Palm Beach, Florida, is a land of golf courses, sunshine and beautiful gardens. The only problem is that you can't see most of the gardens because they are hidden behind huge hedges. Host Rebecca Kolls toured the work of a local designer, Paul Okean, who believes that beautiful gardens should be seen and not hidden.
A "living driveway" at one residence combines grass and paving, with each footing poured individually and sod that was cut and laid by hand. Each piece was individually laid on a foundation of sand. The "softscape" effect creates a friendly, inviting entrance to the house.
The driveway draws the visitor into the courtyard and is flanked by a lot of color, which seems to be missing in many of the gardens in this area. Some of the plants used are crinum lilies, bromeliads and orchids. The entrance is framed with bougainvillea and gardenias for fragrance. A little shady spot was filled with Begonia odorata.
The garden looks like it has been here for many years, but it's actually a very young garden--15 months from the original installation. One of the challenges in the early stages was in finding mature palms. Heterospathe palms from the Philippines were used along with containerized bamboo. The palms are very vigorous growers and have probably tripled in size in the last 15 months. Bamboo--a tropical plant--adds a great deal of texture. And the textures of this garden are as bold as they are colorful.
Within the landscape, there are a variety of gardens. The garden right off the kitchen is quite intimate, but unfortunately there is a nearby road with noise. To drown out that noise, an aquatic garden was created. On the sunny side of the grounds is a butterfly garden. The opposite side is very shady, so more of the tropical plants including orchids, hostas, haliconias, gingers and bamboo were brought in. Peacock fern is used as a groundcover.
Finding unusual plants that integrate well with a house can be fun. You can plant things that are not normally found in your area--a wonderful opportunity to be creative and unique in your garden.
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