:strip_icc()/white-house-brown-trim-surrounded-plants-ee66525c-98c2470df8104db3bee38e96441a7b1e.jpg "An example of garden ideas inspired by cars from around the world.")
Mother's Day is celebrated this weekend, and visiting the local preschool is always a good idea to show your growing love for your mom.
This year, the Tacoma Garden Club is giving the city a flower show along with classic cars on display at the Le May Automobile Museum, across from the Tacoma Dome. I ran a workshop at an event called Drive by Design and here are some ideas from that workshop inspired by my travels. They will inspire you in your traffic stop projects.
Ferrari of Italy, sort of an official design.
You don't need an Italian villa to enjoy Dolce Vita. Symmetry and balance are classic design tips that make any landscape look more formal and classic, like a red Ferrari. Planting ideas include a few evergreens on either side of the front door, urn-shaped pots filled with white or evergreen planting material, and fenced-in patios with a centerpiece fountain.
Plants to borrow from the dry Italian landscape include: yews, yuccas, chokeberries, hardy cyclamen and, of course, Mediterranean herbs for great Italian dishes: basil, rosemary and sage.
Tip: Italians will never eat pasta or any other food in the car. Dinner is the art of eating quietly with family and friends, and a Ferrari is a work of art that cannot be spoiled with sauce.
Mercedes from Germany as well as tinted glass frames.
Classic German engineering makes a reliable Mercedes, as well as robust planters full of flowers from the German countryside.
The key to color throughout the summer is to use annuals such as ivy, geraniums and petunias in window boxes and container gardens. Geraniums can handle the heat and their continuous flowering is second to none, but the new Supertonia is in the running for the best flowering plants for window boxes.
The common name "geranium" is not entirely accurate for the heat-loving, summer-blooming plants that the Germans love so much. The botanical name is Pelargonium and these succulents like warm days and cool nights. The latest varieties combine zonal or upright geraniums with ivy-leaf geraniums to create the Galleria series and the new Caliente geranium series, which have better branching and more flowers.
If you haven't tried growing geraniums in hanging baskets or window boxes for years, head to a nursery and try these new plants.
Tip: The smell of pelargonium or mallow repels flies and mosquitoes, which is why you see them on German shop windows. In countries where there is no air conditioning, windows are left open during the day, and the smell of geranium repels insects.
Americans love trucks and country parks.
Whether it's a Ford, a Chevrolet, or even a pickup truck called the Tacoma, Americans' love of trucks keeps our farms and orchards growing. Takeaway ideas include a meadow garden planted with wildflowers, a Midwestern-style sunflower and redback garden, or for small-towners, an inexpensive idea to reuse and recycle container gardens. Consider these cheap and dirty American ideas:
From petals to metal, metal trays, metal buckets and even metal mailboxes with holes drilled in the bottom for drainage are good containers for the occasional daisy-like flower. Coreopsis, rudbeckia, Shasta daisies and others look great in metal containers, and all of these perennials can withstand the heat of metal and come back the next year, making these containers very inexpensive to build and maintain.
delicious risotto? Yankee thrift has also inspired the world to grow more tomatoes, kale and lettuce in recycled containers, including everything from metal filing cabinets (put one on its side and plant where drawers used to be) to adding colorful greens like Bright Lights Swiss chard . . . As an accent plant for decorative containers.
Marian Benetti has a degree in horticulture from the University of Washington and is the author of several books. Contact her at binettigarden.com.
