by Brent Knoll | Jul 7, 2014 | Education, Landscape design
Let’s talk about the best landscape design options for you.
Choosing the best landscape design for your Miami, South Florida home sometimes can be tricky. There are many design elements and variables to sort through, it’s easy to see why a person can be confused when trying to decide what the best landscape design is. You want a landscape that’s not only beautiful, but fits your personal needs as well, for example having a tree that provides great shade and fruit, like a mango or avocado tree. You can’t decide whether to go with a Mediterranean look or Tropical Design? You have many design choices with numerous landscape elements to consider. You’re design should flow with the architecture of your home, inside and out.
Landscape Designer Brent Knoll of Knoll Landscape Design is here to help. Brent has over 20 years of designing gardens in South Florida and has put together his top ten landscape designs for beautifying your outdoor space. In this article he’ll discuss the best landscape design for Miami and the elemental factors that make them work. So what is the best landscape design for your Miami, South Florida home? Here’s Brent’s top ten landscape designs for Miami:
1. Mediterranean Landscape Design– Mediterranean gardens are best known for their casual elegance. The inspiration for these gardens comes from the coastal areas of Spain, Italy and France, this landscape style combines relaxed materials and plants with formal accents and designs. Imagine spiral topiaries, lavender, cypress trees and ornamentals combined with terra cotta pots, tiered fountains, roman columns and greek statues. That’s a pretty picture!
Mediterranean Landscape Design
2. Tropical Landscape Design– Tropical Landscapes in Miami are a slam dunk as South Florida is…Tropical. Imagaine a Tropical Landscape full of hummingbirds and butterflies, exotic flowering bat plants whose whiskery flowers are 20″ long, fragrant trumpet flowers perfuming the night air and the creaking sound of bamboo as it sways in the wind. Small waterfalls flowing in to ponds filled with papyrus, lotus flowers and koi fish. The icing on the cake is lying in a hammock between two coconuts as you sip cold ginger tea and listen to the birds sing. That’s paradise….Tropical is the best landscape design in Miami and South Florida when it comes to lushness, rapid growth, and plant variety.
Tropical Landscape Miami
3. Edible Landscape Design– Edible landscaping is an infusion of herbs, fruits and vegetable plants combined with hummingbird and butterfly flora, ornamentals, nectar plants to attract pollinators, fruit trees and shrubs. The object of an edible landscape design is to create a beautiful, yet practical organic garden, one that provides for your basic needs of aesthetics, privacy and shade, but can be eaten from as well. This is a great way to say good by to all that lawn grass and expensive upkeep by planting lot’s of crisp lettuce, fresh herbs and vegetables. Your shade tree becomes a delcious mango tree. Privacy hedge a passion flowering vine on fence giving you fruit all year long. In my opinion, Edible Landscapes are great way to become empowered about growing your own food and setting an example for the community. Are Edible Landscapes the best landscape design for being sustainable, growing food and making the most of your taxable property…Yes! For more information on edible landscaping in Miami, visit our friends Easy Edible Landscapes at http://www.easyediblelandscapes.com
Papaya
4. Certified Wildlife Habitat– These gardens hold a special place in my heart as they’re all about connecting with Nature. With the continued development of Metropolitan properties, more of the natural environment is removed including the soil, to be replaced with huge homes, concrete and small lawns. In my line of work as Landscape Designer, I’m digging all day long in construction fill, bottles, concrete and whatever is left over from the site. The first step for creating balance is to take care of the soil by rejuvenating it with organic material. Then we plant the prettiest of native trees, shrubs, flowering vines, butterfly and bird attracting plants, grasses and ground covers. The result is a outdoor space full of song birds, butterflies fluttering about, frogs singing at night and a place for all to find solace, a natural sanctuary. This is the best landscape design hands down for attracting wildlife to your Miami home.
Certified Wildlife Habitat
5. Butterfly and Hummingbird Haven– the name says it all! The one consistant element in all my gardens are the butterflies. I can’t help it, they’re so much fun to be around. Always fluttering, chasing and nectaring, so tranquil and elegant. It’s easy to attract butterflies in our temperate climate. In one Miami garden alone, I attracted over 30 of native species. It was butterflies gone wild!!! Great thing about butterfly plants, they also bring in the hummingbirds. Plants like ruby red penta, firebush and firespike are great for nectaring, while corkystem passion vine, milkweed and cassia serve as the larval plants. Combine those elements and you’ve got buffet line for our little friends and entertainment for hours. For attracting butterflies, the butterfly and hummingbird haven is the best landscape design for this purpose.
