A Visit to Desert Theater Nursery

Last Friday I visited the Desert Theater Nursery up in Escondido with some clients. This nursery is truly amazing for the stunning amount and variety of cacti, aloe, and agaves on site. I'm working on a project for clients in Escondido, and they've worked with Brandon of Desert Theater before - so we headed up there on Friday and scoped out planting materials.

I was impressed with the number and quality of mature plants at the Nursery. I'm really excited to get this plan through the HOA approval process and to bring some of these gorgeous plants into this couple's yard!

Even Newer Schwag - and QR Codes!

One of my first entries on this blog was with a photo of my first set of business cards. While there haven't been a ton of posts in the interim 10 months, I have run out of business cards. Friday I got my newly redesigned and reprinted cards:

I print my cards at Moo.com - a most wonderful printing company! I do my holiday cards there, personal portfolio collateral there, and business cards for other ventures of which I undertake. I love their recycled paper, print quality, fast production/shipping, and their "print-finity" option (allows you to have a different front to each business card in a package). 

Now that I have some built projects, photos of those, combined with botanical photos taken by yours truly grace the front. The back has all of the important details, some project drawing and photo thumbnails, and my ADS QR Code.

I QR coded everything in my online life several months ago. Its incredibly useful - now with the right smart phone app (I use Optiscan on the iPhone) you can access ADS' website by scanning my business card! Go on, try it. You know you want to...

Tee Gifts

Earlier this week Aeonium Design Studio finished up the first custom orders for the Garden Shop. ADS supplied tee gifts and gift card holders for a local charity women's golf tournament:

The event had a "Spring Fling" theme, so recognizable spring annuals (Marigolds and violets) in oranges and yellows were used for the tee gifts. The lower, wider vases also featured a sedum groundcover in addition to the annuals. Tournament winners were awarded gift cards presented in a bird cage votive candle holders that double as place card holders and were selected and decorated to coordinate with the tee gifts plants in the white vases.

This project also gave me a chance to try out the new work bench space at the ADS office (i.e. in my garage!) - with 32 5" vases, and over 90 plants on the table at a time, I'd say it worked out pretty well!

Carlsbad Home: Installation & After Photos

As promised, here are some photos from our latest residential landscape installation in Carlsbad. For before photos, check the previous post.

Installation (done by a very hard working crew...):

After Photos:

All photographs in this post are credited to Laurel Stanford. Check out more of her brilliant photography at Precious Memories - Photography by Laurel Gales Stanford. 

Carlsbad Home - Before Photos

This weekend Aeonium Design Studio finished up another residence. This one in Rancho Carlsbad - a community of manufactured homes just East of the Carlsbad Flower Fields. ADS is working on the entryway to this community for the HOA, and as new owners come in, will be helping them to redo their landscaping according to their HOA guidelines.

Our first yard, a demonstration house for the community, went in this past Sunday:

Front Yard - Before

Side Driveway Planting - Before

A note about the property. Rancho Carlsbad started out as a trailer park some years ago. About 30 years ago the community members started buying the homes AND the land. Now when many people move into the community they pull out the existing structure and rebuild.

The community itself is gorgeous. Its a dedicated senior community, built with Mission style architecture and planting. Two creeks run through the property, a large clubhouse sits on a lake in the center of the community, and they boast a large community garden, resort style pool and recreation area, and a heavily planted environment.

Photos from the installation, as well as photos of the completed front yard will be up shortly!

Aeonium's Garden Shop - Now Open

Things have really been cooking over here at ADS. Right now I'm tying up plans for an HOA's Community Entry, finishing up the maintenance manual for my 2 latest happy landscaping clients (postings soon to come), working on some live gifts for a Garden Shop client, and well, working on the Garden Shop.

Garden Shop? Yeah. Garden Shop.

As if life in general, and life at Aeonium weren't busy enough - I've decided that Aeonium will have two arms, so to speak. One is the landscape design aspect of the business - facilitating people to develop their  outdoor spaces, create their dream yard, or dress up a house in need of a face lift. On the other end of the business you'll see the Garden Shop - essentially a place for me to play around with centerpieces, miniature succulent gardens, vertical wall gardens, succulent wreaths, and one day (one day soon I hope) planted furniture.

As an avid Etsy buyer and seller, it seemed pretty natural to start up an Etsy Shop and Account for Aeonium and run the Garden Shop through there. So here they are, the first two listings:

Morning Coffee

4 Tiny Pails

Slowly but surely I'll be adding more little plantings to the Garden Shop. So keep checking in here: Aeonium Design Studio Garden Shop for updated listings!

I got this today...

... not gonna lie - pretty excited!!!