Mosaic Monday: The Gardens of Alcatraz

First of all, in Hurricane Irene news -- we were very lucky here at Little Red House. Although we got over seven inches of rain (some of which came to rest in our cellar) we managed to scrape by without losing power, or losing any trees. Thanks for all your well wishes and prayers! :)

Now, about these photos... you had to know that I couldn't go long without posting a garden, right? There is actually quite a beautiful garden at Alcatraz in San Francisco. The juxtaposition of colorful blooms and forbidding prison buildings makes for a very interesting combination. And of course, since Alcatraz is an island, views of the water are never far away.

Now let's have some mosaic fun! Here are the instructions:
1. Publish your Mosaic Monday post. The post may be about any subject you wish. The only stipulation is that it include a collage, or mosaic of photos.
2. Once it is published, click on the title of the post. This will lead you to the static link for your post. The static link is the page with only that post on it. Copy the url from your browser at the top of the page.
3. Paste the url into the appropriate inlinkz box in this post.
4. Type your name in the appropriate inlinkz box in this post.
5. Click on "Enter."
6. Please link back to this Mosaic Monday post so that your readers can find other wonderful mosaics.

That's all there is to it! It's always a good idea to then check and see if your link is working. If you have any questions, feel free to email me: mrcarroll(at)optonline

And a quick reminder: if you would like to join Mosaic Monday but don't know quite where to start, there is a tutorial on mosaic-making on my sidebar. Just scroll down, and click on the small blue mosaic.

Mosaic Monday: August in New Jersey

Welcome to August in New Jersey. Actually, these photos may have been taken at the end of July, but let us not quibble over a few days. This is what August in New Jersey looks like -- the fields are filled with thistle and asters and queen anne's lace. And if you are lucky, your garden is filled with phlox and echinacea.

My garden is actually filled with weeds.

But this lovely garden is about twenty minutes away. It is called Willowwood, and is maintained by the Morris County Parks system. Last year, I posted about it here, and here.

Encompassing over 130 acres, the garden includes fields filled with wildflowers. In the more formal areas, crazy paving paths are overhung with helianthemum and lilies and garden phlox in melting shades of pink and white. Joe Pye weed towers in the back of the beds, while the whole is guarded by sentinels of dark evergreens. Open the black wrought iron gate, and enter a magical garden. :)

Please Note: Next week there will be no Mosaic Monday. I will be taking a week away from the computer, to celebrate my husband's birthday, to get my new business going, and to enjoy the last days of summer with my daughter before she returns to school. Enjoy your week!

Now let's have some mosaic fun! Here are the instructions:
1. Publish your Mosaic Monday post. The post may be about any subject you wish. The only stipulation is that it include a collage, or mosaic of photos.
2. Once it is published, click on the title of the post. This will lead you to the static link for your post. The static link is the page with only that post on it. Copy the url from your browser at the top of the page.
3. Paste the url into the appropriate inlinkz box in this post.
4. Type your name in the appropriate inlinkz box in this post.
5. Click on "Enter."
6. Please link back to this Mosaic Monday post so that your readers can find other wonderful mosaics.

That's all there is to it! It's always a good idea to then check and see if your link is working. If you have any questions, feel free to email me: mrcarroll(at)optonline

And a quick reminder: if you would like to join Mosaic Monday but don't know quite where to start, there is a tutorial on mosaic-making on my sidebar. Just scroll down, and click on the small blue mosaic.

Mosaic Monday: I ♥ Gardens

Well, you have probably figured out by now that I love to go on garden tours... :)

The photos here were taken way back in June, at a local garden tour in a nearby town. I love this shingle-style home, built in 1904. You can see the side view in the photos above. I felt uncomfortable taking a picture of the front, as the owner was on the front porch greeting garden visitors. The side view of the house does give you an idea of what a beautiful house it is, though -- don't you just love those windows?

The garden itself was rather formal, with a brick path leading to a small stone bench encircled by a yew hedge. There were lovely decorative touches throughout, including a pair of blue and white Chinese jars planted with roses, and an elegant fountain just off the side porch.

And do you see what was parked in the driveway?! A vintage baby blue Mustang! How cool is that???

