I get asked about the right landscape design for a mid-century a lot.
And, while I do design outdoor “rooms” and have a landscape at my own house, I am far from the expert on designing beautiful gardens. Seriously…I only just succeeded in not killing (most of) my houseplants in the last couple of years.
So to tackle all your landscaping questions I called up a landscaping expert.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A chat with an MCM Landscape specialist
And big giant bonus? An expert who specializes in design for mid-century homes. Jim Drzewiecki, APLD, award-winning principal designer, is the founder and owner of Ginkgo Leaf Studio where he and Hannah Paulson design beautiful landscapes for all kind of homes.
Here’s the secret to a great mcm landscape
Long story short: The best way to design a landscape to fit your mid-century house is to … listen to the house! Jim so good at doing just that. He’s interested in the shapes and materials on a good MCM house. And not locked into (probably) overgrown and (almost certainly) DIYed plant placements from decades of yore.
You can be the judge of the results. Take a swipe through these before and after images! Nothing of the mid-century charm is lost, but new outdoor living spaces are opened up and existing features are highlighted.
Here are a couple of their (gorgeous) mid-century projects:
Mid-Century Leenhouts Landscape – Photos by Renn Kuhnen Photography
Mid-Century Bayside Landscape, 2022 Silver Award Residential Design from the Association of Professional Landscape Designers -Photos by Renn Kuhnen Photography
Here’s how to make great landscape designs
Need some advice for making great choices on your MCM home’s lanscaping … or even just ideas for the yard around your sweet but modest ranch. Here are some design tips to keep in mind.
Let the house give your landscape a focus.
Your house, even if it’s very modest, can tell you a lot about what to design. Look for a material (an accent not an all over material) to pick up. Or identify a shape, a detail, or an angle to repeat. A good design depends on context, so attention paid to the context will improve your design.
Think hardest about hardscape.
Patios, decks, pergolas and outdoor walls are structure – those choices need to last. Mistakes cost money and hardscaping is always the biggest dollar investment. Plants are like the wallpaper for the landscape. They are an opportunity for lovely color and texture but can be changed out.
Start from simple circles.
Start “fuzzy”. Draw circles, then research the types of plants that fit in those circles. Do your homework on what will thrive in your microclimate.
The Missouri Botanical Garden database is a great resource for plant information. Or … take the time to notice what grows well in your neighborhood. Do your neighbors have a beautifully flowering bush or a decorative grass going gangbusters? That might be a varietal worth investigating.
And, please don’t try to force plants that don’t want to grow in your area.
A few more Landscape Design Tips:
- Don’t plant things under the overhang of the roof.
- Use lines of force – centerlines of windows/doors, corners of the buildings.
- Let the design be more driven by the house close to the house.
- Let defined details dissolve as you get farther from the house.
In Today’s Episode You’ll Hear:
- How to let your house tell you how to design your landscape.
- Why hardscapes are the hardest (and most important) to get right.
- Tips for getting started on landscape design.
Listen Now On
Resources
- Check out all of Ginkgo Leaf Studios landscape projects on their website.
- Find the right plants for your landscape using the Missouri Botanical Garden database.
- Jump into Ready to Remodel ahead of our upcoming Layout Buster Challenge THIS SATURDAY (April 27th).
- Get the essential elements of my master plan process in my new mini-course, Master Plan in a Month.
- Get the essential elements of my master plan process in my new mini-course, Master Plan in a Month.
- Want us to master plan for you? Find out all the details with my mini-class, Three Secrets of a Regret-Proof Mid Mod Remodel.
And you can always…
- Join us in the Facebook Community for Mid Mod Remodel
- Find me on Instagram:@midmodmidwest
- Find the podcast on Instagram: @midmodremodelpodcast
Read the Full Episode Transcript
Della Hansmann
Do you wonder how to make the best choices for the yard around your mid-century house? To be honest, so do I. Green things are not my specialty. But I get questions about this all the time for my clients and students. So I reached out to fellow mid-century enthusiast Jim Drzewiecki, founder and principal of gingko leaf studio for some expert opinions on landscape design.
Della Hansmann
We are going to walk you through the first move you can make in upgrading a mid-century yard. How to find design inspiration from your house, even if it’s modest. What can be the most costly mistake and how to avoid it. And how to make smart choices for your climate. Look, we all love the Palm Springs effect. But here in the Midwest, we need to use different strategies to achieve that look, you cannot copy paste a landscape design.
Della Hansmann
So maybe pull out your phone or grab a notebook right now because you’re going to want to hang on to the advice that gets shared in today’s episode. Hey there, welcome back to mid mob remodel. This is the show about updating MCM homes helping you match a mid-century home to your modern life. I’m your host Della Hansmann architect and mid-century ranch enthusiast, you are listening to Episode 1703.
Della Hansmann
Now before we get started, I’ll just say that you will want to see some of the great designs Jim and landscape designer Hannah Paulson put together for their clients. And you can find them right on their website. If you spell the name right, that’s gingkoleafstudio.net spelled g i n k go, spelled the right way. Or just hit up the show notes page for key episode takeaways and handy links to their website and some of their project photos.
Della Hansmann
I’m not going to do a pulled out history snippet this week. But if you listen closely, you’ll find out from Jim the exact formula for what our grandparents all planted in front of their brand new mid-century homes. And why it was so consistent. Basically, there weren’t that many options. The planting combination he named checks is exactly what I found in my yard when I moved in. But it’s not what Jim or I recommend for you to do to your mid-century yard today. So keep your ears open, and you’ll hear more.
Della Hansmann
Okay, so here I am with Jim Drzewiecki, who is the moving heart behind ginkgo leaf studio, which specializes in mid-century landscapes not only in the Midwest, as was with the case when we first met each other, but now throughout the country. And I’m so excited to have you here, Jim, to answer all the questions that I cannot about appropriate choices for mid-century landscape design, which I get asked all the time. I want to ask you a little bit about your background and how you got into this generally and specifically. But first, just to give people a taste. Do you have an easy tip to make your landscaping choices a little more mid-century that sort of a guideline or a small project or something to kind of give people a starter?
Jim Drzewiecki
Point? Yeah, I think a great starting point. And it seems so simple to say it this way. But just look at your house. Let the house talk to you. And what I mean by that is look at the details. Because mid-century homes typically have at least one unique detail whether it’s something on the porch, door, it’s a certain window, it’s a roof line. Look for those. And then also we always look at the materials on the house. So you know, in the Midwest, here we have a lot of what’s called Lannon stone, generically a limestone. So if that’s on the house, we’re likely going to try to pull that into the landscape somehow. But I always just let the house tell me almost what I should be doing.
