Ann Acheson

August 26, 2022

Midwest Groundcovers - One of the wholesale nurseries I wish I could shop at!

Ann Acheson

August 26, 2022

I first heard of Midwest Groundcovers a number of years ago from a lecture given by Roy Diblik at NYBG. He mentioned them as a source for native plants and they had a list on their website of native plants that I printed out and carried around in my notebook for a few years. Fast forward to the COVID years, where connections to horticulture, plants, and "normality" was available mainly through webinars and YouTube presentations. Midwest Groundcovers turns out to have a Winter Lecture series that I've watched for the last 2 winters that turns out to be quite interesting.

This is what Midwest Groundcovers says about itself on its website:

Growing & Propagating Over 20 Million of the Finest Wholesale Plants in the Midwest
Although Groundcovers are our specialty, Midwest Groundcovers’ plant offerings include Evergreens and Broadleaves, Deciduous Shrubs, Perennials, Ornamental Grasses, Vines and Native Prairie, Wetland and Woodland species. We are leaders in the Green Industry in partnering with landscape architects, landscape designers, green roof and plant professionals to create inspiring planting combination solutions. Experts in plants for Midwestern durability and sustainability for over five decades.

Unfortunately for me, they don't do mail order and Irvington NY is obviously not in their delivery range. But if I lived near enough, I would buy everything from them.

Their Nursery includes the Midwest Natural Garden that was established in 2011. It was originally a planting by Walter Stephens, called The Natural Garden, founded in 1953. Stevens populated the original garden with a variety of native species that he rescued from being destroyed by a development project. Nearly 60 years later, Midwest Groundcovers purchased the property and has kept the integrity of the local ecotype plants and the original native stock plants and seed beds. In 2016, conservation work and site development began under the consultation of Restoration Ecologist Jens Jensen from Jensen Ecology. Sections of the 29-acre site were graded and a series of step pools installed to reduce erosion and direct stormwater into the pond. A vegetative bioswale and wetland area were added to capture sediment and “clean” the water for irrigation use. A selection of native plugs and prairie seed mix was planted on the pond’s edge for pollinators. In 2017, controlled burns were begun to assist in managing invasives and non-natives. We continue to restore on-site, existing natural areas and develop new ones. Habitats include woodland, prairie, wetland, and a stream restoration.

Midwest Natural Garden is a production nursery site and is not open to the public.

They grow many different species of Carex as well - and have planted a "Carex Classroom" so that people can see what the different Carex species look like. I imagine this is a very valuable resource, since Carex are fairly new to the Trade, there are so many of them, they actually have a wide variety of habits and foliage, some are best suited to specific niches and many of us (me) have no idea what most of them look like except from pictures.

The Carex Classroom is designed to help educate specifiers, ecologists, landscape designers and plant experts on the nuances of the many species available.

Here are some of the plants that Midwest Groundcovers horticulturalists found exciting in 2022.

From Midwest Groundcovers Webinar January 21, 2022 “21 Plants for 2022”

Spigelia marilandica ‘Little Redhead’ (Common Name: Indian Pink)

Spigelia is underutilized in the landscape due to limited availability, but it's poised to make an explosion in popularity. Why? It's a very versatile perennial-it grows naturally in either sun or shade. This perennial can be found growing in the wild in woodlands and along streambanks throughout the Eastern United States. It's wildly popular among wildflower enthusiasts and highly sought after.

'Little Redhead' is a superior selection of the species, vegetatively propagated to ensure uniformity. Dark red tubular flowers with yellow interiors are produced above top of an upright clump of dark green, wedge-shaped leaves. This genus requires good drainage to thrive, so do not plant in areas with standing water. Full sun - part shade; 24-28 in tall X 20-24 in wide. Rabbits eat it.

Tricyrtis formosana ‘Autumn Glow’ (Common Name: Formosa Toad Lily)

Impressive variegation is what sets this toad lily apart from older cultivars. Per Tony Avent, it boasts the widest yellow leaf margins of any variegated Tricyrtis he’s grown.

Orchid-like, reddish purple to blue violet speckled blossoms appear from late summer into early fall in the north, midsummer in the south. It has attractive dark buds and is slow-growing. An excellent perennial for adding late season color to the shade garden.

