Outdoor Furniture, Patio Furniture and more!

Have you ever heard that saying, “Good things come to those who wait”? Or how about, “Patience is the companion of wisdom”? It’s true, patience does bring good things.  And, as you know, we’ve been talking up the coming Derek Fell Collection for awhile now.

Our dedicated readers may remember his February post announcing the collection and then a following April post about his upcoming collection.  So, it’s been nearly a half a year coming, but we have finally arrived at the eagerly awaited release of the first ever line of outdoor structures from one of the world’s most prolific garden experts! No seriously, go check it out now and tell your friends: DerekFellCollection.com

Derek Fell is a writer and photographer with art, travel and garden books totaling more than 2.5 million in print, plus a photo library numbering more than l50,000 images portraying plants, gardens and travel destinations. As an active and award winning member of both the Garden Writers Association of America and the Society of American Travel Writers, Derek Fell has won more awards from the Garden Writers Association of America than any other garden writer. Derek was born and educated in England, and has traveled widely throughout North America, Europe, Africa, South America, New Zealand and Japan to become a world-wide gardening expert.  As a highly sought contributor for Home and Garden Television, The Outdoor Living Channel, and PBS, Derek also writes for Architectural Digest, Veranda, Royal Horticultural Society Magazine, Garden Design, Hemispheres, American Nurseryman and countless other publications.  He served as a garden design consultant for the White House Gardens as well as several luxury tourist destinations.

Author of over 60 books, his main focus has always been recreating the breathtaking landscapes portrayed in Impressionist art.  Derek has looked at impressionist gardens holistically through his books, The Impressionist Garden and Impressionist Roses, but has also narrowed his scope to specific painters in Cezanne’s Garden, Secrets of Monet’s Garden, Van Gogh’s Gardens and Renoir’s Garden.  Derek believes in bringing art to life, and just as Claude Monet planted his garden to paint, Derek has planted his garden to write about and photograph.   He lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, at the historic Cedaridge Farm, where he cultivates the 24 sloping acres into an award-winning garden of flowers, fruits, and vegetables.

Serving as a thought leader and expert writer on the design, creation, and maintenance of Impressionist gardens for decades, Derek is now spreading his passion through his first line of garden furniture and structures, The Derek Fell Collections.  All inspired by original Impressionist paintings or the structures used in their restored gardens, Derek Fell’s designs will transform your garden into a valued work of art.

So, exciting, right?!

Want to see them?  More than that… want to see them and read what the designer himself has to say about them?

(I do)

Monet’s Bridge with Arched Wisteria Canopy. Claude Monet was one of the founders of the Impressionist movement and when his paintings began to sell to American art collectors, he purchased a house with five acres to create what he called his greatest work of art: his garden at Giverny. The garden was deeded to the state after the death of his son Michel, and restored in 1970 mostly by a donation from the Readers Digest Foundation and other American art benefactors. His famous arched bridge with wisteria canopy is probably the most recognizable garden feature in the world. It has been copied by many gardens. In New Zealand I saw one garden with no less than three Monet bridges connected by paths that wound their way through colonies of azaleas.

Many of the ‘Monet’ bridges featured the arched bridge painted green, but fail to include the wisteria canopy that arches over the span. My design is a scaled-down replica complete with wisteria canopy. This design features a curved canopy that follows the lines of the bridge. In addition to wisteria, the canopy will support climbing roses, silver fleece vine, trumpet vine, climbing hydrangea and other tall climbing plants Monet admired.

Renoir’s Three compartment Compost Bin. Renoir’s home and garden near Nice had goats, chickens and rabbits as well as a large vegetable garden fed by compost. Its most impressive planting is an orchard of 500-year old olive trees. He spent winters there and summers in Paris, erecting an outdoor studio with walls of glass so he could paint the garden in all weather, even seating nudes outside while he sat cool and shaded under cover. There are probably a dozen compost bins on the market, but they don’t hold much compost. I call them ‘toys’ as they fill up so soon and take so long to decompose the contents. My three compartment compost bin is a slightly scaled down version of Renoir’s, allowing for the storage of finished compost, compost in the process of decomposition and a new pile. All the compartments are accessible by removable slats. The air spaces between the slats provide aeration and rapid decomposition.

Japanese Bridge with Horizontal Wisteria Canopy. Monet’s inspiration for his arched bridge with arched wisteria canopy was a Japanese woodblock print. In Japan many of the canopied bridges have a flat span rather than arched, so I decided to offer a flat canopy as a second choice at a slight savings in cost. For a particularly beautiful display, plant blue and white wisteria so their colors mingle, as Monet did.

Monet’s Bench. Monet’s Garden features three distinctive curved benches. He did not design these himself, but saw one in the grounds of Versailles Palace where he went to paint. Years later, when he acquired his Giverny property, he had the Versailles carpenters make identical benches. The original is wide enough to seat six people, but my design is available in several sizes, including a two-seater.

Cezanne’s Trail Bridge. Cezanne’s garden is on the outskirts of Aix-en-Provence. Just a half acre in extend, it descends a slope overlooking the city. A naturalistic woodland garden, Cezanne disliked formality and any signs of human intrusion on the landscape. His garden, therefore, is extremely natural, with zig-zag trails threading through avenues of mockorange and pines, wild rosemary and fig almost invading the windows of the studio. This bridge design emulates a bridge in Cezanne’s Garden that crosses a narrow stream. The random-width flat span has a rustic appearance, ideal for an informal garden or along a nature trail.

Renoir’s Arbor. Renoir loved to paint mothers and their children sitting in intimate garden spaces like a balcony or a gazebo. This type of arbor can create a transition between two garden spaces or announce the entrance to a garden, allowing vines to carry color high overhead and create what the Impressionist painters called a lace curtain effect, especially from white flowers like white climbing roses and white wisteria.

Van Gogh’s Zig Zag Bridge. Many people do not realize what a keen gardener Vincent van Gogh really was. His father always had a large vicarage garden with fruit trees and vegetable plots, and when he was an art dealer in London he cultivated a cottage-style garden at the back of his lodgings, planting potatoes, poppies and sweet peas. Van Gogh also painted a lot of gardens and he corresponded frequently with his youngest sister who was a garden writer, not only suggesting color harmonies for her to plant, but also naming the plants for her to grow. Japanese art and garden design greatly influenced the Impressionist painters. Van Gogh painted and sketched wooden slab bridges in the fenlands of Holland and in the orchards of Provence. He also collected Japanese woodblock prints. The zig-zag bridge is a classic Japanese design, used to cross low depressions or streams and ponds. In Japanese mythology evil spirits could only travel in straight lines and so entering a garden by means of a zig-zag bridge provided a sense of peace and seclusion.

Have Fun!

Hazel

Tags: Derek Fell, Garden Bridges, impressionism, impressionist furniture, Impressionist Gardens, impressionist structures