting seedlings.
The landscape beds have a wide variety of perennials mixed in too.
Join us for the Annual Garden Party a good place to see and be seen this gardening season.