Della Hansmann
Well, I love that advice. That seems very right to me. Um, marvelous. So you’ve been working in landscape design landscape architecture for a long time, but that’s not where you started. What? intro into this field of creative design? Yeah.
Jim Drzewiecki
Well, in fifth grade, I toured the Johnson wax Center in Racine. Oh. And, you know, if you can’t be inspired by something that Frank Lloyd Wright did, you probably shouldn’t be a designer. So it was kind of right then in there today said I think I want to be an architect. High school came, my counselor said you’re probably not good enough at maths to go into architecture. Oh, and I thought, well, yeah, I don’t like math, but I really want to be an architect. So I went ahead and went to the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. At the time, they are a top 20 school for architecture in the country. And I got a great education there. So I have my Bachelor of Science and architecture, went to work for an architecture firm for two and a half years. But it was the early 90s. And if you know your economic history, that was one of our most read sent economic collapses.
Della Hansmann
Yeah, that was a long time for young designers, wasn’t it? Yes.
Jim Drzewiecki
And I thought, oh my gosh, I just went to school for five years. And now I’m in a profession that I didn’t realize, followed the economy so closely. does, it really does. And I was still single at the time. But I thought, Okay, I want to get married, I want to have a family, this may not be the profession I thought it was. And people were quitting our firm to go work for whatever firm was busy at the time. So I quit.
Jim Drzewiecki
Without anything lined up, I went to work for a manufacturing company in their engineering department just to have a job doing drafting but started applying at landscape firms. Because growing up, my mother gave me a love of plants, I used to help her out in the yard and in the garden. I think I was 14 years old, and I was redesigning their backyard for them. And I grew up in a 1968 Ranch, so that my parents built. I think, some people have said recently that that was probably imprinted on me, and why I appreciate that mid-century house. So much, because I literally grew up in one.
Jim Drzewiecki
But I thought I really love plants. Maybe that’s what I should be doing. And I looked at landscape design as more of a lateral move, I didn’t necessarily have to give up five years of college, right? But no one would hire me no surprise, because I had no experience. Then I had moved out of my parents’ house, my sister calls me out of the blue and says you got a letter here from a landscape company, they want you to come in for an interview. And so I did. And they hired me as a CAD drafter, initially, but the longer I was there, I started getting little chances to design little pieces of projects. And by the time I left there, 12 and a half years later, I was doing designs for projects that were being overseen actually by the owner of the company.
Della Hansmann
And you couldn’t stop yourself from just getting the design thinking in there while you were doing the time. Yep. Well, that’s a sign of someone who’s in the right profession,
Jim Drzewiecki
for sure. And then at 12 and a half years, my wife said, you know, if you’re not happy entirely with how that company is doing things, she is the one who said, Well, why don’t you start your own business and do it the way you want to? 17 plus years later, here we are.
Della Hansmann
You’re still doing it. So it was the right thing. But when you started your own business, you weren’t necessarily focusing only on mid-century yards, you were doing beautiful yards of a number of varieties around your local area. Right?
Jim Drzewiecki
100% You know, when you’d have no clients because you’re brand new, as you know. Yes, I was doing any kind of landscape design that someone wanted and and I and we still do, I should point that out. But as time went on, we started to notice that probably 50% of our work, before we even decided to focus on it. Because there’s just so many mid-century homes in the southeast Wisconsin. Yeah, we suddenly had this fairly decent portfolio of mid-century work that we had done without even realizing it.
Della Hansmann
Oh, that’s interesting. That’s where I first noticed you, of course, because I moved back to Wisconsin and fell into my obsession with mid-century deeply. But I saw that you did other types of houses. Do you give a preference? Do you feel like you still like to do the other projects too? Or does it feel like well do the favorite style at all? Is it mid-century even?
Jim Drzewiecki
It definitely is mid-century. And again, that’s probably because I imprinted on that style at an early age. I love I love ranch homes in general. I just like designing spaces around a ranch house. But you know, we get occasional interesting requests. We’ve done a few what I call Asian fusion gardens because by no means what I say I am copying the true Japanese garden style. We’ve done a totally 100% Colonial Williamsburg style rose garden for a client so Wow. Those still come in. But as we realized this was our favorite style for both Hannah and I We really have pushed more of our energy towards that. And then we realized that there were quite a bit of areas around the country that also had mid-century homes.
Della Hansmann
Yeah, well, it was a huge push in the building boom. And I think it’s interesting, you’re somewhat unusual in growing up in a ranch house and loving it consistently, I find a lot more people who grew up in mid-century houses that didn’t appreciate them when they lived there. But if they love them, now, they’ve kind of come back to a reawakening of that appreciation. But there was a long kind of drought of people liking them in century houses that were everywhere. And now I feel like people are seeing them with new eyes and therefore wanting to make great remodeling choices for them and wanting to make great landscaping choices for them, too.
Jim Drzewiecki
I would agree. I do recall that when I was younger, my parents’ home was completely filled with Scandinavian style furniture. Interesting.
Della Hansmann
That’s a little I mean, I feel like that’s a cue towards maybe not mid-century that they’ve always had an eye for design. They’ve always been designing people, which seems like a logical extension to you. Yeah, so many people were trying to turn their ranches into cottages or like, fill them with Victoriana in the 80s and 90s. And that was never a great alignment of style eras.
No, as we got older, my siblings and I though my parents did go to Ethan Allen furniture, and turned our family room into a pseudo colonial style furniture grouping. Well, but I mentioned the Scandinavian furniture because although I probably appreciate the home, the architecture, I didn’t appreciate the furniture at that time. Interesting. I look back with regret that I didn’t, you know, tell my parents hey, don’t get rid of that furniture. I do have their cedar chest from when they got married. It’s a mid-century piece. It’s a lane, you know, chest knife. But that’s the only piece that you know, I remember from my childhood.
Della Hansmann
That is yeah, those things are hard to hang on to sometimes I’m lucky my parents are kind of Hoarders. And when they finally upgraded from my mom’s youthful furniture, I have her Scandinavian import store, sofa and matchstick furniture, shelves and things in this house now, which is wonderful. I’m kind of a magpie for found slightly broken objects that I can then nursed back to life and I make my own. So you got these early infants. And, of course, if the Johnson wax building, woke up your design nature, there’s got to be some love for the mid-century, you’re in there. So now, more than half of your business isn’t mentioned entry. And I know you show up in atomic ranch. And I think that since we last spoke, you now do work more outside of the Southeast Wisconsin area. Is that right? Yeah.
