Quick Takes With: Corwin Green and Damon Arrington

In this week’s installment of Quick Takes, we present a pair of Brooklyn academics with a flair for garden design, Corwin Green and Damon Arrington, partners in life and business. Corwin teaches communication design and social design at Pratt Institute, School of Visual Arts, and Parsons School of Design. Damon teaches landscape design at Cornell, New York Botanic Garden, and Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

The pair’s four-year-old firm, Verru Design, recently showed up on our radar when we spotted the naturalistic plantings they did for a charming townhouse garden (see Brooklyn Backyard Visit: A Fruitful Collab Between an Architect and Landscape Designers). Their M.O.: “We embed ourselves in communities, research their attributes and ecologies, and then actualize design projects.” The up-and-comers even have a podcast, Tree, Shrub, Flower, launched a few months ago, that spotlights the deep roots they have in their New York community. “Our guests are our friends and collaborators, who happen to have Tony Awards, and Emmys and are incredible creatives, whether it be a landscape expert or a leading actor on Broadway.”

Below, Corwin and Damon share the garden book they both assign to their students,  the reason they like to plant when the moon is waxing, and more.  

Photography courtesy of Verru Design.

Your first garden memory:

Corwin: My first memory was in my grandma’s backyard in Waynesboro, Georgia. During summer visits, my siblings and I were tasked with picking figs from her trees, which she would use for desserts and preserves, and to instill a work ethic. As a kid, I didn’t like figs or the idea of working during often hot vacations. Even though I still haven’t developed a taste for them, I appreciate learning the practice of fruit picking.

Damon: I grew up on a dairy farm on southwest Virginia. My mother had greenhouses growing up and she kept my crib under the impatiens flats. My first memories of gardening were the smell of vermiculite and the sound of loud fans humming throughout the moisture-filled plastic rooms.

Garden-related book you return to time and again:

Planting in a Post-Wild World. We recommend it to students in our classes. It is the quintessential book for learning how to create ‘plant communities’. They teach you how to create landscapes that are layered.

Instagram account that inspires you:

Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design @mcldllc. His photos are always top-notch and the gardens he design are very much in our style of wild and lush, appropriately vegetated. He deals a lot with slopes, and we are currently working on a project where the client’s backyard has something like a 20 percent slope, so we’ve been watching how he crafts staircases and retaining walls into the landscapes.

Describe in three words your garden aesthetic.

To steal the words of Laura Fenton from her feature [on our project] in Gardenista last week…”low-key wild.”

Plant the makes you swoon:

Calamintha nepeta. The compact foliage looks good in containers and along pathways and produces a nice show into fall. It has a consistent presence in perennial gardens and a quiet charm that hits you with amazing aromas.

Plant that makes you want to run the other way:

Bamboo. We’ve had jobs where we had to extract bamboo from containers and the roots are really gnarly. We are literally scared of bamboo.

Favorite go-to plant:

Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina). For unexpected texture, the staghorn sumac has always delighted our clients. And its fall color is absolutely stunning. The seed heads that form are striking in the winter, so its seasonal interest is abundant. Sometimes we choose plants specifically for their winter interest.

Hardest gardening lesson you’ve learned:

Sun conditions. Understanding your garden at both solstices is of crucial importance. In the northeast the summer solstice sun is at a 72-degree angle, the winter solstice is at a staggering 27-degree angle. Mapping this on-site analysis is the most important step in your initial steps. We recently did a pinup at NYBG where the students had to show us the extent of the summer/winter sun in plan view, an integral step for young designers to learn.

Gardening or design trend that needs to go:

We are convinced that wattle fencing is not meant for this region. Wattles tend to be better suited for our friends over the pond who are crafting the most beautiful fences. And we’ve taken them on as part of the English garden aesthetic here. They tend to be made out of newly cut green wood such as hazel, willow, forsythia, all of which, over about five years, will completely fall apart—our summers are too dry and hot, the wood cracks, and the wattle disintegrate. We are sticking to local cedar! Felled ash wood from upstate.

Old wives’ tale that actually works:

Damon: My grandmother, who worked on a dairy farm her entire life, would say that the best time to plant flowers is during the waxing moon, which is the time between the new moon and the full moon. And it’s true! When planting seeds I can literally tell they shift in the soil overnight, I used to think it was about gravitational pull, but apparently it is about the increase in light overnight. This increase in light increases sap flow. Farmer’s Almanac promotes that the “the waxing moon is a good time to plant annuals, biennials, and flowering plants that produce above-ground crops.” And I believe them—and I believe my grandma!

Favorite gardening hack:

Plant Tone. Organic Fertilizer is something we are using less and less of, but sometimes the soils in these Brooklyn backyards are so depleted of anything organic, that Plant Tone really helps. We discourage people from spreading it around when doing a new plant installation, it tends to shock the plants, but it’s a good thing to add after the plants have taken hold a bit, and mostly in the spring. We stay away from fertilizing in the fall—we don’t want to promote new growth. But, with climate realities sinking in, even the sense of how long to fertilize becomes a challenge. The norms are no longer relevant.

Favorite way to bring the outdoors in:

Material repetition can be a good way to accomplish this, perhaps an Ipe wall inside and out, or porcelain pavers that flow inside to outside. If we are designing a new garden, we always want to check which way the floorboards or tiles are positioned on the interior. We then want to continue to follow the existing patterns to the exterior space, at least at the door thresholds. It will make the spaces feel cohesive. That is why we love working with architects on projects, especially if we catch them in the schematic phase, then we can all have these conversations together.

Every garden needs a…

Pop of color. And admittedly, we struggle with this sometimes. Our aesthetic is very soothing, wild vibes, lots of analogous color schemes. But we love these chairs with all the green foliage. They really make a statement, and can give a space character.

Favorite hardscape material:

Teak tiles. We are enamored with these 2- by 2-foot tiles. They can be positioned in many different combinations to give each space such character. They also patina beautifully turning a grey color, as seen in the photo.

Go-to gardening outfit:

The classic denim apron by Mi Cocina San Francisco. We love this apron—it is our work outfit here at Verru. We don’t leave home without it.

Favorite nursery, plant shop, or seed company:

GRDN on Hoyt Street in Brooklyn. We are always excited to visit the owner Susanne Kongoy to see what she is curating. She has such a strong eye, always forecasting the future of home décor. She has the most interesting green things you’ll find in Brooklyn.

On your wishlist:

We are fixing up a ’70s A-frame house in southwest Virginia. We call it our country cottage. We are constantly thinking about pieces of furniture that we want for this renovation, and the Fermob slatted dining table is on the top of that list. It brings a refined look to an otherwise wild landscape. And those Fermob colors!

Not to be missed public garden/park/botanical garden:

We travel to Western Massachusetts frequently. We love this one nature trail, the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge in Hadley, Massachusetts. It has incredible paths that are lined in decomposed granite. It winds through a series of uplands and lowlands and climaxes in this beautiful wetland with salamanders bouncing around in the shallow water. It’s only 1.5 miles. And there is parking at the trial entrance. Go immediately.

The real reason you garden:

Damon: The reason I garden is to carry on the traditions of growing I learned as a kid in the greenhouse, in the crib under my mother’s flats of impatiens. I come from a long line of southern farmers. When I completed my master’s degree in landscape architecture, I could feel my ancestors patting me on their backs. I’m carrying the torch.

Corwin: Because it is an opportunity to tap into my own personal history with gardening and working with nature. I come from an agricultural history and I’m applying it now in an urban context.

Thanks so much, Corwin and Damon! (Follow them on Instagram @verrudesign.)