DIRTIER

2012-02-13T06:58:00.000-08:00

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Aimed at my fellow frigid-blooded friends who, like me, are always cold…

A cozy house just is not enough.

If there is happiness in a material thing, especially one as simple as a pair of well-fitting, warm fleecy tights, then I have found Nirvana. Mind you, these are not Yoga pants or running pants -- so they don’t have annoying floppy wide legs or even worse, an elastic band at the ankle…nor do they have any messages printed on them anywhere. They are just simple warm and comforting.

If my website, The Best @ Dianne B can bring the same happiness to you that these toasty tights from Blue Ice Clothing have brought to me, I am happy.
WARM WINTER READING

Long before Patti Smith’s great little book , Just Kids about her juicy sixties life in New York with Robert Mapplethorpe received a National Book Award, I recommended it here in Volume 10 of DIRTIER when first published, and now in the throes of winter I would like to point you toward another small tome from Patti called - delightfully and snuggly –Woolgathering.

In this hardcover book, a reprise of a small volume she made in the 90’s for the charmingly diminutive Hannuman Press.

(If you don’t know these tiny 2 x 4 inch books printed in India by Raymond Foye and Francesco Clemente, well, then you should).

…anyway in this new edition of Woolgathering, available in your bookstores now, she covers and photographs all sorts of topics from our forefathers to what’s on Johnny Depp’s desk. Snug and charming.

Best of this…best of that…Best movie of the year, best book, best plant, best buy, best best best. Well, who knows these days what is best anyway with such an abundance of choices, but I particularly like the idea of Best Word of the Year as chosen by the American Dialect Society (in cahoots with the Linguistic Society) and they have chosen:

OCCUPY

Nothing like bringing new life to a seemingly

tired old word.

Since Brain Pickings dreamed up a logo similar to mine (I won’t pile on the hosannas by alluding that they might have been influenced, but I think mine came first), I have taken interest in this website and you might too. It is sometimes nerdy and too new-agey – and never about gardening -- but mostly has great images and things of cultural interest .

2012-02-04T17:51:00.000-08:00

First 2012 Issue: DIRTIER The Savvy Gardener's Must-Read

David LaChapelle
Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, Love leaves a memory no one can steal, 2009
Chromogenic color print
Image size: 16 x16 inches
Paper size: 24 x 20 inches
© 2011 David LaChapelle

Ed Ruscha
Twig, 2011
Photographic image produced using large format color negative film, drum scanned and digitally output with a Gretag/Cymbolic LightJet printer onto Fujiflex Crystal Archive Supergloss Paper
Image size: 14 x 11 inches
Paper size: 24 x 20 inches
© 2011 Ed Ruscha

These images are from a new portfolio that is being sold to support Elton John’s AIDS Foundation. The portfolio is an edition of only 40, there are ten images in the set and it can be purchased through the fine gallery of Marian Goodman for 25,000 USD…2500. per print is not a bad price and of course, it is for a very good cause.

Both the intense light of the David LaChapelle and the endless presence of the Twig circle remind me of John McWhinnie and so I share these with you to remember him.

THOUGHTS ON KEEPING WARM:
( or VAROIUS METHODS for CONQUERING the COLD)

The time-honored practice of protecting tenderer trees has been accomplished in several ways around here.

Remembering how her father wrapped their fig trees in Connecticut, Lys super-wrapped our Fig Tree Ficus carica ’Brown Turkey’ first in hay, surrounded that with burlap , then a tarp; and added a Khmer goddess and a rock for good measure.

This next is my loose approximation of a Christo.

Notice how the English Garden Twine caresses every curve of the fledgling summer magnolia that I am trying to accustom to the maybe-too-shady spot.

Wrapping a tender plant, here a prized big-leaf
Farfugium, like a gift basket is another favorite method to be accomplished with a few squares of burlap (available at most garden centers, but you usually have to ask for it) and more of that fabulousEnglish Garden Twine, which has a million uses.

The Farfugium came from Plant Delights. They got it from Marco Polo Stufano, so I feel particularly protective about it because not only is he the retired originator of the great gardens at Wave Hill – he is now conferring with LongHouse via The Garden Conservancy on our new Affiliate status. And you know how I feel about LongHouse.

