I’m very pleased to have Billy Goodnick speaking at the store this month. We’ve been trying to share more of the work of our favorite designers in our newsletters and events. We love Billy’s work – take for example this photo that could so easily be a San Francisco shady garden. Billy will be presenting his ‘Design Like a Pro’ workshop here at the store on July 16th.

Design and photo by Billy Goodnick.

ABOVE: We’re especially excited to see a design that uses so many of the plants that we grow ourselves and others that we always have on hand in our shade house.  The plants you see include Asparagus ‘Myers’, Philodendron selloum, Aeonium canariense, Impatiens oliveri, and Farfugium japonicum ‘Aureo-maculata’. Maybe you didn’t realize that the section of our nursery under the canopy features plants that thrive in shade (and wind!). Billy’s design features plants that can cope not only with shade but also with occasional dryness – a perennial problem of many a Bay Area garden. No flowers were needed to achieve this beautiful and serene space. Despite the lushness of the scene – these are durable plants – the design doesn’t call for coddling or lots of precious water.

Santa Barbara-based Billy Goodnick is an award-winning landscape architect, columnist and blogger at Fine Gardening Magazine, college instructor, and co-host of Garden Wise Guys, a comedic sustainable landscaping TV show in Southern California. The often hilarious Goodnick is also know for his crusade to eliminate “Crimes Against Horticulture.”