Jim Drzewiecki
When we was the middle of a pandemic, is kind of when we took a step back and said, you know, we’ve been doing a lot of mid-century projects without realizing it. And we thought we both love it. Why don’t we try to put more of our energy into that. That’s what triggered our interest in advertising and atomic ranch. We were lucky enough that I think a year or two prior atomic ranch had reached out to us about one of our projects and said we do you want to write a feature about it?
Della Hansmann
Well, there are not many people doing great good looking mid-century appropriate landscaping around mid-century houses. I think you are somewhat for the same reason I end up working all over the country. People look for that locally. They want the person that can help them in their town in their climate zone. And they don’t find that person. So then they have to keep hunting and they find someone like you are specifically.
Jim Drzewiecki
Yeah, atomic ranch really fell in love with it’s a John Randall McDonald House, the famous local Wisconsin architect. They fell in love with the house. They wrote the feature a couple of years go by, I reached out to the writer and she was no longer a writer with the magazine. So then the editor reached out to me and she specifically told me I remember this because atomic Ranch is based in California. And if you really read through a typical issue, it’s a lot of California style projects, maybe Florida, maybe the southwest. And she said, you know our readership is just craving Mid-century Midwest. We remember we don’t ever write about it.
Jim Drzewiecki
And I said, Well, I have lots of projects I could show you so that way At the fire under us. And then I also during the pandemic started hanging out in various Facebook groups that were focused on mid-century ranches. There’s actually a Facebook group that a lot of your listeners will be familiar with. It’s literally MCM landscape design. And that led to probably the epiphany for me, which is, suddenly people were messaging me and saying, I cannot find a landscape company in Indiana that understands this style. Or I hired someone, I’m in Kentucky, I hired a local landscaper. And they gave me a design that looks just like every other house. And so Hannah, and I said, Well, wait a minute, people are used to doing things virtually now. Maybe we should try to offer our services to people in other states. And it’s since taken off. So
Della Hansmann
what does it look like when you do a project remotely, that’s different from when you do one that you can visit personally?
Jim Drzewiecki
really, the only difference? Well, two differences. The meetings, of course, are virtual, right? Just like we were talking now. The only other differences instead of me coming out to the property and doing what we call the site analysis, where we take the measurements and we take the photos, we ask the client to do that for us. We have a guide. Now, because we’ve done so many, virtually, we have a guide that we send to our clients that gives them instructions on how to take the photos and how to take the measurements. That’s been very helpful for our clients. And now, that’s really the only difference in our process.
Della Hansmann
Right? I mean, so much of design happens at the drawing board or these days in the computer. And so the thinking work doesn’t happen. It’s not like an architect sits in the house or the art of the place they’re going to work. And does the design work that that in person contact is magical. And I love it when I get it. But there’s so much you can give of good advice and good design. If you have the right base information that does not actually require being in person.
Jim Drzewiecki
No. In a perfect world, I would visit every site in person and you would love to be in every house that you work on in person. Yes, for more than one reason, because I love you know, whenever I meet with a new client that’s in a mid-century house, literally I’m like, Could we have a tour first? Exactly.
Della Hansmann
No, I haven’t, I have to separate them. I need to do the chatty tour with the owner first and then I measurements and then I photograph. And then we talk about design. We can do chatty tour and then design separately as well, sequentially. But I have to just take it all in first because it’s so much fun. It’s that’s the for me part and for you part.
Jim Drzewiecki
We will travel if a client really feel strongly that we need to see their property in person. The woman in Kansas wanted me to come out there. But the religious typical issues, there were no direct flights to anywhere near where she lived. I think the closest city was a two and a half hour drive away because she’s in the literally in the middle of Kansas. But our client in Delaware, they said you have to see our backyard in person photos will not do it justice. So I try to make that visit basically almost in a 24 hour period. I fly out in the morning, I visit with the client in the afternoon and into the evening. I spend the night and I fly back the following morning.
Della Hansmann
That sounds overwhelming but really fun. It is.
Jim Drzewiecki
I’m not a big fan of flying. So you know virtual design is totally fine with me. But I’m not going to talk a client out of it if they really do believe it will help the design process for me to see it in person.
Della Hansmann
Well, that sounds like a good option that you’ve got in your back pocket then. So I have been such a fan of your work. It happens actually. At the moment. We have a client in common they have already had been working with you for their landscape design and we’re going to be doing a mini master plan of their ancient house is gorgeous but someone came in unfortunately the previous buyer came in absolutely destroyed the kitchen. That was there it is. I’ll just say when the client sent me the pictures, I couldn’t tell if what I was seeing was like a bad AI rendering of a bad idea of a kitchen or an actual photo of a bad kitchen. That’s how fake and off it looks, but we’re gonna fix it. So that’s the good news.
Della Hansmann
And it’s really fun that you and I are going to get to collaborate on the inside and outside of this space through those gorgeous big glass windows that that kitchen has. But also, I feel like our interests overset our interests intersect so much. And I get so many questions from my design clients ready to remodel students, people on Instagram asking what’s the right choice for mid-century landscaping and I have recently graduated to keeping five houseplants alive in my house. But only recently, I don’t think I’m the right person to provide that advice. But you are. Let’s see, do you feel like there’s a question you can ask the most? Or a question that we shared some of the questions, we’ve been getting something that felt like Oh, of course, that’s, that’s the most obvious baseline place to start? Where would you begin if you’re gonna give someone good mid-century landscaping advice?
Della Hansmann
Well, I definitely think looking at the house and letting it speak to you let the house tell you what it should have in front of it. And that sounds very esoteric in a way. Like, oh, I’m sure the house is going to start talking to me. But what I really mean is look at the details on the house. Even a mid-century modest house usually has one unique detail on it that might say something to you about. Well, that’s an angle beam holding up our porch roof. What if we made the bed blinds angled instead of curvy? If you’re thinking about paving, well, then I look at the hardscape materials that are on the house, is it brick and stone? Well, then likely I may think about repeating that in the landscape. Probably the biggest, it’s not always a question as much as it’s maybe more my opinion. And we’ve talked about this multiple times with the atomic ranch writers. I truly believe a good mid-century landscape should work off of the context of where it is. And what I mean by that is if it’s a house in the Midwest, you shouldn’t be trying to make your yard look like it’s in Palm Springs. Yeah.
Della Hansmann
Because it’s only perhaps it’s not possible at all. And if it is only with the greatest of interventions of trying to control for temperature and microclimates, trying to control for water situations, trying to do a lot of externality control that isn’t really possible.
