Serenity in the Garden

My new book Floratopia is out! I am so happy to finally be able to share flower garden design ideas with everyone. I have been working with annual and perennial flowers in all my landscape projects for decades and yet I wrote about everything but flowers.  Odd. Well, that has now been corrected. I have amassed a collection of flower tips accompanied by my photos and categorized them in 6 sections in the book.  Osteospermum Serenity Series Why did I write this book? Here is an excerpt from my introduction: "Flowers are such an important part of our living world—offering food and habitat to our threat-  ened pollinators such as bees, birds, butterflies, and more. That is why I chose to write about  flowers and flower garden design. I have worked with flowers as a landscape designer and  horticulturist all my adult life, and I know how wonderful it is to open the door to the sight of  colorful blooms in the garden. More important, I believe we need flower gard...

I am thrilled to say that I was invited to be one of the 30 book authors signing books this evening in Sharon, CT for the benefit of the Hotchkiss Library there.  Please join us !

Jewel tones are rich colors that resemble gemstones including emerald green, amethyst purple, ruby red, topaz yellow, sapphire blue, tourmaline green, and turquoise blue. A jewel tone is bold (no pastels here) and lends an air of distinction to a space. They bring a scintillating 'Pop' to a garden.  Complimentary jewel tones like amethyst purple and topaz yellow are especially effective. Jewel tones look great indoors as well...I love this painting and chairs below... But too much saturation can be overwhelming...You must temper your exuberance a little.... Richness can lead to burn out...but maybe not. Fire Spinner Ice Plant You can get away with lots of jewel tones when you use plants... Spello, Italy Flowers also can be combined to become a  Jewel Tone Medley ... Angelonia and Lime Rickey Heuchera - Johnsen Landscapes & Pools Coleus works great to create a jewel tone planter You can...

Spring has sprung! I am happy to announce the publication of my new book Gardentopia- Design Basics for Creating Beautiful Outdoor Spaces . Publishers Weekly just released its wonderful review which I am sharing with you. I took the liberty of adding a few photos from my book: Readers with even the slightest interest in beautifying an outdoor space-large or small-should find something of value in this expansive guide from landscape designer Johnsen (The Spirit of Stone: 101 Practical & Creative Stonescaping Ideas for Your Garden).  She emphasizes the importance of deciding upon a goal for a garden and visualizing its final appearance before beginning work on it, declaring that the sum of any such project is greater than its parts. Johnsen takes care to dissect these parts, revealing creative possibilities (accompanied by practical guidance) for each nook and cranny.  For example, to recover the lost art of "garden strolling," the desi...

Trees emanate a palpable energy. Stop next to a tree, be quiet, and you can feel it. In my book, Heaven is a Garden , I have a chapter titled, 'Calling on the Trees'. It touches upon the unsung aspects of our woody grand neighbors. Now, with the public's renewed focus on trees, I feel it is the right time to share a short excerpt from my book with you: "The Celts of ancient Europe believed that Nemetona, goddess of the grove, resided in the hushed atmosphere of forest glades. She could be found in a needle-covered pine forest, beneath a group of towering beech trees or in a sun-dappled birch grove. These woodland clearings were called nemetons and were seen as being awash with the enchanted energies of trees. Trees: Nature’s Recharger The Celts attributed the charged atmosphere of woodland clearings to shunnache, the life energy of trees. Interestingly, this ancient notion is similar to the invisible energy fields of modern physics, and Albert Einst...

This interview was published on July 18, 2017 on the great blog Gardening Know How . You can see it and much more - click here .  Q & A with Jan Johnsen, author of ‘Spirit of Stone’ Share Article         Jan Johnsen  is a well-regarded landscape designer, author and teacher with a passion for plants, rocks and beautiful gardens.  Jan is a co-principal of the design firm, Johnsen Landscapes & Pools, in Westchester County, New York.   Jan’s book,  Heaven is a Garden , (published by St Lynn’s Press, 2014)  is now in its third printing. In her new book, “ The Spirit of Stone: 101 Practical & Creative Stonescaping Ideas for Your Garden ’, (St Lynn’s Press, 2017) she celebrates this natural material and highlights its many uses in the landscape. 1.      Why do you have a soft spot for hard rock? Rocks are plentiful where I live in the Northeast. Growing up h...

Do you garden in a dry area?  I love this teaching approach by Olivier Filippi. 1: Salvia chamaedryoides 2: Rhodanthemum hosmariense 3: Artemisia abrotanum 'Silver' 4: Phlomis 'The South' 5:  Senecio vira-vira 6: Salvia fruticosa 7: Salvia leucophylla 8: Artemisia lanata This photo and information is from a French website that I cannot translate into English. It is by the authority on dry gardens, Olivier Filippi, and is very good. Check it out:    http://www.jardin-sec.com/ Also he wrote a great book called 'Planting Design for Dry Gardens'.  Nigel Dunnett says,  "In  Planting Design for Dry Gardens  Olivier Filippi has charted a future for garden and planting Design. Combining authoritative practical advice with deep ecological insight, Olivier shows how learning from nature can give us the best of all worlds: beautiful and sustainable gardens with a unique sense of place. I challen...

As you may know, I love Garden Design magazine. It is gorgeous, each issue is 148 pages thick and packed with fascinating gardening info and landscaping ideas and, best of all, it  has no ads!   It is published quarterly, one issue per season. How can they make it work? Well, it is a subscriber-supported magazine. Jim Peterson is the publisher and Thad Orr is the editor. I think they have made it the best garden magazine out there.... Would you like an issue? I am giving out the current issue to 3 lucky winners...see below for my random drawing.  And I am thrilled to say that Garden Design chose to feature my ideas on Creating a Relaxing Retreat in their current issue which features Serene Spaces. I am honored and so happy that it is being shared by such a prestigious and elevated magazine! The 6 page article, 'Serenity and the Sweet Spot', offers my tips for creating relaxing outdoor spaces that I have refined over the years. I look to ancient ...

Is gardening like writing? This is what Carl Lennertz of HarperCollins Publishing wrote in his blog  Publishing Insider : "....every 5 years or so, I get a truckload of topsoil dropped off so I can elevate a corner of the yard or start a new flower bed.  And it occurred to me, sleepily, that the sound of a shovel going into dirt is one of the most satisfying, tangible sounds, of all.  'shoosh' The shoosh of metal on dirt, then the creation of something new.  And then it hit me that writing was like that, too . The sound of writing, the sense of building something, measurable bit by bit, and most of all, the going back and reshaping and redoing. " Jan Johnsen - garden path I wholeheartedly agree! For me there is nothing more satisfying than physical creation: seeing a swimming pool and garden emerge from nothing more than a drawing. Or a Japanese stream evolve from orange paint lines on the ground. Or a delightful cascade de...