Dianthus X ‘Paint the Town Fancy’ Series (Common Name: Pinks)

The Paint the Town Series cultivars are prized for their bright colors and increased heat tolerance. Flowers appear in early summer, and a quick shearing after flowering will encourage them to rebloom in early fall. This is the perfect size to edge the front of the sunny border and use in combination containers.

'Paint the Town Fancy' produces 1", single, rosy fuchsia flowers with a red eye and serrated petals. Flowers completely cover the plant when it's in peak. It has glaucous blue foliage that stays clean and tolerates heat very well. Midwest Groundcovers considers this to be an improvement over ‘Firewitch’. It needs good drainage.

Aquilegia EARLYBIRD™ Purple Blue ('PAS1258487') EARLYBIRD™ Series (Common Name: Columbine)

A series of early flowering Columbine from Kieft Seed. There are several cultivars as seen above.. These are compact plants with lots of flowers and strong colors. 9-11 in tall with upward-facing flowers. Will naturalize. They also have excellent potential as cut flowers, lasting up to 2 weeks in a vase.

Allium X ‘Big Beauty’ (Common Name: Ornamental Onion)

‘Big Beauty’ has lovely wide gray-green foliage that is very showy - bolder than other alliums when it comes up in spring. Large soft pink flowers bloom July - Sep and are 2.5 in diameter. This is a really nice foliage plant as well as a beautiful flowering plant. Takes heat and drought and performs over a long period. Seed heads hold up well to snow and ice. 18 - 24 in tall

Cotinus coggygria ‘Winecraft Gold’ (Common Name: Smokebush)

Leaves emerge orange, turn golden yellow and then mature to chartreuse. It flowers with pink “smoke” plumes. It has a dense oval shape; good branching structure; much more “regular” habit than many other smokebush varieties. Not very susceptible to leaf burn. Beautiful fall color with tones of orange/yellow.

Helleborus X Frost Kiss ‘Molly’s White’ (Common Name: Lenten Rose)

This is a great performer in the landscape. It has silvery-green mottled foliage and a huge number of clear white flowers that are fairly upward-facing. It will bloom in the first year and will fill out quickly. Compact habit; 12-18 in tall.

Hydrangea paniculata grandiflora ‘Firelight Tidbit’ (Common Name: PG Hydrangea)

A dwarf form of ‘Firelight’. It’s shorter than ‘Bobo’ at 2-3 ft tall. Flowers turn a deep righ red color in fall. Gets a fantastic purpley-orange fall foliage color.

Ann Acheson

July 28, 2022

Some more new perennials that I'd like to try, and why

Ann Acheson

July 28, 2022

I said I gave up on writing about new plants, but that proves to have been an emotional outburst. There are always new plants, and its a good idea to look through the lists and the marketing materials and see if there are some that could really work for my design practice. Below are a few more perennials that are new for 2022 - or at least newly on my radar - including information from their Plant Patent for some of them.

Amsonia hybrid ‘String Theory’ Patent number: PP34419

Date of Patent: July 12, 2022

Assignee: Walters Gardens, Inc.

Inventor: Hans A Hansen

From the Plant Patent:

A new and distinct Amsonia plant named ‘String Theory’ is characterized by winter-hardy, compact, densely-stemmed, clean habit with linear, dark-green foliage that goes dormant in the winter; single, light periwinkle-blue, star-shaped flowers on medium height scapes flowering above the foliage beginning about early-May and effective for about four weeks. T
The most similar Blue Star cultivars known to the inventor are: ‘Blue Ice’ (not patented), ‘Starstruck’ U.S. Plant Pat. No. 32,246 and ‘Storm Cloud’ (not patented).

Amsonia hubrichtii, commonly called “bluestar,” is a native perennial with blue spring flowers and showy fine-textured foliage that turns gold in fall. The main criticism is that some people think it gets a little tall and floppy with its three-foot height. ‘String Theory, is a compact version that knocks a foot off of this plant’s usual height.

“It’s more compact than the species, plus the leaves don’t turn chlorotic (yellowish) in summer,” says Chris Ruger, a grower for the wholesale Quality Greenhouses near Dillsburg who picks ‘String Theory’ as his favorite new perennial of 2022. The variety blooms a little later in spring than the species but still retains the periwinkle-blue flower color as well as the brilliant golden fall-foliage color.

Plants grow just under two feet tall, ideally in full sun. Amsonia is also heat tolerant and not a favorite of deer.