Jim Drzewiecki
Yeah, if you truly study a Midwest or excuse me, a Palm Springs neighborhood. And I’ve been to modernism week, and I think everyone should go to modernism week at least once in their life, because it’s, it’s an amazing 10 days. But when you walk a neighborhood, you can’t avoid realizing you’re still kind of in the desert. And the simplistic plantings that are done out there where the plants are six feet, eight feet apart, and there’s no wood mulch, and there’s barely any lawn, it’s all gravel. Well, that’s because the desert around it influenced that style. And of course, the weather. So when I look at a Midwest landscape, and I see someone trying to put, like, Yeah, cuz we’ll grow here, but that’s probably the only plant you’re lucky enough to be able to replicate that look. But then you put five of them in front of your house and you put that ugly white marble chip around it. That’s the 1970s landscape. It just doesn’t look like it belongs here. So the Midwest landscape to me should have prairie plants and we can use ornamental grasses instead of the yuccas. And the Agave is because an ornamental grass still has that architectural feel to it. But because it’s a grass, it looks like it belongs here in the Midwest. And then suddenly the landscape looks like it belongs in the Midwest. And then it fits the house because the house always looked like it belonged in the Midwest
Della Hansmann
right same materials choices that are made because of our weather factors our Sun our need for insulation, we don’t generally speaking, build post and beam houses with entire walls of glass here either because it tends to not feel very comfortable no matter how much heat you put into it. So yeah, the our houses fit the landscape makes sense that the landscape should fit the landscape
Jim Drzewiecki
and how many flat roofed houses are here for this?
Della Hansmann
Very few and they can work but they require a lot Got more structure than one out west? Because we’ve got to be able to carry that snow load is an undertaking. Yeah. And not always a successful one. There are a lot of there’s a higher proportion of leaky flat roofs here in the Midwest, but I’ll just say, the generality. Yeah. So listening to the house seems like a great starting point that anyone can anyone can take a look at their house and see what sets it apart from the neighbors? Or what sets it apart from houses in another neighborhood of another era? And how can you play off those features? Pick them up? How much do you feel like if there’s a stone element on a house? is can you put too much stone to the landscaping? Do you have a goal of where you want to place it? Or how much you want to use it so that they feel like they’re nicely in conversation with each other? Yeah,
Jim Drzewiecki
for sure. That’s a great question, because I hate to say it, but professionals who have done this a long time, we tend to know what details we should be looking at, and maybe which details we should be ignoring number one. Number two, I think you hit the nail on the head as far as too much of a good thing. So if you had a mid-century Ranch, that’s already brick, I’m not so sure I would put in a red brick front walk or a red brick patio. At that point, I would be considering a contrasting material. And in that case, because it’s pretty typical, at least on a Midwest, Midwest, ranch, there may be limestone windowsills, there may be a limestone chimney on the brick house. So I would, I would then go to that lesser used material and make a pull that into the landscape instead of focusing on the red brick, because the red brick walkway would just melt and disappear up against a red brick house on
Della Hansmann
it. So you’re kind of looking for the most sort of accent detail of a house to pull from rather than the biggest feature of house. Yeah,
that’s a good way to put it. I
Della Hansmann
like that. And I think people do worry too much. They, I find this on the inside of design as well. People worry about everything needs to match. And mid-century houses aren’t really all about matching, it needs to coordinate. But it’s possible to have too much matching. And especially if you feel like you’re locked in and you only have one option that that’s rarely true. It’s more of a mental state. Do you feel like when you’re looking when you’re looking at a mid-century house, there’s a particularly in the Midwest in this region? You’re right, you’re gonna see a brick in the wall or a stone knee wall, some accent material. Do you have you ever had a project where you’re just like there’s this house is too plain? There’s nothing to pull from here. You’ve talked about shapes, maybe that’s the place you go when you can’t find the material, what you’re looking for?
Jim Drzewiecki
Yes, certainly. Another good question is, are there houses that don’t inspire? And yeah, that can happen. But then maybe I’m looking at the overall, maybe it’s just the shape of the house. We have one of our very first project mid-century project that we’ve truly loved. It’s a ranch, and you can really even not notice it from the street. But the house has a slight crease in it. It bends not curved, but an angled bend in the floorplan. Oh, interesting. It might be off by 10 degrees. Clearly, the builder decided to do that for a very particular reason. And I looked at that and said, well, wouldn’t that be interesting to maybe make the bed lines play off of that house now has this angled feature in it? Let’s go that way. An L shaped ranch that has a very deep setback, I might play off of that. Is there a curved or circular window or curved detail somewhere on the house that we can play off of? It can be a very simple minute detail. It could be something that’s really dramatic and in your face that you can’t avoid not playing off of that detail. So it really depends, of course house to house.
Della Hansmann
But that makes each design personal and unique to so that’s really fun.
Jim Drzewiecki
Totally that may be our most favorite part of doing this job is Every house is different. Every site is different. Every client is different. We have a project that we just finished. It’s in the fox Point area of Milwaukee which is a suburb and a strong mid-century neighborhood there. Yeah, the client hired me to do a landscape. Regretfully they did everything white inside the house when they remodeled the inside. Right. So yeah, it happens. They wanted a very simplistic front landscape, though. And I presented the design. I of course, had some linear groupings of plants and evergreens. But I also had a fair number of flowering perennials. And the wife looked at me during the design meeting and said, Oh, I guess I should have told you I really don’t like flowers. And I thought, well, yeah, that probably would have been good information to have early on.
Della Hansmann
You designed it with flat? Yeah.
Jim Drzewiecki
So I had to take all the flowers out, it really became an all evergreen landscape, not what I would have done. Strangely enough, though, last year, the house is sold. The new homeowners reached out to me not even realizing that we had done the original design. And they basically say, this is not us at all. We want color, we want texture, can you do a design for it? So I got to correct the mistakes that were made the first time around. Interesting.
Della Hansmann
Well, hopefully they introduced a little bit more mid-century wood back into the interior of the house.
Jim Drzewiecki
I think that is their intent is to skew the inside of the house back to what it should have
Della Hansmann
been. It’s always possible. I mean, this actually leads to an interesting question, because I feel like people sometimes come to me with a time capsule house. That’s amazing. That’s so fun to move, we need to make lifestyle changes, but sometimes we’re just polishing and some new people come to me with the house has been very aggressively modified by previous owners, and we can always reintroduce mid-century details. How much do you feel like? Is there such a thing as yummy? Your landscape is so much more in flux? Is there such a thing as a vintage yard? Do you find that or? And if so, what would you do with it versus what a house has been? When you’re sort of redoing choices from the past? How do you approach those two different situations?