Zebra butterfly nectaring on firebush
6. Healing Garden Design– If there’s a garden I’d prefer to install the most, it would be the Healing Garden. In our fast-pacing, chaotic world, it’s easy to feel the effects of stress and become unbalanced or even ill. If you’re looking for an incredible way to bring healing and meditative calm to your space, then you’ve met your future garden. With restoration of the body, mind, and spirit at its heart, it is infused with many divine and delightful elements. We use things like sacred geometry, scent, color, sound therapy, water features, herbal and medicinal plants, meditation and prayer niches, edibles, and various wildlife attractants among others. Imagine being greeted with the fragrance of a joy perfume tree each time you come home from work or relaxing on a bench near a fountain listening to song birds. Butterflies always in chase, hummingbirds nectaring on native flowers. If you want a Sanctuary, a place of solace, Healing Gardens are the best landscape design in Miami for finding balance and peace of mind.
Healing Garden
7. Sacred Sanctuary Design and Labryths– With our days typically filled with work, home life, social life, hobbies, etc., we can lose sight of the sacred. And yet this part of our life is (for many of us) the most crucial and central need we have. Imagine having a garden truly set apart as a holy place for meditation, prayer, and worship, and as a reminder of all that is divine in your life. We encourage the use of things like sacred geometry, crystals, prayer flags, meditation benches and other sacred symbols as templates for these designs. Wildlife attracting plants like firebush for the butterflies and surnam cherry for the birds will bring balance to any space, ecouraging sanctuary and peace for all.
Sacred Geometry Design
8. Raised Bed Gardening– Imagine having an organic marketplace in your own back yard! The Raised Bed Garden is a classic approach to growing herbs and vegetables. Raised Bed Gardens are neatly contained and easy to work, this simple design offers everything you need to begin growing the healthy herbs, fruits and vegetables you and your family deserve. Raised bed garden frames can be made with wood, metal, stone or plastic. The wood raised bed frames are build with 2″ pine, cedar, cypress or teak, are normally 2′ to 4′ wide, 4′ to 10′ long, and are 10″ deep, filled with organic soil, seasonally planted with seeds and starter plants and fertilized organically. These little raised garden beds are the best landscape design approach for beginners to grow their own food.
Raised Bed Garden
9. Bamboo Retreat– Adding bamboo to your landscape can be perfect for many situations. Let’s say you’ve got a building next to your property that you don’t want to see anymore or don’t want your neighbor to see you skinny dipping in your pool, bamboo as a privacy hedge is ideal due to it’s fast growing nature and non invasiveness. (we only install clumping, non running bamboo at Knoll Landscape Design) The Bamboo Retreat Designs we create are lush, tropical, exotic and elegant, each unique in presentation and impact. Imagine a small bamboo forest surrounding a clear water limestone pool with koi fish, water lillies, orchids and flowering bromeliads, a true vacation getaway in your back yard!
Bamboo retreat
10. Edible Forest Design– If your tired of throwing money away for costly yard upkeep and want to make the most of your property by growing your own food, then the Edible Forest is the landscape design for you. This sustainable “green” design combines concepts like permaculture and companion planting. This self-sustaining microclimate involves the layering of plants and fruit trees according to height, sun tolerance, and growth habits, creating tiny forests that mimic nature and work in beautiful harmony to produce a constant yield of fresh organic deliciousness! Replace your lawn grass with crisp lettuce, fresh herbs, nutritious vegetables and fruits. Tear out that whitefly destroyed ficus hedge and grow a super sweet surnam cherry hedge. Remove that invasive schefflera tree and plant a mango tree, surrounded by papayas and sweet potatoes. With this new style of landscaping you’ll grow enough food for your family and have enough to give to friends. Edible Forests are the best landscape design for making the most of your organic gardening space.
Edible Forest Garden
Need a consulation or design?
