Larry Miller Subaru Turf to Xeriscape Conversion

The folks over at the Boise Larry Miller Subaru had a problem: the two south facing areas of turf in front of their showroom looked nice enough, but demanded an obscene amount of water. Worse, over-spray from the broadcast irrigation was staining their shiny new Subarus.

As a sponsor/supporter of the Idaho Botanical Garden, naturally Larry Miller Subaru turned to IBG for turf alternative ideas. IBG horticulture director Toby Mancini, sketched up a plan that included creating berms in the two areas out of a specific soil "recipe" (25% organic compost, 25% fractured 1/4" gravel and 50% screened topsoil), especially formulated for xeric, zonally adapted plants. The plants he specified read like a list of the "who's who" list of dependable, drought tolerant and readily available specimens, perfect for the dry intermountain west. They included:

Philadelphus lewisii 'Blizzard'

Fallugia paradoxa

Agastache rupestris

Panicum virgatum "Heavy Metal'

              Nepeta racemosa 'walker's low'

Oennothera macrocarpa subsp. incan 'Silver Blade'®

Echinacea x 'Cheyenne Spirit'

Thymus pseudolanuginosus 

We jumped at the opportunity when Toby asked us if we be interested in the installation and were able to complete the project in a single day (including the conversion of the broadcast sprinkler system over to single source drip system for each plant*).

Clean up after a long day.

Fresh installation = lots of negative space. By mid-summer next year, the plants will really start filling in.

*I generally prefer broadcast irrigation because I believe it promotes good lateral root development as well as a vibrant soil ecology. This is a great example, however, where drip was the right way to go to eliminate wasteful over-spray as well as runoff from the berm. Our preferred approach is to loop a 1/4" line with 6" emitter intervals all around each plant, making sure that each 1/4" line is directly connected to a 1/2" feed line for even water volume throughout the bed and even distribution of water around each plant.

Industrial Park

While Corten is often associated with modern gardens abiding by rules of strict linearity and an emphasis on negative space, I was delighted to find panels of oxidized steel sprinkled throughout a woodland garden during a design consultation earlier this summer. The warm, earthen tones of the rusting panels leapt out of the shadows and contributed to a visceral feeling of movement throughout the garden. I took this as the starting point for the design of an  outdoor room in a woodland garden.

A concave 8' x 9' oxidized steel panel acts as the back wall and abstract focal point "painting" for the room. An arcing, andesite stone wall, green roof arbor and steel edging all add to the feeling of an open, yet delineated space within the garden.

A Yankee doodles.

In the process of developing the design, I experimented with using concentric circles as a way to bridge from the right angles of the home/patio to the fluid, curvilinear lines throughout the garden.











The vertical expression of these concentric circles (the panel, the arbor and sloping andesite wall) are all critical in defining the space.

A completed concept. No, wait- the rocks are too much.

The home is in a neighborhood nestled against the Boise river that provides a micro-climate achingly close to zone 7, with trace amounts of honest-to-gosh humidity and an actual water table; perfect for the dry, woodland, under-story plants we installed.

                                   

Just another Mendelssohn/Front 242 mashup.

The process...

Before the intervention.

Construction of the andesite wall and steel panel base.

Kevin Knickrehm attaching the green
roof arbor to its i-beam armature.

I almost like it as well unplanted. Almost.

                                       
                                                       

                                                 

As I was flying by.