Jim Drzewiecki
Yeah, if you know, your typical, again, in the Midwest, the typical landscape that was done in front of the 1950s or 1960s house was all evergreen shrubs. Yeah, they’re user junipers. The US have to be trimmed constantly to keep them under control. You might have a crab apple in the front yard, you might have a blue spruce in the front yard, you’re describing my yard. And, and or the burgundy, maroon, Crimson King maple. That is the classic 1960s landscape. Because if you look in a I have a vintage Better Homes and Gardens book that my parents actually owned on if you page through it, the perennials that were available then were daisies, irises, carnations, I mean, none of the plants that we recognize as perennials, nowadays, ornamental grasses didn’t even exist, those didn’t even come into the United States until the late 80s, early 90s. And even tried and true plants like lilacs. Now there’s you know, 50 varieties of lilacs versus the one purple lilac and one white lilac that existed back then. So I’m not a fan of someone who says well, you know, I’m, it’s a time capsule inside. So I want my landscape to look like that to bear. There’s just so many more varieties to use now. That keeping us to me, no, I’m taking away maintenance if I take those us out and replace them with something else.
Della Hansmann
It was actually literally the first thing I did to my house because I knew I had I knew I needed to paint the outside and I knew there was lead paint so I was going to need to handle it carefully and put down plastic and the whole nine yards and I had used growing right up against touching the house because they had become overgrown and I went in with the big loppers and the chainsaw and took them out I felt so murderous about it but they weren’t they weren’t my style.
Jim Drzewiecki
Were we try to avoid taking out healthy living plants on any project we do. But when the yews have grown past the windowsills
Della Hansmann
that exactly oh my gosh my neighbor’s house across the street maybe that she’s not the longest resident well should not be as long as Resident Now we’ve lost a couple people to retirement homes but that they go up to the roof line on the front and she has to climb over them to get to the gutters and it’s quite precarious looking.
Jim Drzewiecki
We have one Now, where the yews were planted right next to the front Foundation. And of course, it’s a mid-century house. So it’s got big overhangs. And these us, you can see their branches all went out trying to reach the sunlight. So they become half shrubs, because the half of the shrub that would have grown towards the house, there was no light, there was no rain. So these us are completely leaning out towards the sun. And of course, we’re going to take those out and put either no plants there because they won’t get rained on they won’t get sunlight or will try to find something that could tolerate conditions like that.
Della Hansmann
Well, that’s an interesting question. This is total jump sideways. But if we think about right and wrong choices, I think another reason people have to pull out us is because they were planted when they were small. As far as my expertise goes, and it’s limited to close to the house, would you agree that they often,
Jim Drzewiecki
For sure, yeah. Or the classic spruce tree, planted three feet off the edge of the driveway. Because when they planted it was two or three feet tall. It was a baby, and it looked cute. And they might have put one on either side of their driveway. But now you drive by that house 50 years later. And the homeowner, the new homeowner has had to limb them up. So they look like pipe cleaner trees.
Della Hansmann
Yeah. So I mean, you can put a plant in the wrong place. That’s certainly a thing. Is it? Is it really anything that’s a good idea to plant so close to the house like that? Or really should we not be doing that in any case, from a, from a technical house point of view, I advise against it, I wonder what your perspective is
Jim Drzewiecki
certainly getting the plants out from under the overhang. Just as logical good rule of thumb, sunlight and rain kind of important for a plant to survive. Secondly, though, you can probably work with the great around the house a little easier if the plants aren’t right up against the foundation.
Secondly, you described your neighbor, I mean, if you have to clean your windows, and you’re crawling over your shrubs, because they’re right next to the house, that’s another reason to not be planting everything so that eventually will touch. And people do forget that, you know, if you if you look online, it’s a lot easier nowadays, you can see how big a plant may get. But people don’t always pay attention to that. And they’ll put a shrub that’s going to get eight feet wide, and they’ll plant it three feet away from their house. And then five years later wonder why does this thing you know, now taking over our front yard.
Della Hansmann
Because he didn’t check the basic. It’s true. It’s, we can still forget to do it. But it should be so much easier for us to look up these basic pieces of information. I wonder, I think a lot of mid-century landscaping was DIY. And I maybe there was an advice in a Better Homes and Gardens book or in a magazine but I don’t know how well it was followed or how universally applicable it was depending on what the market of that
Jim Drzewiecki
I can’t imagine my parents hired a landscaper right around their 1968 Ranch, I am pretty positive they use their Better Homes and Gardens book to choose the plants they drove to the local garden center. And they planted the straight line of us in front of the family room and this Juniper is in front of the living room.
Della Hansmann
Yeah, I had the US in front of the house and the something else I don’t. It sprouts up. It’s not a Forsythia, but it sprouts up like a forsythia is thing and it stumps starts it’s still in front of my fence line. And I haven’t had the heart to do get aggressive with enough to take it out.
But it’s if I get mad at it and cut it down to the stump in the spring, it comes right back up above the fence before at the end of the year. I know the previous owner just had a passion for his hedge trimmer. But I don’t treat it that way. But yeah, it is. The lines, the straight lines, I think we’re just the easier DIY thing. But now we can do some things that are more interesting. Do you think about? Um, so don’t plan to underneath the line?
Good, logical, I like it. Do you think about creating space with the plantings near the house versus farther from the house? Or are there general rules about that? Or do you look at the lifestyle of the homeowner more than rules of thumb when you’re thinking about creating spaces in and out from the house zone and yard?
Jim Drzewiecki
Yeah. Well, I can answer that question two ways. Yeah. I do think it’s important. You know, just like you do this. We as designers, we’re balancing the lifestyle of our client, their tastes. us have some clients who love color and do I can tell by the way they dress or how they pick their furniture. And we use those exact we look at that when we meet with a client, we look at how they decorated the inside of their house, because that will influence maybe how much color we use outside. If they’re into very eclectic, you know, they’ve got the Eames chair, but they’ve got maybe something more tufted, and fabric up next to it. I noticed those things. And then we can maybe be a little quirky out in the landscape, because that’s how they were inside.
Della Hansmann
Oh, I love that. That’s really fun insight. I wonder if people even realize that about themselves. Some do, of course. But that might even be something that you’re seeing that they’re doing subconsciously and not even realizing why they like your design so much. When it’s complete.