Pennisetum alopecuroides Worryfree Hush Puppy - a non-invasive Fountain grass

Pennisetum alopecuroides 'Tift PA5' PP31,027

Bred at the University of Georgia

From the Plant Patent:

Open pollinated seeds from ‘Tift PS989’ plants were irradiated with 10 K of Cobalt 60 gamma radiation to produce a first group of irradiated seeds. These seeds were planted in a field to produce 256 plants. These plants were evaluated and six were selected based on morphologically desirable genotypes with reduced seed set. Open pollinated seeds (a second group of seeds) from these six selected plants was harvested and irradiated with 10 Kr of Cobalt 60. Irradiated seeds from only one of the six selected plants survived the second radiation and were planted in a field to produce 64 plants. Irradiation of seeds usually results in chimeras or sectors on the plants for the trait of interest. Therefore, each of the sixty four plant was divided into four quadrants or sectors (a, b, c, and d) and five or more inflorescences from each quadrant were examined for seed sterility. A highly seed sterile sector a of plant number 60 was selected and asexually propagated to produce ‘Tift PA5’. ‘Tift PA5’ has been tested at Tifton, Ga.

Lower Paxton Twp. PA horticulturist David Wilson, marketing director for Overdevest Nurseries’ Garden Splendor line of plants, picked Worryfree Hush Puppy fountain grass as one of his two favorite new perennials of 2022. He likes it for two reasons : 1.) it’s sterile (meaning no unwanted seeding around), and 2.) it has unusually long-lasting flowering spikes

Wilson adds that Hush Puppy has a “nice, full, and vigorous free-flowering habit with inflorescences that last much longer than conventional varieties like ‘Hameln.’ In our trials, we’ve witnessed displays that last at least four weeks longer than other varieties.”

Hush Puppy™ Fountain Grass features long-lasting pink plumes that spray high over rounded mounds of slender foliage. Plants grow three feet tall and four feet wide, ideally in full sun. Drought-tough and deer-resistant. Hardiness Zones: 5-9

Eupatorium purpureum 'FLOREUPRE1' Euphoria™ RubyPPAF (syn. Eutrochium purpureum 'FLOREUPRE1')

Joe Pye Weed

There are lots of varieties of Joe Pye weed now - it's hard to keep them straight sometimes. Joe Pye Weed can get a bit big for a lot of gardens, topping out at six feet or more. Even recent “dwarf” varieties often grow four feet tall and wide. But its a very valuable native plant that pollinaotrs of all kinds flock to. So having a cultivar that is even smaller than 'Little Joe' is a great addition to the landscape designer's arsenal. Plus its name is a cute and clever play on the word "Eupatorium".

'Euphoria Ruby' grows just over three feet tall, doesn’t flop, and is a heavy bloomer with magenta umbrella-shaped clusters. Bees and butterflies love it. ‘Euphoria Ruby’ will grow in both damp or dry soil, ideally in full sun.

The new cultivar originated in a controlled breeding program in Quedlinburg, Germany in 2011. The objective of the breeding program was the development of Eutrochium cultivars having a compact growth habit.

From the Plant Patent:

The new Eutrochium cultivar is the result of open-pollination. The female (seed) parent of the new cultivar is the proprietary Eutrochium purpureum breeding selection coded 4846-1, not patented, characterized by its medium cream-rose colored ray florets, dark green-colored foliage, and vigorous, upright growth habit. The male (pollen) parent of the new cultivar is unknown. The new cultivar was discovered and selected as a single flowering plant within the progeny of the above stated open-pollination in a controlled environment in Quedlinburg, Germany.
The following characteristics of the new cultivar have been repeatedly observed and can be used to distinguish ‘FLOREUPRE1’ as a new and distinct cultivar of Eutrochium plant:
 1. Medium red-purple colored inflorescences
 2. Medium green-colored foliage
 3. Low growth vigor
 4. Compact-upright growth habit
Plants of the new cultivar differ from plants of the female parent primarily in having a different ray floret color, lower growth vigor, and a more compact growth habit.
Of the many commercially available Eutrochium cultivars, the most similar in comparison to the new cultivar is ‘Little Joe’, U.S. Plant Pat. No. 16,122. However, in side-by-side comparisons, plants of the new cultivar differ from plants of ‘Little Joe’ in at least the following characteristics:
 1. Plants of the new cultivar are shorter than plants of ‘Little Joe’
 2. Plants of the new cultivar have a darker purple-colored flowers than plants of ‘Little Joe’
 3. Plants of the new cultivar have larger leaves than plants of ‘Little Joe’