LongHouse, East Hampton, NY

DIANNE B HOLIDAY TREATS 2011

2011-12-08T05:19:00.000-08:00

SEE WHAT KDHAMPTONS--The Luxury Lifestyle Diary of The Hamptons--HAS TO SAY ABOUT DIANNE

MY HAMPTONS

Dianne Benson

Occupation: Garden Stylist, Founder of The Best @ Dianne B, President of LongHouse Reserve, Writer, Mother
Current Residence: LongHall, Davids Lane, East Hampton

KDHamptons: How long have you been coming to the Hamptons? Why do you love it so much? Do you come out all year round?
Dianne Benson: I’ve been an East Hamptonite for nearly thirty years. It was the fullness of the seasons and the beauty of the place that captured me…and eventually turned me into an obsessed gardener. If I had to choose the best time of year, it would surely be early spring when our glorious 75 year old magnolia tree is in bloom and everything around us feels so tender. Although I would feel bereft without our Beekman Place city apartment, East Hampton is our home. As proud President of LongHouse Reserve, and also actively involved with many other things like The Watermill Center, the LVIS, various garden tours and St. Luke’s Church. Plus our 16 year old daughter, Skye Qi goes to school here and my gardening retail business (diannebbest.com) is based here, so…. life really revolves around East Hampton.

Dale Chihuly sculpture @ LongHouse Reserve

KDH: Describe your Hamptons home and decorating style?

DB: Our home is a wonderfully eclectic mix of ancient artifacts, contemporary photography and art, carpets gathered from around the world and mostly comfortable furniture from many periods collected in many places. Our huge master suite that looks over the Nature Trail was once a glass-covered olympic- sized pool. A plethora of books makes up four libraries: Literature and Poetry in the official library room, Archaeology and Religion in Lys’ writing room, art and travel covers one high wall of the bedroom and, natch, gardening and fashion in my office.

KDH: Personal style: do you have a Hamptons “uniform”? Which designer do you wear the most?
DB: My personal look is not very different from our home — a diverse collection of designers, accessories and put-togethers — some old, some new, some ethnic — that I switch and change and wear simultaneously. Some of my favorite designers are still those once sold in my Dianne B. stores: Gaultier, Comme des Garcons and Issey Miyake; and I newly like Rick Owens and occasionally splurge on Hermes or Marc Jacobs for Vuitton. It is seldom that I wear any color that is not natural, white or black. My default look is some form of jodphurs or riding pants with varying jackets and boots that do not belong in the saddle. With the blessing of a gigantic closet, I can whip up last-minute looks from disparate sources and wind up looking like me without a designer’s stamp.

KDH: What is your favorite restaurant? Do you have a favorite dish you get every time?
DB: Our favorite East Hampton restaurant, whether it is an occasion or a simple lunch, is unquestionably The Living Room at c/o The Maidstone. We love the décor — all of Jenny’s Swedish touches combined with her taste in art…but most of all, it is the delicious menu that keeps us coming back. At least once a week I need a dose of Toast Pelle Jansson, which is the thinnest slivers of grass-fed beef carpaccio under a layer of greens and yummy Swedish cheese topped with just the right amount of crème fraiche and caviar.

Maidstone Inn Dining Room

KDH: Describe your perfect day in detail for KDHamptons readers?

DB: My perfect day would be one with more hours than 24.

KDH: How did you transition from fashion to gardening? What inspired you to start The Best @ Dianne B? What is your latest garden great?
DB: Transition from fashion to gardening: It was an unconscious move, really, during my fashion days I expressed myself with style in the form of clothes and then that same palette became a garden instead of an outfit.
The fashion world of the 70’s and 80’s was filled with inspiration and there were no such things as stylist’s assistants or corporate considerations to over-burden what was a wonderfully free and creative process. My first store on Madison Avenue sold great clothes from Paris, Japan and New York. Then I opened three more stores in what was just becoming the art center of New York, SoHo, including a great big concrete minimalist Comme des Garcons store. No regular advertising for me — I teamed up with artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and Cindy Sherman and published images in Interview. They were exciting days. So are these.