Whether it’s a mediterranean style landscape with tiered Italian fountains, a Tropical Paradise with exotic orchids and waterfalls, or just showing off your prize lemon tree in your Edible Forest, you have many choices for landscaping your South Florida property. Need direction for where to start first? Maybe a consulation will shed light on what style of landscape best suits your architecture? Have the ideas and just need a landscape design? Knoll Landscape Design is ready to help you get started. With over 20 year designing and installing gorgeous landscapes, Landscape Designer Brent Knoll knows the best landscape design for your property and is just a phone call away at 3054965155. Call today and get your property looking great!
by Brent Knoll | May 29, 2014 | B-Edible Landscape, Education
Banana Fun Facts for Edible Landscaping
1. A banana is an edible fruit produced by several kinds of large herbaceous florwering plantsi in the genus Musa.
2. The majority of the bananas grown these days are a clone of one another originating in Southeast Asia which could lead to problems with fungus and soil born diseases.
3. Musa species are native to tropical Indomalaya and Australia, and are likely to have been first domesticated in Papua New Guinea.
4. The banana plant is the largest herbaceous flowering plant in the world. That’s one big herb!!!
5. Bananas are one of the easiest edible landscape fruits to grow producing huge clumps of bananas all year long. Usually over 100 bananas in each clump!
6. The banana fruits develop from the banana heart, in a large hanging cluster, made up of tiers (called “hands”), with up to 20 fruit to a tier. Each individual banana is called a finger.
7. Bananas are naturally slightly radioactive, more so than most other fruits, because of their potassium content and the small amounts of the isotope potassium-40 found in naturally occurring potassium.
8. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Portuguese colonists started banana plantations in the Atlantic Islands, Brazil, and western Africa. Today we consume over 100,000,000,000 annually making them the 4th largest agricultural product in the world.
9. Bananas like rich organic soil, like composted horse manure. Make your own organic soil with composted vegetable scraps!
10. Edible landscaping with bananas creates microclimates great for growing herbs, vegetables and berries all year long.
11. Want a great garden idea for growing bananas in your space? Try growing bananas in an edible forest, an edible landscape or in pots in your patio garden.
12. There are around 1,000 different types of bananas but most are not edible. The banana grown mostly for commercial food is the cavendish.
13. Ever wonder why organic bananas taste better? Export bananas are picked green, and ripen in special rooms upon arrival in the destination country. These rooms are air-tight and filled with ethylene gas to induce ripening. Gross!!!
14. Ever had fried plantains? Delcious! Plantains or fried bananans constitute a major staple food crop for millions of people in developing countries. In most tropical countries, green (unripe) bananas used for cooking represent the main cultivars.
15. Easy to grow and fruits all year long in Miami and South Florida, making it my favorite edible landscape plant of all time!
Go to www.easyediblelandscapes.com for the latest and greatest garden ideas regarding edible landscaping in South Florida.
Call 3054965155 to have your edible landscape installed today!!!
by Brent Knoll | May 22, 2014 | B-Edible Landscape, Education
Return of the Victory Garden
The Victory Garden movement of WWI & II, and The Great Depression encouraged nearly 20 million Americans to plant fruits and vegetables in backyard gardens, empty lots, on roof tops, in neighborhood parks, and on other public land including 800 gardens in the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Also called war gardens, these food spaces were promoted because of necessary food rationing, to reduce strain on the short-handed labor and transport industries, and to promote patriotism and boost low public morale. The American government encouraged citizens to plant, including USDA distribution of gardening booklets and videos. Neighbors pooled resources, planted different crops, formed coops, and made it happen. The result? During WWII alone, 9,000,000 – 10,000,000 short tons of produce were grown in urban spaces, equaling then-current commercial production of fresh veggies! Good job local organic urban America!!!
victory garden woman stands with vegetable basket and hoe
As I began to read about victory gardens, I was thrilled to find the above statistics. Brent and I began talking about how the concept of The Victory Garden applies today. What has changed? What still rings true? I continued to read, and one tidbit of info stuck out like a sore thumb. Here it is… “Although at first the Department of Agriculture objected to Eleanor Roosevelt‘s institution of a victory garden on the White House grounds, fearing that such a movement would hurt the food industry…” What?! Wait a minute! Morale is soaring! People are empowered! In a matter of a couple of years, “average citizens” are producing the same amount of fresh vegetables as commercial farming! It seems like a no brainer! Why did we ever STOP doing this? Why are we where we are today when it comes to food, health, and gardening?