Anemone hybrid 'Spring Beauty Pink'

Spring Beauty Pink comes from the Netherlands and is a hybrid of Anemone sylvestris, with bubblegum pink flowers first appearing in late spring and contining throughout summer. Delicate looking, but extremely tough, its perfectly pink flowers flutter in the wind attracting all the early pollinators with its nectar. Attractive molunded foliage.

It grows 12″ tall and 15″ wide, making it compact enough for smaller gardens, and for the front of the border. Its ideal condition is dappled shade protected from the afternoon sun, yet it will also grow in full shade. It looks beautiful in woodland settings and mixed with other perennials in cottage, cutting, and pollinator gardens. It spreads by underground rhizomes and can be used as a ground cover. New plants may grow near the original plant and can be easily transplanted elsewhere.

Angela Treadwell-Palmer, founder and co-owner of Alabama-based Plants Nouveau plant introduction company, picks this as her favorite new 2022 perennial because it’s the first deep-pink, spring-blooming anemone. Treadwell-Palmer says plants might look delicate, but they’re actually “supersturdy” and seldom bothered by any bug or disease issues. And she notes that early pollinators appreciate the spring blooms.

Nepeta grandiflora 'Summer Magic' PP27090 (Catmint)

This cultivar is not new by any means, having been on RHS Chelsea Flower show’s Short List in 2013. But its new to the US trade and is an introduction by Plants Nouveau. Their founder, Treadwell-Palmer, likes this new catmint variety because of its exceptionally long bloom time – running non-stop from May until September most years. “It blooms and blooms all summer,” she says. “The upright, deep-lavender blooms are held high above the grass-green foliage and never flop, even in the worst of storms. We admire its ability to ‘keep it fresh’ even in the heat and humidity of summer as other Nepeta varieties tend to fade.” Plants grow 15 to 18 inches tall and do best in full sun.

From the Plant Patent:

The new cultivar is a product of chance discovery by the inventor. This new variety, hereinafter referred to as ‘SUMMER MAGIC’, was discovered as a chance seedling by the inventor, Malcolm Spencer. The seed parent is believed to be Nepeta grandiflora ‘Bramdean’, unpatented, and the pollen parent undetermined. This interesting new variety was discovered in the inventor's garden during June 2010 as an individual seedling plant. The plant was discovered in West Sussex, England.
The following traits have been repeatedly observed and are determined to be the unique characteristics of ‘SUMMER MAGIC’
• 1. Compact bushy habit
 2. Improved branch structure on flower stems
 3. Improved plant sturdiness; better resistance to wind/rain damage
 4. Distinctive strong flower color
 5. Large quantity of flowers
COMPARISON TO PARENT VARIETY
‘SUMMER MAGIC’ is similar in most horticultural characteristics to the presumed seed parent variety Nepeta grandiflora ‘Bramdean’. Plants of the new cultivar ‘SUMMER MAGIC’ however, differ in the following:
 1. The new variety is shorter
 2. The new variety produces more branches.
 3. The new variety has improved resistance to weather damage—parent variety is often broken open by summer storms.
‘SUMMER MAGIC’ can be compared to the well known commercial variety Nepeta faassenii ‘Six Hills Giant’, unpatented. Plants of the new cultivar ‘SUMMER MAGIC’ are similar to plants of ‘Six Hills Giant’ in most horticultural characteristics. Plants of the new cultivar ‘SUMMER MAGIC’ however, differ in the following characteristics:
 1. The new variety is much shorter
 2. The new variety has significantly improved branching on flower stems
 3. The new variety has improved resistance to weather damage
 4. Pinching requirements and or/growth regulator use are reduced
‘SUMMER MAGIC’ can be compared to the known commercial variety Nepeta racemosa ‘Little Titch’, unpatented. Plants of the new cultivar ‘SUMMER MAGIC’ are similar to plants of ‘Little Titch’ in most horticultural characteristics. Plants of the new cultivar ‘SUMMER MAGIC’ however, differ in the following characteristics:
 1. The new variety produces longer flower spikes.
 2. The new variety produces more flowers per stem, and more flowering stems per plant.
 3. The new variety has improved resistance to weather damage
 4. The new variety produces more branches per plant.
‘SUMMER MAGIC’ can be compared to the known commercial variety Nepeta racemosa ‘Little Titch’, unpatented. Plants of the new cultivar ‘SUMMER MAGIC’ are similar to plants of ‘Little Titch’ in most horticultural characteristics. Plants of the new cultivar ‘SUMMER MAGIC’ however, differ in the following characteristics:
 1. The new variety produces longer flower spikes.
 2. The new variety produces more flowers per stem, and more flowering stems per plant.
 3. The new variety has improved resistance to weather damage
 4. The new variety produces more branches per plant.‘SUMMER MAGIC’ can be compared to the known commercial variety Nepeta racemosa ‘Little Titch’, unpatented. Plants of the new cultivar ‘SUMMER MAGIC’ are similar to plants of ‘Little Titch’ in most horticultural characteristics. Plants of the new cultivar ‘SUMMER MAGIC’ however, differ in the following characteristics:
 1. The new variety produces longer flower spikes.
 2. The new variety produces more flowers per stem, and more flowering stems per plant.
 3. The new variety has improved resistance to weather damage
 4. The new variety produces more branches per plant.
‘SUMMER MAGIC’ can be compared to the known commercial variety Nepeta racemosa ‘Little Titch’, unpatented. Plants of the new cultivar ‘SUMMER MAGIC’ are similar to plants of ‘Little Titch’ in most horticultural characteristics. Plants of the new cultivar ‘SUMMER MAGIC’ however, differ in the following characteristics:
 1. The new variety produces longer flower spikes.
 2. The new variety produces more flowers per stem, and more flowering stems per plant.
 3. The new variety has improved resistance to weather damage
 4. The new variety produces more branches per plant.

