House on a Hill

Welcome to this 2014 El Cerrito Garden that has matured into a hillside treasure!

Installed July 2014

We chose a Pepper Tree, with it's handsome & slight weeping form, as the focal point.

The surrounding plantings include low water natives, succulents & non-natives

that add pops of color and beauty all year round.

Written by B.B. Garibaldi

Color Blocks

BLOOMING PERENNIALS & SUCCULENTS

No Water? No problem! These beauties require little water, yet reveal a gorgeous

variety of colors that brighten up any garden space.

Written by B.B. Garibaldi

All Grown Up

This San Francisco garden makes us appreciate winters in our moderate climate.  A recent renovation in 2015 converted the lawn area into a patio space surrounded by herbs and blooming perennials.

After a single growing season, our Bay Area gardens come to life with flowers and foliage attracting beneficial insects, birds and bees.

This Berkeley cottage garden designed in conjunction with Planted Earth was installed about 3 years ago.

Material Girl

This garden redesign project in El Cerrito makes the most of all the wonderful landscape materials we have available to us.

Here you see the materials used in the garden: Steel containers on the deck and patio, south american hardwood deck, concrete stepping stones and landing, decomposed granite patio and cedar veggie box and hot tub.

The challenge in working with so many materials is blending them together so they look and feel coherent in the garden space.

The concrete stepping stones lead to the cedar hot tub.  In the distance is a mounded planting space with a dg path leading to a seating area.  The plants chosen for the mound are meant to draw birds, bees and butterflies that can be enjoyed from the small seating area in the corner.

A number of small trees were added to provide year round interest in the garden.

A succulent bowl inserted in the mound.

The small courtyard outside the home office offers a nice respite from the work to do inside.  

Pretty Pots

This patio garden has a lovely array of pots containing succulents and blooming perennials.

Cotyledon in the foreground, Cordyline in the center and Sencio 'Chalk Sticks' in the far pot.

This little blue pot adds a pop of color that accentuates the Leucadendron 'Ebony'

Things that make you go HMM...

Interesting and captivating garden design encompasses more than just flower bloom and color.  It also incorporates texture, natural lighting and a little bit of whimsy to make the most of what each plant has to offer.

Cotinus 'Grace' Variegated Caprosma, Salvia chiapensis and Chocolate Geranium.

A whimiscal path connects two flagstone patios.
 

Amazing texture provided by a mature Fan Palm.  The focal point in a current garden renovation.

Silver rosettes contrast with slender green Crassula ovata

Bulbine frutescens pops when paired with this glowing chartreuse geranium.

Interesting blooms are always welcome.

What's New?

Some of recent projects are highlighted below:
A new look for Flowerland in Albany

This Utah ledge stone was used to create low retaining walls along the front entry of Flowerland.  This creates a level planting area along the sidewalk and prevents soil from continually slipping.  The golden color of the stone works well with the blue succulents Agave and Senicio.

















This Oakland back garden was renovated to create more open space for the homeowners' children.
A low water and low maintenance Now Mow sod was installed to create a play space.  Drought tolerant and native plants that add color and visual interest around the perimeter of the space.

Below are the 'before images'.  The garden was overgrown and not ideal for a family with small children.  The stones were repurposed to become a 'jumping off' point for the lawn and the smaller stone was moved along side the patio for natural seating.

Happy New Year

Hello everyone from Mya and Racheal and everyone here at Fiddlehead Gardens!

Sorry for the long silence on the blog front. We've been extremely busy in the field and the blog had to go on the back burner for a while. Plus I (Mya) had a (second) baby boy in October and went on maternity leave so Racheal was flying solo for a while with a full load of installations, maintenance, and holiday festivities to juggle. Way to go Racheal!!!

Anyway, we are back at the computer with lots of great pictures and garden ideas and tips to share so please check back. And in addition to our perennial list of personal resolutions to exercise more, eat less sweets, and read more books, we have a list of professional goals which we thought we'd share.

Our New Years resolutions include:

1. Blog more! Hopefully once a week. Post more befores and afters, which are so fun to share. Post more maintenance tips for you do-it-yourselfers out there. And share inspiring plant finds, gardening ideas, and pictures from our gardening adventures. We encourage our readers to comment and send in photos and questions of things happening in your garden as well.

2. We would like to get Racheal's beautiful garden at her house in Bernal Heights on a garden tour. We will get some photos up soon for a virtual tour but she is having a hard time finding any organization in San Francisco that sponsors actual tours, so please let us know if you hear of anything.

3. Hopefully this is the year for me (Mya) to re-do my own garden. Classic shoemaker's shoes syndrome here, but I'm going to prioritize my own home this year because I'm tired of looking at my raggedy garden in its current state. I have a lot of edibles in my garden, so it is an opportunity to show how one can incorporate food production for your family into a small space and still have it be beautiful and organic.

4. Continue to learn about and maximize Bay-friendly environmental gardening practices.

5. Do more design and build of small spaces like patios, courtyards, and small backyards. I am particularly interested in the challenges of small space gardening since I have a tiny garden and lots of requirements for how I want to use it. We love all the new trends in vertical gardening and container gardening and otherwise greening up urban spaces.

So we're looking forward to sharing our progress on these various fronts as the year progresses. To kick it off, take a look at the vertical garden pictures above. The first is a succulent-filled picture box that was made (I think) by the fabulous Mike (Teddy) at East Bay Nursery and was on display there for a while last fall. This would be stunning as a focal point mounted on a dark-colored stucco wall. And the second photo is of a vertical garden we built and installed for a client in the Elmwood area of Oakland. The client constructed a fence panel to conceal a trash/utility area and we built a tropical-themed vertical garden on it. They liked it so much that they had us make a second garden panel on the other side of the gate to match. The plants were chosen for their color, ability to tolerate shade, and cold-hardiness/ability to over-winter in our climate, and include some bromeliads, ferns, sweet flag grasses, and shrub begonias. Contact us for construction details if you're interested in replicating this look.