uncle sam in victory garden with vegetables and herbs
I have a lot of smart friends. I hear many of them talking about things like US poverty, inflation, big agriculture, big food, and big pharma buying out our politicians, the high cost of healthy food vs the low cost of junk food, and the even higher cost of healthcare and prescription drugs, and while I don’t tend to go on political rants (yuck), I do know how to connect the dots. So I’ve decided the modern Urban Victory Garden just may be the solution to a huge portion of our political, social, and environmental woes! What’d she say??!! You heard me. How?
victory garden easy edible landscapes
Just google “big ag big pharma”, and you’ll find more reading than you want on the fact that our government gives subsidies to big commodity (corn and soy) producers while withholding the same funding for fruit and veggie farmers (making unhealthy foods cheap and healthy foods expensive), allows large food corporations to pump out these cheap, high calorie/low nutrient foods with merciless advertising often aimed at children, and then also caters to the pharmeceutical and health insurance giants who happen to reap the greatest benefit from a nation in which 75% of it’s citizens are overweight (a condition linked closely to diseases like diabetes, cancer, and heart disease and CAUSED by the inferior food being sold). There it is in one sentence. Need I say more? (And please, all you grammar geeks, give me a free pass on this one!)
look at all those veggies!
And if the problem lies at the core of our political and economic system, what can we do? Plant a veggie bed, and if you have some spunk, plant one in your front yard. Why? Because it’s the very best way to not only stick it to “the man” (who is this man??), but it’s ground zero for taking the power back as well. Grow only the best, save your money, eat it fresher than ever, get your kids away from the tv and teach them the right way to eat for great health, recover from your chronic illnesses, feel the amazing “alive and enlightened” feeling of clean eating, and Go Be Well. Is it that easy to change the world? I really do think so.
We’re ready to help you “take the power back” and plant your New Urban Victory Garden. There are many ways to grow your own food. Here in Miami, South Florida, raised bed gardens are very popular as the soil is very rocky. Others want to rid themselves of the high maintenance that comes with grass by installing an edible landscape, or edible forest, a permaculture approach to landscaping. Give Landscape Designer Brent Knoll a call today at 3054965155 to help you get started growing your own food.
Join the organic gardening revolution today!!!
Brent Knoll and Sarah Reimer with the kids
by Brent Knoll | Jan 23, 2014 | Education
Power of Plants
Like many things in life, we don’t always see the forest for the trees, and losing appreciation for the plant life around us just happens. We may begin to see our living landscapes as just utilitarian, aesthetic, or even invasive. While our attitudes may vary, the plant life around us still represents one of the most vital parts of our survival…This is the Power of Plants.
Like all of the natural world, plants are here to give us life, the Power of Plants is amazing. We eat them, eat the things that eat them, and when we pass on, they recycle our own remains, repeating the process again and again. We are, in fact, a true product of the landscape of our planet. With such an undeniably intimate relationship, it would be hard to believe that the indigenous wisdom and humble offerings of the plant kingdom could not be totally vital to life!
Breathe deeply… In… Out… Ahhh, the sweet feeling of vitality rushing through your veins. Just the simple act of breathing thick, oxygen-rich air is enough to make us say, “THANK YOU, PLANTS!” Once again, the basic throb the earth’s heart is “heard” from the plants, pumping oxygen into the air to fuel our own bodies. Even in the involuntary act of breathing, we are partaking in the fruits of the plant world…. Wow.
And the plants just keep giving… There’s really no end to the things our foliated friends do for us. They blanket our surroundings with the fresh, clear, healing color of green. They provide medicine and offer up their wisdom to science to help humanity create myriads of healing modalities. They provide protection from the elements, building and industrial materials, food, and shelter. Their forests, open plains, and deserts evoke emotions and fuel spiritual growth with the quiet lessons they whisper. They surround us with natural art, dramatic, colorful, subtle, intricate, and mesmerizing… And scent… Fresh cut grass, an open rose warmed lightly in the midmorning sun, or crushed lemongrass… If you stop for a minute and think of all the things plants GIVE to us, you can’t help but hear them all whispering, “I love you. I’m here for you.”