Ann Acheson

May 18, 2022

Doug Tallamy's Homegrown National Park Idea

Ann Acheson

May 18, 2022

I think Doug Tallamy has the right message for us, and I need to write again about his idea of the Homegrown National Park. First of all, its pretty good marketing, because it catches your attention and is easy to remember. The only thing I slightly quibble with is the use of the word "Homegrown" because I think to many that has the connotation of growing vegetables. But what Tallamy is advocating is not a Victory Garden - although it would be a victory for the climate if it were to be adopted widely across the US.

From the Homegrown National Park website

Chances are, you have never thought of your garden - - indeed, of all of the space on your property - - as a wildlife preserve that represents the last opportunity we have for sustaining plants and animals that were once common throughout the U.S. But that is exactly the role that built landscapes are now playing and will play even more in the near future. If this is news to you, it’s not your fault. We were taught from childhood that plants are decorations and our landscapes are for beauty; they are an outlet for expressing our artistic talents and an oasis for having fun and relaxing in. And, whether we like it or not, the way we landscape our properties is taken by our neighbors as a statement of our wealth, our social status, and our willingness to follow cultural norms.

This is idea #1: even though our landscapes are there for beauty, expressing our artistic talents and an oasis for fun and relaxation, they need to be more than that at this point in hiustory. Your landscape has to play a more important role than just being a statement of wealth or social status.

But no one has taught us that we have forced the plants and animals that evolved in North America (our nation’s biodiversity) to depend more and more on human-dominated landscapes for their continued existence. We have always thought that biodiversity was happy somewhere “out there, in nature,” in our local woodlot or perhaps our state and national parks. We have heard little about the rate at which species are disappearing from our neighborhoods, towns, counties, and states. Even worse, we have never been taught how vital biodiversity is for our own well-being.

This is idea #2: Biodiversity is critically important. Learn what it means!

The population of the U.S., now over 330 million people, has more than doubled since most of us were kids, and it continues to grow by 4,800 people each day. All of those additional souls, together with cheap gas, our love affair with the car, and our quest to own ever larger homes, have fueled unprecedented development that continues to sprawl over 2 million additional acres per year (the size of Yellowstone National Park). ... We have connected all of our developments with 4 million miles of roads, and their combined paved surface is nearly five times the size of New Jersey. Somewhere along the way we decided to convert most of our living and working spaces into huge expanses of lawn. So far, we have planted over 62,500 square miles -some 40 million acres - in lawn. Each weekend we mow an area the size of New England to within one inch and then congratulate ourselves on a job well done. And it’s not as though those little woodlots and “open spaces” we have not paved or manicured are pristine. Nearly all are second-growth forests that have been overtaken by invasive Asian plants like autumn olive, multiflora rose, Oriental bittersweet, porcelainberry, buckthorn, privet, and bush honeysuckle.

