BOOK REVIEW: Design*Sponge at Home

SOMETIMES I THINK I have a case of arrested decorating development. At my age — a couple of generations past 30, which is the age of Grace Bonney, hugely successful design blogger and now author of a hefty new decorating and DIY book, Design*Sponge at Home (Artisan Books, $35) — shouldn’t I be more of a House Beautiful type? Shouldn’t I be gravitating toward wing chairs and Chinese ginger jar lamps and floor-to-ceiling drapes with valences?

Instead, I’m drawn to the very sorts of freewheeling, colorful, creative places featured in the first half of Bonney’s comprehensive, textbook-weighty book, many inhabited by designers, artists, and stylists.

These are places I can see myself actually living in, with cheerfully mismatched furniture and imperfect walls, full of thrift-shop discoveries and pieces that just happened to come to hand, almost always with (low) budget in mind.

The common thread here is that these homes don’t take themselves too seriously. Always a sucker for interior design and decorating books, I sucked up this one, which is particularly idea-full for renters and cottage dwellers such as myself — people who live comfortably with a sense of impermanence, who are willing to get down on their hands and knees rip up old linoleum, and who use the oldest, cheapest decorating trick in the book — paint  — to transform space with diamond-pattern wood floors, mustard yellow kitchen counters, walls of ash gray or black, or maybe Outrageous Orange.

At first I thought I would have no use for the second half of the book, a compendium of crafty DIY projects, some from readers, some from D*S editors — not having the skills required to sew my own slipcovers or the patience for creating starburst patterns on a dresser with small wooden dowels. But I was impressed with the overhaul of those easy-to-find Salvation Army staples — the boring brown wood dresser or armoire — into bright and appealing new pieces, merely by painting them with vivid flower or wave patterns. Now I’m itching to go out and find some on which to try my hand.

Design*Sponge at Home was published in early September. This review is a bit late because I lent the book out immediately upon receiving it to the 26-year-old daughter of a friend who’d just moved into a bare Brooklyn apartment. She called it “inspiring,” and that’s exactly what it  is: 400 pages of get-out-and-do-it design inspiration.

How to Be an Absentee Landlord (Don’t!)

THERE’S A NEW QUESTION on my Q&A page. I’m putting it up today as a post; it will remain in perpetuity on the Q&A page along with others I’ve answered in the past:

• looking for property under 150K
• where to find good buys on mid-century furniture
• contemplating a move from the Hudson Valley to Philadelphia
• entering the Brooklyn real-estate market as first-time home-buyers
• renting in Brooklyn with three dogs

Check it out when you get a chance. Here’s the latest:

Q: How do you handle being an landlord in multiple cities? I’m in Brooklyn. My girlfriend and I are building a little investment house in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. Going to rent it out…the house is comprised of 3 little lockout apartments and can easily convert back to single family. Any tips or advice on how to be an absentee landlord? – Reid

A: Hi, Reid. What you’re proposing is entirely do-able. I have ten rental units, five in Brooklyn and five in Philadelphia. For the past year-and-a-half, I’ve been living at the end of Long Island, 2-1/2 hours from Brooklyn and 4 or 5 from Philly, so I’m an absentee landlord all around, I guess. I don’t love the term “absentee landlord,” though. It suggests tenants running amok because they think you won’t know or don’t care. It reminds me on New York in the ’70s, when “absentee landlord” was synonymous with “slumlord” in the tabloids. That’s not us! We need a new term (suggestions welcome…)

Anyway, in this day of cell phones, texts, email, FedEx (for leases and keys), and Craigslist, it’s not hard to be “present” as a property owner/manager, even at a considerable physical distance.

Made in the Shade: Tips from the Experts

Margaret Roach at last weekend’s shade gardening workshop, above

LAST WEEKEND, along with a few dozen other garden nerds, I attended a half-day shade gardening workshop in Columbia County, and took 8 pages of notes.

We started at Margaret Roach’s lovely, hilly two-acre spread (she being the garden blogger I most admire, and author of a forthcoming dropout memoir about leaving the city for a more serene life in the sticks — I can relate). Our second stop was Loomis Creek, a nursery known for unusual offerings and stunning display borders. One of Loomis Creek’s owners, Bob Hyland, presented the second half of the workshop, and shared the news that the nursery will be closing for good Columbus Day weekend, when Bob and his partner de-camp for new adventures on the West Coast. Great bargains there in their final close-out; I came away with a car-full.

When asked why we were there, one woman spoke for many: “Because I don’t have any SUN!!!” Despite what I hoped when I first came to my Long Island cottage in May ’09 — south-facing backyard and all that — I have NO full sun anywhere on my half-acre. It varies from part to deep shade throughout, and I’ve been gravitating toward plants that don’t have to struggle. Also, almost all my gardening knowledge to date comes from books. I wanted to see how real gardeners actually handle plants (I may never plant a quart nursery pot again without tearing it into several pieces, as we watched Bob Hyland do with a  pot of ajuga).

Here’s some of what we learned last Saturday, beyond the basics (the basics being ‘plant in multiples of 3,5,7,9; in drifts or waves rather than rows…’):

• Shade plants grow slowly. That’s why they tend to be more expensive. It takes a nursery 2-3 years to nurture seedlings (hellebores, epimedium) along to salable size.
• When transplanting/dividing plants in fall, pre-soak the ground. I’d always just sprinkled perfunctorily, but Margaret recommended a few hours a day for a few days in advance. And wait for cool, overcast weather to do the deed, if possible.
• September is THE time to transplant and divide perennials (in Zone 5, anyway; here in Zone 7, we can probably go into October). October’s the month for planting new trees and shrubs.
• A lot of woodland (shade) plants have shallow root structures, so their roots freeze easily if you move them too late. They are adapted to live in small pockets of soil between tree roots. “Pocket planting of baby seedlings may be more effective,” said Margaret, than buying larger nursery specimens. “It’s nature way.” That requires patience, not my strong suit.
• Think “opportunistic” gardening on a shady property — that is, create gardens for beauty in March through May, before deciduous trees leaf out. Identify your seasonal opportunities and make the most of them.
• An easy kind of shade garden (well, it’s all relative) is creating a “skirt” around deciduous trees, with early bulbs and primulas, trilliums, Jeffersonia, and ‘dolls eyes’ aceta (cimicifuga) — none of which I’ve tried — especially near the house, where you can view them through a window in March and April.
• The best way to design: “Look out the window.” Especially in winter, that’ll be your most frequent vantage point.
• Group containers full of high-impact, long-lasting plants, such as ‘citronelle’ heuchera, hostas, begonias, and hakonechloa to welcome visitors into a shade garden.
• Spanish bluebells are “good for the back 40” – sweeps of ground cover visible from a distance.
• Note to self: get some petasites! They’re dramatic, huge-leafed, pre-historic-looking things.
• If you want to special-order annuals from a nursery for next year — if you need a large quantity or want something unusual — do it now.