Jim Drzewiecki
You that’s again, fear, but I think we’ll do this a lot. I think subconscious is something that most people don’t realize comes into play. If you walk into a house, you may not realize why a space feels just wonderful. But your subconscious is picking up on well, that wall ends here. Yeah, that’s a half wall instead of a full wall, or there’s glass block here instead of a solid wall. If you stare at it long enough, you probably do start to see it. But the instant reaction is your subconscious. Yeah.
And I love putting detail in our designs that are maybe not Ultra obvious. But because we picked up on something on the house and put it into the landscape. We’re big fans of what we call lines of force, center lines of Windows center lines of doors, corners of the house, we tend to drag lines off of those first, to kind of give us a framework to work within.
If you’re lucky enough to have a house that’s got a grid in it, the architect used an actual grid to lay out the house, you got to be silly to not try to extend that grid out into the landscape. Back to your original question, I do like using linear groups of plants close to the house to reinforce the architecture. Or if the House has an angled wall, I’m going to put an angled planting, hearing. So I tend to coordinate some groups of plants to play off the architecture of the house. But then the farther away we get, I let that dissolve a little bit and maybe become a little more loose. That’s probably not necessarily a rule of thumb, as much as it is our style. I
Della Hansmann
like that though. It also, again, slightly sideways follow up question, do you think about what’s happening in the adjacent yards? And I’m certain that letting the linear-ness of responding to the house dissolve as you go away from it helps with that sort of transition as you go from one year?
Jim Drzewiecki
I think so you don’t want. I’ve never been fond of architects who design a house that has zero context with its neighborhood. Because to me, it literally looks like Dorothy’s house fell out of the sky. Yep, exactly in this neighborhood. And I would never do that with a landscape. I understand the people who don’t want to have a front lawn and instead install a prairie. I get that. It looks odd when the neighbors have these emerald green lawns on either side of it.
Della Hansmann
You can definitely see. I don’t know maybe sometimes people are very good friends, but their neighbor that has an completely different lawn. But it doesn’t look like they’re friends.
Jim Drzewiecki
Yes, that might be a good way to describe it. So yeah, that dissolving idea does tend to allow the landscape to maybe at least look like it’s still fits with the neighborhood somewhat. But our focus still is always our client and their house. I’m not going to let the neighborhood drive the design by any means.
Della Hansmann
So what are the other levers you like to pull? I’m sure you work with hardscaping do you think about coming up in three dimensions with structures at all? Or is that not your favorite way to move a landscape around?
Jim Drzewiecki
No, in a perfect world, we could add verticality, you know, landscape. The problem is, those tend to be the more expensive elements right in terms of actual installation costs. So while I love designing pergolas like practically to can design a pergola with my eyes closed because of my architecture degree. I love Have them not because they create shade. And of course, I always remind clients, it’s never a solid shadow because it’s an open air structure. But I love that they helped to define an outdoor room.
Della Hansmann
Yes, absolutely. Whether,
Jim Drzewiecki
whether that’s for lounge furniture or dining, that vertical element defines that individual space from the rest of the patio. And that’s wonderful. The other way to do that is certainly what we call seat walls.
They can be dry stacked stone, which is a little more economical, at least in in environments where we have our freeze thaw cycles in the winter. Because if you build a masonry wall, or the classic poured concrete wall that you see in so many California landscapes, right, not practical here in the Midwest, my concrete guy will tell you if you pour a concrete retaining wall, it may look great for five years, but once it’s been through a few Wisconsin winters, it’s likely going to get a crack somewhere. Yeah.
Masonry seat walls, which means the stone is or brick is mortared together, that wall has to have a frost footing, which is going four feet down into the soil. And the excavation cost of that the concrete masonry unit core. Yeah, the time involved in murdering every brick or stone piece onto that wall, and then providing a nice honed capstone on top of it. The last time I checked a seat wall is running like $800 A lineal foot.
Della Hansmann
Wow. Yeah,
Jim Drzewiecki
a 10 foot long seat wall is suddenly $8,000 in your landscape.
Della Hansmann
And that sounds like a lot of money to me. And also it sounds perfectly appropriate for how much work goes into. Yeah, digging out a frost protected footing is no small endeavor.
Jim Drzewiecki
No.
Della Hansmann
You might as well go ahead and make the building at that point.
Jim Drzewiecki
You come close to that. Yep. If you’ve ever seen the cost of just adding a three season room on to a house.
Della Hansmann
People are like, well, just not a real addition, just a three season or I’m like, oh, that’s in the Midwest, it is not that different? No, maybe we should just make a real room and put a lot of screens in it. So it can it can be both, right. But yeah. So those are the those are the pricey pieces. I imagine those are also the pieces that are a little harder to change your mind around. From my perspective and design, I hate to see bad choices made or regrettable choices made and the choices made because I feel like they’re just landfill in five or 10 or 15 years. And some of landscaping can sure can be composted, but the hardscaping that goes to the landfill as well, right?
Jim Drzewiecki
Yeah, I think you make a really valid point there because at least landscaping maybe has a little bit more cushion, or a leeway in terms of its permanent permanence. If you move a load bearing wall inside your house, you better make sure that was the right decision.
Della Hansmann
Yeah.
Jim Drzewiecki
If you reclad a fireplace in your house, you’re gonna live with that decision for a long time. Unless your budget is bottomless, and you can just change it out a few years later.
Della Hansmann
I haven’t met too many I’ve not met too many bottomless budgets, really, at any price point, whatever people’s price point is, they still will come up with enough things they want to do that they’ll fill up their budget. With a more comprehensive wish list, they don’t just want to spend the money and spend the money and spend the money. No,
Jim Drzewiecki
you know, are probably number one task is to make sure that a client’s budget matches their wish list. And I’m sure you do the very same thing. We both know what various things cost within our realms. And when a client says I want these 10 things, but they give you a budget that can only cover five, we have to give them the bad news, right?
Della Hansmann
Yeah. And we try to do what we can to give them options so that they can find out what the local current pricing is, and then choose what are the favorite features. But yeah, realism is always going to come in in terms of cost. You can’t have all the things at the highest quality for a very modest budget.
Jim Drzewiecki
No, that’s when I look at the list and I try to help the client prioritize. You know, you want these 10 things but if you had to break it down to five, what are really the five you absolutely want, and then we do our best to try to make that happen. Plants are the wallpaper and paint color and carpet of the exterior world.
They can be changed used out, you know, you can put in the yellow plant. And after a couple of years you don’t like it, you can either get rid of it and put it in the compost pile or maybe move it to somewhere else in your yard. Designing a patio space, a pergola seat walls, a permanent fire pit.