This is Idea #3: Re-think the lawn.

... We have turned 54% of the lower 48 states into a matrix of cities, suburbs, roads, airports, power and pipelines, shopping centers, golf courses, infrastructure, and isolated habitat fragments, with 41% more of the U.S. into various forms of agriculture. That’s right: we humans have taken 95% of the natural world and made it unnatural. But does this matter? Are there consequences to using almost all of our land to meet human needs without considering the needs of other species? Absolutely, both for biodiversity and for us. Our fellow creatures need food and shelter to survive and reproduce, and we need robust populations of our fellow creatures because they are what run the ecosystems on which we all depend.

Why We Need Biodiversity

... Biodiversity losses are a clear sign that our own life-support systems are failing. The ecosystems that determine the earth’s ability to support us are run by the plants and animals around us. It is plants that generate oxygen and clean water, that create topsoil out of rock, and that buffer extreme weather events like droughts and floods. It is insect decomposers that drive the nutrient cycles on earth, allowing each new generation of plants and animals to exist. It is pollinators that are essential to the continued existence of 80 % of all plants and 90% of all flowering plants, and it is birds and mammals that disperse the seeds of those plants and provide them with pest control services.

This is Idea #4: Ecosystems fail without enough biodiversity.

Here is the solution proposed by Tallamy - this is Nature's Best Hope. Move your landscape toward four ecological functions:

• support a diverse and complex food web

• manage local watersheds

• move carbon from the atmosphere to the soil

• provide food and housing for as many species of native bees as possible.

Lawn does none of these things well, so reducing the area we have in turf grass is a logical first step. But plants vary a great deal in how well they achieve ecological goals, so we must choose very carefully the plants we use to replace lawn.

This is an image from Benjamin Vogt (Monarch Gardens) showing his front yard prairie garden makeover with a view of the rest of the traditional front lawns in the subdivision. He has a new book coming January 2023 called “Prairie Up”.

Ann Acheson

January 30, 2022

Back to Landscape Design for a change: a Naturalistic Planting Design by Nigel Dunnett for The Garden of Pooled Talents Conceived and Designed by Stephen Broadbent

Ann Acheson

January 30, 2022

Garden of Pooled Talents

Description of the Garden, the impetus for the design and the symbolism contained within it

The Garden of Pooled Talents is a public art work on the University of Sheffield campus, that sits in a courtyard space between the Diamond Building (Engineering School) and the Jessop West Building (Arts and Humanities). The large galvanized metal structures represent giant ladles reaching out from both sides, with central gathering spaces symbolizing the meeting of the disciplines.

This is a podium deck landscape (i.e hard surface underneath rather than soil) and is not irrigated. There is a strong landform of ‘ripples’ that move out from the center, and the plants are growing in a free-draining, aggregate-based green roof substrate.

The concept and design for this project came from the artist Stephen Broadbent and was carried out by Broadbent studio. The studio website describes that Stephen Broadbent “has over the last thirty years successfully completed many public art projects, demonstrating a role where artists can be radically engaged in the community, finding solutions, selecting and interpreting themes that enlarge, enliven and enlighten our experience of the world.” The group is described as follows: “WE ARE AN EXPERIENCED TEAM OF ARTISTS, DESIGNERS AND ENABLERS THAT RESPOND IMAGINATIVELY TO PLACE AND PEOPLE. We conceive and champion public art and design projects in collaboration with architects and urban designers, allowing a community to become active participators in a process of change, celebration or remembrance. The studio facilitates creative engagement projects, developing specific strategies and frameworks for cultural activities and creative intervention. We are also a studio of makers, with an equipped workshop, and proven relationships with manufacturing partners, that enable us to not just conceive ideas but to also craft elements large and small that are site specific and beautifully integrated into their environment.”

https://broadbent.studio/garden-of-pooled-talents

Pictures of the construction process shown below are are from Broadbent Studio and words are from Stephen Broadbent.

