Photo credits: Baltimore Sun/Colby Ware
In today's Baltimore Sun, I preview the Baltimore Symphony Associates Designer Show House, Woodholme, in Pikesville, which opens Saturday for three weeks.
The design challenge for Katherine Adams of Honey Bee Hollow was to create a garden around a patio that drops a step down with no notice.
That's not safe when you are expecting thousands of guests, as they are at the show house over the next three weeks.
So the landscape architect created an outdoor room by surrounding the patio with planters that would keep guests from wandering over the six-inch ledge.
"I didn't just want to protect people from falling over the edge," she said. "I wanted to define this amorphous area and make it intimate."
The garden plants are immature at this time of year, so Adams pumped up the garden's profile with a trio of glass balls on shepherd's rooks.
The arty fixture had the added advantage of letting visitors know where to exit the garden.
"It (garden art) can solve some problems, but it can also be about the person who gardens here. About you."
Her take-home tip? Add an art object to the garden. "It doesn't have to be expensive," she said. "And it can give a garden a sense of whimsy. It makes the garden very personal as well."