Featured Landscape Designer >> Featured Landscape Designer Archives>> Spring '09: Ann Nickerson, APLD
 

Ann Nickerson, APLD is active in the Oregon Chapter of APLD as the 2009 Chapter Vice-President and 2010 Chapter President.

She is also the owner of Ann Nickerson Landscape Design, Inc. offering garden design and consultation in the greater Portland metro area.

Ann's Bio:  
Since incorporating my business in 1993, I've designed well over one hundred gardens. They have ranged from four-acre country estates, complete with a small lake, to patio gardens and neighborhood parks. I've interpreted such styles as Japanese, Mediterranean, and English Cottage Garden to our climate and to specific needs of the site. I've created waterfalls, dry creek beds and boulder rookeries. I've found the right structures and accents to transform a plain corner into an inviting sanctuary. While doing all this, I've had fun and am always looking forward to the next challenge.

Creating Andora Gardens:
Taking space away to create more gardens!

Three years ago Brian, my husband and I moved into my third home as a landscape designer. We chose this home for a number of reasons: it is within a half mile of  the light rail so Brian does not have to drive to work, it is close to family and friends, and it had a pleasant but boring garden that I could rip out and replace with my own creation.

The house has an interestingly shaped back yard. It is 25 feet deep and 80 feet wide. It looked like a bowling alley. I decided the only solution was to break it up into two gardens by building the sunroom I’ve always wanted. Brian suggested we remodel the kitchen and add hard wood floors while we were at it. We had all that complete last spring. The new sunroom serves as a breakfast room, a dining room and an open air pavilion. It is 12’ x 12’, has 5’ French doors on either side and large windows on the end that gaze upon a fountain, featuring my bronze children. It has heated slate tile floor and can be closed up snug as a button or opened up to fresh air and breezes.

We also lopped off the last 12’ of the entire yard so we could add RV parking and a driveway along the north property line. With those two subtractions we created a 35’ x 25’ Italian garden and a 20’ x 40’ English garden.

The north side garden is a transition shade garden. It still features four seasons of color and textures but it transitions into the more subdued English garden. The border along the south side of the house is a working garden. Five large blueberries and three cherry tomatoes are grown there with the help of the reflected sun off the south wall. The front border between our neighbor and our driveway is cut on a diagonal. Our neighbor wanted room to park their little sports car and I was happy to have more garden space, so we divided the space with a diagonal line that gave them more room in the back and us more room in the front. It blurs the property lines. That bed is full of large grasses, daylilies, lavender, and heat loving perennials because it gets sun all day.

After three years my group of gardens is filled with fun and flowers. I still keep adding little features and removing plants that just aren’t right. My latest additions are purple-leafed grapevines for one of the arbors in the Italian Garden and more clematis in the English garden. I will never be quite finished. That would ruin my fun.

To see more of Ann's work, please visit her website at www.ann.nickerson.net
You may contact her at 503-846-1352 or by email at ann@nickerson.net

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