This is how the project is described on the Broadbent studio website:

The original brief was to design concrete planters for a rather forlorn left-over space between … a new building, designed by Twelve Architects, and the equally distinctive geometric Jessop West Humanities building, designed by Sauerbruch Hutton. The space is also partly enclosed by the Music School housed in the original Gothic grade II Jessop building and the glazed facade of the landmark bio incubator building.
These surrounding buildings presented both a challenge and an opportunity that resulted in the inspiration for our conceptual idea and a determination to create a remarkable space that could unite these building and their particular use.
Our site was the misshapen area left between buildings that don’t talk to each other.
It was bleak, hemmed in, and unwanted.
Greenery needed to break it up, soften, bring life to this space in the same way greenery is being encouraged to invigorate the built environment all over Sheffield. But nature is not reclaiming the city by itself; humans are helping. …
These thoughts gave us the image of a garden into which humans are pouring water, and which seems to be growing outwards.
Students from both sides of the old arts and sciences divide need to enliven the society they share by pooling different ways of seeing the world. The society they share is a garden and an exchange of ideas produces a flowering - a garden that grows.

LADLES TO BRING WATER

Twin paths draw people from opposite sides of a garden, to twin seating areas in the middle. Two giant metal ladles pour water into the ground. Ladle-sculptures give a nod to Sheffield’s cutlery-making tradition, particularly the craftsmanship of the Little Mesters.

A MARRIAGE OF ART & SCIENCE

The ladles seem to pour water, but what they actually feed the garden with are students from both sides of a traditional divide - one ladle brings the arts students, the other brings the science students.
Arts and sciences represent different approaches to investigating the world, but both are expressions of the same creative impulse in humans. Both ladles are identical in form and material, but each has a different finish.
The central paving holds two sequences of words that reveal contrasting processes of thought, one drawn from a more analytical scientific process, and the other from a more creative perspective representing the arts. Each ends with the word Share, and throughout their differing sequence, there are words that are common to both processes.

RIPPLES GROWING EVER OUTWARDS

At the centre of the garden lies a small circle - a drop of water poured from twin ladles, a drop of inspiration produced from the sharing of ideas.
Outwards from this central circle spread ripples - concentric rings of hard surface and planting, followed by ripples in the landform. The movement of these ripples out from the centre has left the garden with a ragged outer edge creeping into the existing paving.

OUTCROPS OF GROWTH

Near the perimeter of the garden, trees have taken root. Our concept also included, further out, smaller secondary areas of greenery, bringing with them more trees. Each of these outcrops of growth is fringed by its own creeping edge.
The garden seems to be spreading out of the site like lichen colonising a rock-face.

MAKING

Galvanised steel with a decorative lacquered finish was the chosen material. The decking of the bridge sections consist of a bound aggregate and the central area infilled with concrete and a bonded aggregate finish. The poem was carved in contrasting limestone.

The landform was created from a lightweight substrate often used on flat roofs, with good properties of water retention. The planting scheme was designed by Professor Nigel Dunnett and planted by the in-house landscape team.

The steelwork was fabricated and installed by Chris Brammall Ltd.

Nigel Dunnet’s Planting Design

There are two main plant mixes. The larger area is a ‘steppe’ type mix for dry open sun, and there is also a smaller area of more shade-tolerant plants for parts of the site that are in shade for most of the day.

The main planting consists of a structural framework of matrix of the Blue Oat Grass, Helicotrichon sempervierens with blue/grey leaves and arching fountains of flowers in early summer. The evergreen Euphorbia characias subsp wulfenii plays a prominent role, especially in winter and spring. Kniphofia ‘Green Jade’ is prominent in late summer and autumn with blue Aster x frikartii ‘Monch’. All these plants are arranged as a naturalistic mixture, with larger groupings of yellow-flowered Phlomis russeliana – which also has excellent autumn and winter seed heads. Amongst these structural plants, a mix of seasonal perennials creates a successional display from spring through to autumn.

Key plants

*Euphorbia characias subsp wulfenii* ‘Humpty Dumpty’

Shadier parts of the garden

In the areas which have more shade, the tall upright grass Calamagrostis ‘Overdam’ creates graceful vertical accents. White aqulegia fills the spaces between in the spring, and in summer through to autumn, white Anemone x hybrida ‘Honorine Jobert’ and Eupatorium ‘Purple Bush’ are prominent.