Those are the decisions that need to be really thought out. And that, you know, you can DIY plantings all day long. But I don’t know that clients should be designing their outdoor space on their own, without some guidance. Without understanding, you know, how much room will that dining set take up? Right grilling area? Have you accounted for circulation? The practicality of getting to the faucet with the hose reel? Just there’s a myriad of things, honestly, it’s no different to me than you designing an interior space. And realizing that if you put the door here, instead of here, you’re going to mess up any possible furniture layout in that room. Right? So that’s how we look at outdoor spaces.
Della Hansmann
There are a lot it’s funny because you feel like oh, well, I’ll just go around it. But it’s really inconvenient, maybe in some ways, and sometimes more. So without the definition of walls. I think it can be harder to realize how much space things take. And it feels so wrong to step off the hardscape on a regular basis to get around something, it feels like well, I just can’t get to there. My options are so important. My favorite
Jim Drzewiecki
thing. for bad reasons that I see on how is our firepit areas where the chair legs are pushed out to the very edge of the paving. Hmm. Because you know that if the fire is too hot, you’re won’t be able to slide your chair any farther away from the fire. And then you even notice that the chairs themselves are maybe 12 or 18 inches away from the actual fire bowl. And you say, Well, what if someone needs to get up and walk away?
Della Hansmann
Grass? Yeah,
Jim Drzewiecki
I mean, our minimum diameter for a fire pit at do is 15 feet across. Anything smaller than that there is not going to be room for chairs in circulation and the actual firepit.
Della Hansmann
Well, these are really good things to note. And I think there’s so much complexity, it’s really it’s really a challenge for anyone who doesn’t do this all day every day and hear other people’s sob stories to hold it all on their head. But there are definitely some errors to avoid. Do you feel like you’ve got any biggest pet peeves in terms of things you see people do that generally are a bad idea or that are in my interest, specifically bad fit for mid-century designs.
Jim Drzewiecki
I think pet peeves certainly would be a couple of things we’ve already talked about the don’t try to make your front yard look like it’s in Palm Springs and you live in Minnesota. Don’t design hardscapes that are too small for practical use, the worst thing you can do is, you know hire a concrete contractor to put in a 12 by 20 rectangle on the back of your ranch home. And then start placing your furniture on it and realize, Oh, we didn’t think this through. Yeah. Because then to like you can’t even afford to have a concrete person come back and add a few more feet on to it. It’ll look like a band aid.
Jim Drzewiecki
So plan. If one thing good came of the pandemic, to me, is that the world has slowed down a little. My carpenter still says, you know, we’re in this next day mentality because of Amazon. But I believe that all these decisions are so important because the most of them can’t be changed. Yeah, so I’m a big believer in thinking this process through, especially with the hardscapes. Again, whether there’s a rose next to the patio or a lilac or a boxwood, honestly doesn’t matter, but it’s designing the outdoor spaces to function properly number one, because they really do need to function before anything else. But then number two aesthetically look like they belong to that particular house. Yeah.
Jim Drzewiecki
Other things to avoid wrong plant and wrong place. You know, verify how big something is going to get before you pick it out because you just like what it looks like right now. doodle, you know, I just start with circles. And that’s a great way to sort of build a landscape design from nothing is to just draw circles. And then look at a certain circle and say, Well, I think I want something that’s going to get six feet high there. Well, now you have a much shorter list of plants to investigate, then, then if you had just said, Well, I think I need a shrub on that corner. Oh, that’s a really good point.
Della Hansmann
Yeah, then you can go looking for the right type of something for your climates on something that’s the right height and general with a much shorter list. Yeah.
Jim Drzewiecki
Because if you force a plant into a spot, that you have to constantly trim it just to make it fit, you’re gonna regret that decision. The plant will never look good, because you’re forcing it by constantly trimming it. And it may die eventually, because you were stressing it out every time you trimmed it.
Yeah. So it really is about, I mean, lots of gardeners have this bad habit of trying plants out, even though they know you know, they may not be hardy in the area, it sometimes takes me three tries before I realize I should raise the white flag and just not try that plant anymore. But look around at what the neighbors have. Clearly, if they’re doing well in the neighbor’s yard, that’s a plant that’s likely going to do well in your yard. Big fan of getting knowledge from people who work at the local garden center. Sometimes the local college will have an extension office that you can reach out to and say, what are the top 10 trees that grow? Well, in my state?
Della Hansmann
Yeah,
Jim Drzewiecki
the information is out there.
Della Hansmann
Do you find I mean, you have your own knowledge base. But do you find that either research materials, you go to Wisconsin Extension or some national database or something, particularly actually, if you’re working slightly out your own? Now that you’re working in further places? Where do you go to look up local climate zone information for someone in Michigan or in Kansas? Well,
Jim Drzewiecki
we do follow the USDA zone map. That’s our starting point. Local garden centers, the major ones tend to have really great websites, where if they’re selling these plants locally, then I know my client will be able to get them. Right. And the garden center wouldn’t be selling plants that die, quite honestly.
Della Hansmann
So unhappy customers.
Jim Drzewiecki
Correct. So I think a local garden center website is a great place to start. I’m a big fan of it’s the Missouri Botanical Garden. They use the acronym mobot. mobot.org is their website. And they have a plant database that is 100% searchable, so you can put in your zone, you can put in what height you want, Bloom color, etc. And every now and then when I can’t think of a certain plant I want to use or maybe a plant is a little unfamiliar to me. I go to that website, look up that plant, verify how big it gets. And because they’re a botanical garden, they give honest information about the hardiness of that plant. Is it invasive, and those factors?
Della Hansmann
Nice. Oh, that’s a great resource. Now I’m gonna go have some fun with girl tonight. Yep. Marvelous. Well, oh, my gosh, we have gone so far past our plans time, because there’s so much to say. But we’re just going to have to have you back for another soon podcast interview. And I think we’ve gotten some of the questions asked by our listeners answered. Not all of them will.
Again, we’ll have to do it again. What? Actually, I had a thing popped into my head while we were going through, this is putting you on the spot. But do you feel like there’s a signature landscape move by decade when you look at a house? Or a particularly when you look in the yard around a house? Can you tell yourself? Oh, yeah, there’s that. You mentioned the white chip from the 70s. Are there things that feel like key indicators from a certain era to you?
Jim Drzewiecki
Yeah, there I think there were certain plants available at certain times I wouldn’t call them trends necessarily like maybe paint colors would be, you know, or avocado appliances right, definitely date themselves. But as we talked about, you know, there were really only three or four shrubs available in the 50s and 60s. They were the forsythia, the lilac, the purple leaf I’m also called a purple sand cherry, the blue spruce, the crab, Apple.