KDH: Your own garden has been included on several house tours, what is so unique about it?
DB: My garden differs from others in that it is all about plants and personality and not very much about flowers; in fact — there is no such thing as a ‘flower bed’ — the whole property is a kind of layering of texture and shape and color. But I am hugely into bulb planting, so come spring there are plenty of tulips, iris, fritillaria and hyacinths in great swathes. Then, in summer I adore lilies of all kinds and not just the obvious big white Casablancas. Instead I am much more into species and Turk’s cap types, which are more mysterious and come in an amazing spectrum of color. Tubers of the arum family are another exotic thing — I especially collect and nurture bizarre Jack-in-the-Pulpits. I carry the same principles into my clients’ gardens — layering and texturing as if the landscape were one big outfit.

Fascinating Allium schubertii in unlikely position
in front of dwarf Japanese maple.

KDH: What is your best kept secret about the Hamptons? DB: Well, most of my secrets are too clandestine to reveal; but cranberry picking just in time for Thanksgiving in the Napeague dunes is one little pleasure that I can share.
KDH: Why haven’t you written another book? DB: Well, in way I have been writing the sequel to DIRT: The Lowdown on Growing a Garden with Style in my News Letter and blog, DIRTIER, which has been published since the inauguration of my web site (www.diannebbest.com), The Best @ Dianne B. Soon I will elaborate on all these essays and combine them into one new and funny volume that I hope will become a cult classic like my first book, DIRT.

DIRT:The Lowdown on Growing a Garden with Style

KDH: What are your plans for the Holidays? Travel or staying out East? DB: Our highlight is the Christmas Eve service at Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church on the East Hampton green, where all the family — except our darling dogs Flora Pandora and Magnolia V. — participates. Sadly we can only bring them to Church once a year on Pet Sunday at the beginning of October. Each time we opt to travel when the Hamptons are all decked out, we regret it, so this year we are staying put but are considering Paris for New Year’s.

Flora Pandora and Magnolia V.

KDH: If you could have anyone at your Hamptons dinner party (dead or alive) who would you invite? DB: There are so many friends and colleagues we enjoy entertaining to name names, but of those that are impossible to invite I would choose my heroine, Vita Sackville West. She was an eccentric gardener and writer of great style who did many notable things but is most probably famous for her torrid affair with Virginia Woolf while maintaining a family and happy marriage at Sissinghurst in Kent, England. From her generation, I would also have the tight-lipped T.S. Eliot and glamorous Nancy Cunard. Along with them, I would mix in Dirk Bogarde and John Lennon. Now, that would be a great party.

THE NEW TOOLS HAVE ARRIVED....

...and they look like hand-hewn works of art --- I am so
happy

to

be able to offer them to you in time for Christmas.

The Dig Deep Weeder

Long-Lithe-Sharp and One of a Kind. The Sneeboer family of Holland

has hand-forged tools that personify quality and elegance for a
hundred

years

and that is why I am so pleased to have my logo engraved on their

cherry-wood handles. You will be just as proud to own this totally unique

DIG DEEP WEEDER. Its lengthy half-moon-shaped blade is extra

sharp--combine that with the lethal v-shaped edge and you will find a

tool that digs deep and defies any root--even dandelions with their

impossibly long taproots can be removed with ease, not to mention

thistles

and nettles.

BUY IT NOW!!

The Poetic Potting Trowel

You have never seen a trowel as sinuously shaped as

The Poetic Potting Trowel simply because there is not another trowel

like it anywhere. It is the only tool specifically designed with enough

agility to sweep around the curves of a pot or to get into the crevices of

a tight window box, plus it is excellent for navigating narrow flower beds.

The undulating curvaceous bend of steel is an extension of the "turn of your wrist" and therefore deposits the soil around the plants precisely where

you direct it, not beside the pot or the box where dirt is wont to fly.

BUY IT NOW!!

Gardening with Style engraved on the handles looks terrific. Get in on this very Limited Edition now. You will want to own it yourself and we gift wrap beautifully for you--the thoughtful garden gift giver.

AN EXTRA SPECIAL HOLIDAY DEAL

Because it is often so difficult to decide exactly what the beloved gardener on your list will want for Christmas....we are making it extra delectable for you to give a Dianne B Gift Certificate.

