BUFFALO HORTICULTURE
  • Buffalo Horticulture. The Landscape by Matthew Dore
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  • BLOG: Buffalo Landscape & Border Gardening
  • Matthew Dore, Landscape Designer, Buffalo, NY
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  • Journal: \\"The Buff Hort Project\\"
  • Buffalo Horticulture. The Landscape by Matthew Dore
  • Services
  • BLOG: Buffalo Landscape & Border Gardening
  • Matthew Dore, Landscape Designer, Buffalo, NY
  • Contact
  • Journal: \\"The Buff Hort Project\\"
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Border Gardening

"Border Gardening" is intended to represent the Buffalo Horticulture ideals as a "Design and Build Landscape Construction and Garden Care Service". It is soft, or hopes to be, and writes with a voice for those in search of value(s) in and from the landscape.

8/29/2015 0 Comments

1000 Landscape Drawings - or at least that's how I imagined it.

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Visited Curtis' opening last night at Sugar City on Niagara. (I've come to love Sugar City as its away from "the busy" parts of the neighborhood, closest to my home, across from Resurgence Brewery, and a block up from Santeserio's)
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The work was exactly as it claimed - 1000 drawings done on 1000 5x7 index cards over four years.
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I immediately recognized that we had a similar enjoyment of .38mm and .05mm pens. Although, his are way boutique - a Japanese pen - where I buy mine at Office Depot.
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A "mini" drawing I did Sunday. Mine here is a bit bigger (10"x5"?) but the 1/8"=1' scale demanded the size. I started scanning Curtis' 1000 drawings as if each had a move in it for me to utilize - hatches, lines, densities, etc.
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Topography and topographical representation
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Topography
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Oh. And I'm pretty sure Curtis has been looking at landscape images
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Basic plant layout and combination of forms. (Take that Fern_Croft
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While in the one hand, the work gave me 1000 new hatch patterns to use... But, imaginatively, he takes something such as an asian garden and reduces it (or transcends it beyond) to only its textures clashing against each other - planes related in their contrast of smoothness or coarseness.
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Oh, come on. Sure. I've dreamt of building this. I just haven't figured out the triangle part.
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A flower? What?
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Form and plant combinations
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Love some "Heavy" Sharpie (my tool - not Curtis') and the classic circle.
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My favorite.
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8/27/2015 0 Comments

The Eye: Looking, Aesthetic, & One's Craft

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I'm searching for a relationship with a barber.

A long term one. One that I can spend twenty years working with. One who's eye I will trust to shape me as I grow and age - always being able to make the representation.

To me, this seems a complicated way to live; developing ones eye as a barber, always looking at people, judging what you feel is appropriate, a good move, a good combination - learning from what is at hand around you, so you can flow that interpretive and reading skill into your work - into someones hair.

I wonder.

What does this activate? Looking at people all the time and not landscapes. Or, am I best to say, looking at a different landcapes?

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8/14/2015 0 Comments

A Couple Notes On Grass Seed

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Tall Fescue seed
- I am experimenting with Tall Fescue for the first time. I have a site that gets 3 to 4 hours of sunlight that I sodded with Bluegrass a couple years ago that isn't standing up real well to the light foot traffic and dog play. I believe the Bluegrass doesn't have the vigor in lower light levels to recover from the wear. My hope is that Tall Fescue is the answer. Tall Fescue will tolerate lower light levels but still has a tough and course leaf blade to stand up to the friction of light wear. 


- Most grass seed one would buy is a mix of several types of grass (the "typical label" below is not). Example, you may come across a 1/3 Bluegrass, 1/3 Ryegrass, 1/3 Fescue mix. But seed ratios are measured by weight and not seed count. Ryegrass and Fescue each have approximately 100,000 seeds per pound, where Bluegrass has over 1,000,000. So, the seemingly balanced 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 mix is actually more that 80% Bluegrass.
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Typical seed label
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8/11/2015 0 Comments

Buying "Good" Topsoil?

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Screened or shredded topsoil stored under cover.

There is an expectation that soil is loose, free of sticks and stones, and without large clumps of clay. But, topsoil, as it is harvested, of course is going to have organic materials in it.

Topsoil may fall in a range from sandy to clay, neither of which do I believe to be universally superior. Since trucked in topsoil often will not match your site soil's texture it is best to amend your existing soil with organic matter.

I believe the image many of us have of "good soil" comes not from a well structured and organic laden top layer of soil that has spent years building itself as an ecosystem but is the result of dirt being dumped into processors, screeners and shredders, which take out all the bulk material and fluff the medium up into a powder.

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The waste material pile as part of the shredding and screening process
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Soil shredder
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8/7/2015 0 Comments

Gravel Logistics

Anytime Buffalo Horticulture deals in concrete that is demo'd or torn out, it's taken to one of two close by recycling plants. In return, the truck always returns with a full capacity load of gravel - never the waste of an empty truck. We almost never use newly mined limestone from quarries much further outside the neighborhood.

Tight logistical operations and operating in a tight geographic area keep fuel consumption minimal. As of August 1st, Buffalo Horticulture's two trucks had not yet combined for 2500 total miles driven.

Sustainability. Efficiency. Value.

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Concrete pile at "Swift River Associates" Tonawanda, NY
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#1 Crusher Run pile (recycled)
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Loader, crusher plant, and conveyers
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Buffalo Horticulture's "Heavy Truck." Moves up to 14 ton and 22 cubic yards. Also transports loader and machinery around and about.
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    Matthew Dore

    Landscape designer and Proprietor of Buffalo Horticulture

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