Now let's have some mosaic fun! Here are the instructions:
1. Publish your Mosaic Monday post. The post may be about any subject you wish. The only stipulation is that it include a collage, or mosaic of photos.
2. Once it is published, click on the title of the post. This will lead you to the static link for your post. The static link is the page with only that post on it. Copy the url from your browser at the top of the page.
3. Paste the url into the appropriate inlinkz box in this post.
4. Type your name in the appropriate inlinkz box in this post.
5. Click on "Enter."
6. Please link back to this Mosaic Monday post so that your readers can find other wonderful mosaics.

That's all there is to it! It's always a good idea to then check and see if your link is working. If you have any questions, feel free to email me: mrcarroll(at)optonline

And a quick reminder: if you would like to join Mosaic Monday but don't know quite where to start, there is a tutorial on mosaic-making on my sidebar. Just scroll down, and click on the small blue mosaic.

Mosaic Monday: Linda Allard's Garden

I'm so sorry to be dumping so many photographs on you, but honestly, I couldn't decide which ones to leave out! When my husband and I visited Connecticut last month and swooned over saw Bunny Williams' garden, we also visited two other beautiful gardens. The one you see here belongs to Linda Allard, the genius behind the fashion house of Ellen Tracy.

Set on 60 acres of beautiful rolling hills, the main part of the garden is very formal and European in nature, with a strict geometry of box-edged beds. There are standard roses, a pair of rose allees that bisect the garden, and pairs of stone outbuildings that are used as garden sheds and an outdoor kitchen. I actually felt a little uncomfortable taking a picture of the house itself, so all you can see is a corner of it peeping out of one photo.

The house itself was designed by Miss Allard's brother, an architect. It is an imposing and large structure, inspired by a Palladian villa. It overlooks a great lawn and an orchard, with views of the Litchfield Hills. There is also a pool, a studio and a shade garden. We actually met Miss Allard in the shade garden, and chatted a few minutes about the depredations that deer can make on a garden. (Yes that's right, we didn't talk clothing design, we talked deer!) Much of her garden is walled, but the shade garden is outside the wall and requires the copious use of deer repellant.

More gardens to come this week. ;)

Now let's have some mosaic fun! Here are the instructions:
1. Publish your Mosaic Monday post. The post may be about any subject you wish. The only stipulation is that it include a collage, or mosaic of photos.
2. Once it is published, click on the title of the post. This will lead you to the static link for your post. The static link is the page with only that post on it. Copy the url from your browser at the top of the page.
3. Paste the url into the appropriate inlinkz box in this post.
4. Type your name in the appropriate inlinkz box in this post.
5. Click on "Enter."
6. Please link back to this Mosaic Monday post so that your readers can find other wonderful mosaics.

That's all there is to it! It's always a good idea to then check and see if your link is working. If you have any questions, feel free to email me: mrcarroll(at)optonline

And a quick reminder: if you would like to join Mosaic Monday but don't know quite where to start, there is a tutorial on mosaic-making on my sidebar. Just scroll down, and click on the small blue mosaic.

More Bunny

After seeing all the beautiful formal spaces in Bunny Williams' garden, I thought you might like to see the service area. The barn shown in the top photo was built to replace the original barn which was remodeled into an entertainment and guest room. Immediately behind the new barn is a very posh chicken house, filled with exotic birds. The birds are favorites of Miss Williams' husband, antiques dealer John Roselli.

Also behind the barn is a large working greenhouse, complete with potting table. It was very hot the day we visited, and the greenhouse was home to succulents, house plants and annuals, many of them in beautiful hand thrown pots by Guy Wolffe, whose pottery is nearby. Don't you love the pot with the ruffled edges?

As you can see, there is a rather large vegetable garden here as well, complete with a compost pile enclosed with a fanciful iron fence. I know the photo is not the best, but I had to show it to you. Have you ever seen such an elegant compost heap in your life? :)

Anyway, I guess that is about it for today. I'm beginning to think that this will be the summer of gardens here on Little Red House, for I've got lots more to show you from all my garden tours. And my favorite thrift store is closed till the fall. ;)

Mosaic Monday: Bunny's Parterre Garden

Well, what do you know? We have yet another post about Bunny Williams' garden! lol

This is the beautiful parterre garden, which adjoins the back of the barn and conservatory. According to Miss Williams' book, An Affair with a House, the parterre garden started out as a potager, modeled on one by famed garden writer Rosemary Verey which was, in turn, taken from the historic French style. But as the barn was renovated, the vegetables were moved elsewhere and the garden became more of a formal knot garden. In spring it is filled with bulbs, which are pulled and replaced with colorful annuals come summer.