Those are just the plants that were available during that time period into the 70s. You started to see the glazed tile, I think a lot on exteriors, I’m that rusty red, red wood stained furniture was a thing of the 70s patio furniture back then all seem to be this red wood color. The marble chip is definitely a 70s thing. Landscape lights, the actual fixtures can sometimes tell you what time period they’re from because of their style.
Jim Drzewiecki
The 50s and 60s had these almost mushroom looking lights, then the style starts to change. And you start to sense that well, maybe I’m in the 70s and 80s. The ornamental grasses came into play in the late 80s and early 90s. So as soon as you see those in a landscape, you know, it’s at least from that time period forward. And perennials have exploded in the last 20 or 30 years. Even lots of shrubs. Now the growers are tinkering with them, practically Frankenstein like, and when there might have only been three hydrangeas 20 years ago. Now there’s 50 Different hydrangeas out there. So the longer we go through our time here, it’s I think, going to be harder to tell when a landscape was specifically done. But I do think through the 80s, and even into the 90s, you can definitely see the era that those might have been done.
Della Hansmann
Interesting. Fun. Well, and probably as we look back from the future, we’ll be able to identify things more clearly, it’s always hard to see what’s on trend, when it’s oriented. It just seems normal. Right? This has been so useful. I think there’s some really good tips that people can take away from making good choices for their house. But I have to agree with you. I think some of these things in particular hardscaping, the very best move anyone can make is check in with professional, make sure that those unknown factors are being accounted for because these decisions are going to last and you want to make the right ones before you invest your money and someone else doing it or your own labor and DIY and something I think sometimes I feel like that hurts even more if you do all that work yourself.
Jim Drzewiecki
If you DIY it, which I’m a big fan of because I do it in my own yard. Yes, I think mistakes can hurt. And maybe more personally than financially.
Della Hansmann
Do you remember exactly how much you labored over that thing? Yeah, the tile, the tile want to do it again?
Jim Drzewiecki
Right. But on the other hand, the sheer costs, and landscapes are not inexpensive. Nowadays. Mistakes cost money. I think there was a meme that I saw years ago that said something along the lines, like it’s very expensive not to hire a professional.
Della Hansmann
Yeah, I agree. And I think when you’re building, it’s very expensive not to hire a designer. Whether that’s inside or out. Not just an opinion. But
Jim Drzewiecki
no, we may be biased because of what we do. But I’m sure you’ve visited homes where you see something that was done and you shake your head, and you calculate the costs in your head. And you say wow, I feel so bad either for these people or I don’t know why the previous owners did this.
Della Hansmann
So many clients come to me with houses that we both are just like what were they thinking What on earth was the first the perceived value of this choice? But I mean, start from where we are and move on forward.
Jim Drzewiecki
I think everything’s fixable.
Della Hansmann
Right? It is and there’s always there’s always a silver lining to a challenge and we get a time capsule house that needs some maintenance work, but nothing’s ever been done to it. We really can build on the things that are there. You get a perhaps a completely wild and uncared for yard, you really have kind of a blank slate to make great moves there. If you get something that’s more over done. Maybe you have something you could work from as you work backwards towards something that’s closer to what works for the house and works for the client and there’s positives.
Jim Drzewiecki
We’re not tied to only new blank slate designs versus enhancing what’s there. We’ll go from one end of the scale To the other that way, if someone says, Well, I certainly don’t want to take out that tree, then I will work around that tree. But we also investigate the health of the plants that are there too, because an old landscape is declining. And that’s just a simple fact of nature.
Della Hansmann
You don’t want to plan an elaborate hardscaping project around a willow that’s about to fall over sideways.
Jim Drzewiecki
Thank you. I just had that conversation with someone last week.
Della Hansmann
That’s what I know. I know that much from my own childhood because my dad loved Willow in our yard and we tried to plan for it and then it basically ran it from the inside and fell in half while we lived there, which broke his heart, because he is very soft hearted about plants and less than nursing back to health. It was just messed up. Um, so if people want to get in touch with you, if they want to admire your beautiful work, where is the best place for them to find it?
Jim Drzewiecki
Our website if you want to see our portfolio of work is www.ginkgoleaf studio.net. And ginkgo is spelled g-i-n-k-g-o. Lots of people misspell gingko. When I started my business, I thought Drzewiecki would be hard to spell but Ginkgo has proven worse.
Della Hansmann
Oh, no. You’re getting the alternate web selling website and just redirecting it to yours.
Jim Drzewiecki
Yeah, actually, it normally happens. But emails are the problem. Because if you misspell gingko, in my email, I’m not getting it.
Della Hansmann
So how can someone get in touch with you is it clearly marked on your website? Yeah,
Jim Drzewiecki
there’s a Contact Us page on our website. Our website does have a mid-century modern section because we have done so many of those projects. I believe we also have a contemporary slash modern section as well as a traditional so you can really see the gamut of our work on our website. We have, you know, a Facebook page and Instagram account. And a much larger version of our portfolio is on our house profile as well.
Della Hansmann
Nice. And you know, for some people who are listening, they might want to take they might have a more modern slash mid-century house, and they might want to do more modern contemporary landscaping around it. And some people are more mid-century traditional or mid mod, and they’re looking for something that hits it. So a lot of these, a lot of these gorgeous examples are going to be really exciting. I will put links to several of your projects and your website on our show notes page.
Jim Drzewiecki
Thank you,
Della Hansmann
and people can learn all about it there.
Della Hansmann
Thanks again to Jim for this fabulous download of design ideas, history and inspiration for our mid-century yards. If you want to see what we’ve been talking about, or just review the advice that Jim shared today in detail, find the transcript of this episode, plus links and photos at the show notes page mid mod dash midwest.com/ 1703. We covered so much ground in this episode that you might be surprised that we left quite a few pre submitted questions unanswered unless you were one of several folks who put in questions about landscapes and yards into the season question form.
Della Hansmann
So you know if we didn’t get to yours, never fear. Jim and I are already cooking up a plan to do this again soon. Later this season, I think and next time we will cover even more ground and even more of your questions. But next week on the podcast we are jumping off from something Jim talked about his early inspiration to become a designer was based on a tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright Johnson wax facility in Racine, Wisconsin.
Della Hansmann
He’s not the only person who makes a connection between Wright and the right choices for mid-century design. So tune in next week for a discussion of how Frank Lloyd Wright influenced mid mod design and how you can infuse a little prairie style or Usonian influences into your home. If you want to see you then.