party in the lou!

A few weeks ago we had a going away party for our friend Elizabeth, or e as we call her. Our friend Karey, or Downtown Karey Brown as we call him. His Loft is AMAZING! Its a penthouse loft with two levels, 3 bedroom, 3 bath, amazing finishes and a rooftop deck. This is pretty much my dream apartment. Here are a few pics from the night.

The High Line

This is the Highline Park. Such an amazing innovative park on a reclaimed Elevated Rail Line. Ellie and I spent our first morning in NYC there and loved every minute. Here are a few shots.

NYC Round 3

Brooklyn Bridge. Love the lines.

Grace Hill

This is the first major project I have designed and its almost complete! There are some plants that need replacing and a few other tweaks, but other than that its looking pretty good.  Check it out!

City officials are Effing Idiots.

OK, here it comes. Yet another rant. SO I designed the landscape for a certain municipal facility as of late. They (the contractors) had destroyed a small area of land while constructing a retaining wall. The city officials asked me to design something to fill in the space. Given that is was somewhat of a residual space with full southern exposure, I just spec'd some liriope and some tardiva hydrangeas to fill in the area since its not all that visible.

2 weeks pass


I am forwarded an email explaining that there are some extra plants that they took from another project that they want to used here. There is a Maple, a Spruce, and 5 arborvitaes. Also, they say that they have tried to use liriope and hydrangea before and that they dont work in ful sun.

This is when my head explodes. Heres why I wanted to CUT A BITCH:
1. Thanks for the explanation of the species there Darwin, but there are a fucking THOUSAND species of Maples. you are gonna have to be a bit more specific. Is is a purple threadleaf japanese maple? Or maybe a silver maple? One is 2 feet tall, the other is 150 feet tall, one likes full shade, the other is full sun. Fuck you.
2.Spruce? Really? Same issue. Did you care to get me a specific epithet on that one there Cletus? Thats like saying, of i think we need to plant that Green stuff here. I hate you.
3 Arborvitaes make me stabby. No one likes them. They are ugly, they get bagworms, they die. Simple. I have never specified one in my life. HATE.
4. I'm sorry I thought I was the one with the background in horticulture. Oh wait. I AM. And unless you have a degree in that magic bag of stupid, you should shut up. Oh yeah and you might want to check every major Botanical gardens website in North America. Tardiva hydrangea and Liriope spicata are both full sun species. Again, there are multiple types of each of these that have different requirements. There is a reason I need a degree to do this, I know stuff. So shut your dirty mouth. Its insulting. More doing, less talking please.

and SCENE....

NYC Round Three

NYC Round Two

NYC Round One

I have so many pictures of my trip to New York but I thought I would post a few. Let me know what you think. First up are the more artistic ones.