In the first photos, you can see the side of the conservatory with a row of stone troughs filled with succulents. The second set of photos show the criss-crossing lines of the boxwood parterres, with a large Italian oil jar in the center. Also shown are a rustic wooden pergola which is covered with climbing roses, and several standard dwarf Korean lilac trees. In a garden with such strong horizontal lines, some vertical accents are key. As you can see, there is also a metal pergola in the center of the garden. The final photo shows the conservatory.

I hope you are enjoying this extended tour of Bunny Williams' garden. I still have a few more photos to share, if you can believe it. What a lot of blog fodder I've gotten from this amazing visit!

Now let's have some mosaic fun! Here are the instructions:
1. Publish your Mosaic Monday post. The post may be about any subject you wish. The only stipulation is that it include a collage, or mosaic of photos.
2. Once it is published, click on the title of the post. This will lead you to the static link for your post. The static link is the page with only that post on it. Copy the url from your browser at the top of the page.
3. Paste the url into the appropriate inlinkz box in this post.
4. Type your name in the appropriate inlinkz box in this post.
5. Click on "Enter."
6. Please link back to this Mosaic Monday post so that your readers can find other wonderful mosaics.

That's all there is to it! It's always a good idea to then check and see if your link is working. If you have any questions, feel free to email me: mrcarroll(at)optonline

And a quick reminder: if you would like to join Mosaic Monday but don't know quite where to start, there is a tutorial on mosaic-making on my sidebar. Just scroll down, and click on the small blue mosaic.

Treat or No Treat?

I realize that I may have over-hyped this post just a bit. I've been telling you for the last week that I had something special and a real treat for you. Well, it was certainly a real treat for me... we'll just have to see what you think.

So let's walk up the driveway here, and take a peek.

Do any of you recognize this house? It was on the cover of one of my all-time favorite decorating books. I first wrote about that book here.

Have you guessed yet? Yes, it is Bunny Williams' house in Falls Village, CT! (Forgive my exuberance, but... Bunny Williams!)

My husband and I spent the weekend in Connecticut, and went to several Garden Conservancy open gardens in Litchfield County on Sunday. They were all beautiful, and I'll be posting all about them in the weeks to come, but this garden was the one that I had looked forward to seeing above all others.

In fact, as we drove through the beautiful Litchfield Hills on Sunday, my husband joked about how excited I was.

"Bunny Williams, Bunny Williams, Bunny Williams," he joked. "Now, what do I do if we meet Bunny? Is it like meeting the queen? Should I not look directly at Miss Williams? Not speak until she addresses me? Can I shake her hand?"

Well, sorry to say that we never did meet Bunny Williams. But we wandered all over her beautiful garden for over an hour, and I took over 100 photos. Yes, that's right -- 100. So you will be seeing a lot of this garden over the next week. :)

This is the view of her sunken garden from the front patio of the house. I will have more photos in a later post, but you can see here that the "bones" of the garden are beautiful, and they are flanked by two spectacular perennial borders.

As I walked on that patio, I noticed that the front door was open, with just a screen door between me and the beautiful front hall. And I'm ashamed to say that I could not resist the temptation to snap a quick photo of a room that I have drooled over for years in books and magazines.

Miss Williams, if you happen to read this post, please forgive me. I am more ashamed than I can say. But gosh, I just couldn't resist. :)

Note: there is a great interview with Bunny Williams here.

Japanese Garden, Garden Conservancy, NJ

As this blog seems to be "All Gardens, All the Time," I'm just popping in today to show you the rest of the garden from my previous post. As you can see, it is a shade garden with some Japanese influences -- quite different from the English borders near the house. And it is a beautiful sight on a hot summer's day.

My husband and I spent a wonderful weekend up in Connecticut, and I have some fabulous pictures to show you. In fact, I took so many pictures that my right hand is sore from holding my camera! I will be back on Friday to share my special treat with you all. ;)