So, perhaps not seeing the whole forest… but just seeing a single tree… can be a great thing. The next time you look at an ordinary tree or bush, or walk across your lawn, take a moment to realize the impact of that green space. What feeds there, rests there, takes shade or cover or raises it’s young there? If we can realize the impact of the presence of each plant around us, we just may see the world with completely new eyes…Thank you Universe, I bow to the Power of Plants.
by Brent Knoll | May 13, 2013 | B-Edible Landscape, Education
A Healing Garden is more than a landscape, it is a spiritual oasis that can directly affect what we bring into our lives. Our Healing Garden is the anchor to our truth of who we are and what we want to feel. The Healing Garden is the highest guru and has the power to reshape the essence of our human experience.
As much as we enjoy socializing and spending time in community, we really need to value and honor our need for solitude and personal space. When we go out into the world we consciously and unconsciously interact with so many different energies that can alter our mood and affect our thought patterns. Sometimes, among all the various energies, we can become confused and mistake what we are feeling for the energies of others around us. This confusion is more common than we realize and if we don’t allow ourselves to take time in solitude amongst our own sacred space we can lose touch with the personal essence that brings us our peace of mind.
Labyrinth garden
A Healing Garden provides an ideal energetic sanctuary for us to relax and contemplate what really matters in our lives. Within the boundaries of a Healing Garden we can sort through our thoughts and feelings while being supported by the pure nourishing energies of the living plants all around us. Those plants and their natural energies provide an energetic reference with which we can calibrate our own energy field and identify any discordant energies that we may have picked up out in the world. The more time we spend in our healing garden space, the more familiar we become with the pure energies of nature, and the more familiar we become with those pure energies of serenity and life the easier it will be for us to move towards that type of energy wherever we are.
Consider, in this context, the law of attraction. The energetic vibration that you are projecting attracts thoughts, feelings, people, and objects that match or resonate with that vibration. When we are feeling angry, tense, hopeless or depressed our vibration is very low and so we attract unproductive and unharmonious situations. When we are feeling joyful, positive, relaxed, and grateful, our vibration is very high and we attract situations that are beneficial, serendipitous and fruitful. That being said it is wisest to always keep your vibration high, but of course that is much easier said than done.
Healing garden design
No matter how much time we spend in contemplation, practicing relaxation, or in meditation we still do not have control over the vibrations and energies that are brought into our field of experience by those around us. The people that we encounter in our lives have unpredictable moods and vibrations that, despite how much we may care for them, affect the way we feel and therefore what we attract into our lives. Friends, family and strangers alike embody inconsistent and erratic energetic patterns that can make it difficult for us to remain grounded in our experience of peaceful consciousness.
On the other hand, the plants, flowers, butterflies, bees, trees and all beautiful life in our healing garden embodies a steady and reliable vibration of graceful vitality and joyful abundance. The more time we spend in that presence the more we will align our own energetic vibration with it. As we begin to identify more and more with the energy of the healing garden it becomes easier and easier to maintain that vibration out in the world. As this vibration becomes an effortless constant projection we will begin to attract circumstances into our lives that reflect the abundance, prosperity, vitality, and joy of the healing garden energies. You will invariably discover that the new people and opportunities that come into your life are also embodying this very high vibration of prosperous joy and abundance.
Healing garden design
Building a Healing Garden is, in itself, an energetic declaration of personal reformation. When you take the time and effort to build this sanctuary for yourself you are putting the universe on notice that you are ready and able to be filled with lively joy and abundance. You are taking responsibility for your self in a way that is energetically, ecologically, and economically sustainable. You are opening yourself up to a sacred healing partnership with the earth and accepting the grace and providence of nature. When you identify with the high vibration of the Healing Garden you are beginning to realize that, like the earth, you have all the power to heal, and to provide safe energetic space for yourself and others.
Landscape Designer Brent Knoll of Knoll Landscape Design specializes in Healing Garden Design. Call Brent today at 3054965155 to schedule a consultation and experience for yourself the Healing Power of the Garden.
Brent Knoll