Between now and Christmas...any Gift Certificate $50 and over will

be eligible for a 20% discount. Please use Special Code

Holiday2011 on the Shopping Cart page.

TO YOU OUR MOST EXTRAVAGANT

Should you opt for the $425 Gift Certificate you will be paying a

mere $340 for all TWELVE of the Garden Greats

(when applied to the

BUY ALL option).

Now that is an incredible deal.....Check it out here!

Though this is new growth on that same Japanese maple,
everything looks like the holidays to me.

HOPE YOURS ARE HAPPY ONES.

Dianne B Has Great News for You!

2011-11-28T04:38:00.000-08:00

WHAT MAKES A THING IRRESISTIBLE?

Exclusivity. Distinction. Quality. And of course, Style.

The TWO NEW GARDEN GREATS @ DIANNE B
Have It All & MORE--MARVELOUS!

I have spent years looking for these perfect tools with the
equipoise and integrity to live up to the distinction of
being Dianne B. Garden Greats.
Here they are...

I was searching for the Perfect Weeder — but
found instead a miracle !
This tool doesn’t just rout out the longest, most

rebellious weeds — it also slices into the earth and

makes a perfect curvature to deposit a big fat lily bulb

or allium or tulip — you name it. So you can imagine,

during this furious bulb planting time that I am doubly

thrilled to offer it to you.

The graceful Poetic Potting Trowel is designed with an inherent rhythm that makes using it unlike any other gardening tool that I have ever touched. The wood

handles are engraved to remind you that you are

gardening with style.

SPEAKING of BULB PLANTING

I have still many more to plant, and if you are in

the same boat, think on this:Try interplanting

the more delectable bulbs (that is, those favored by

rodents and such like tulips, hyacinths,lilies, etc) with

pest-deterring bulbs like Narcissus, Allium and Fritillaria.

This not only protects your bulbs from the burrowers, it

can make for beautiful mixed bulb pictures.

And plant deep…that helps too.

I planted Fritillaria and Puschkinia here between the

Balinese cows now cloaked with my adored Arum italicum.

Narcissus and Muscari Hyacinths are now nestled

among the male and female Skimmia plants:

(which one has the berries, the girl or
the boy...I can never remember).

See how the berries turn red and the Black mambo

stems become more brilliant !

For more on fall plantings, great garden tools and
other exciting news, visit us at

The Best @ Dianne B!

Holiday Special Offer

2011-11-09T14:37:00.000-08:00

THE EPITOME of AUTUMN

Acer shirasawanum 'Autumn Moon'

Acer shirasawanum 'Autumn Moon'

is not only in the beauty of these glorious autumn colors, it is
also the chance of a lifetime to refresh your garden supplies or stock up on Christmas gifts for everyone on your list who even dabbles in daffodils or enjoys communing with their yard or window box.
Never Before Dianne B. Great Deal----Special Buy All for $350

This deal of a lifetime is Not Just for Gardeners…imagine how many Christmas gifts you could provide by giving out a monogrammed shovel here, fabulous aluminum tags there and the hippest tool belt anywhere.

Go to our website and click on the "Specials" button in the right sidebar to see the details for All Twelve Garden Greats.

The regular price for all Twelve Garden Greats at Dianne B. is $530.
Because: Dianne is refreshing the site by retiring a few things and
adding two new gorgeous tools AND because the Holidays are
coming and it is time to be generous--For a very limited time and
with FREE SHIPPING (usually at least $35.00)…every single
item can be yours for only $350.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime fantastic holiday offer!

A great way to buy a gift for one person, or as a way to shop
for gifts for all of your gardening friends
(you can spread out the items to many people on your list). 
Expect a usual Dianne B DIRTIER before Thanksgiving, which will coincide with the introduction of the have-to-have new Couture Gardening Tools. You'll not be able to be resist the handmade best-in-show Dig Deep Weeder nor certainly The Poetic Potting Trowel...both incised with The Best @ Dianne B motto:

Gardening with Style

In the meantime, Happy Bulb Planting.
You can never have enough spring flowers.

Arum italicum

The Best @ Dianne B Holiday Ideas

2011-11-01T04:40:00.000-07:00

Stay tuned as we are about to introduce our
TWO NEW FABULOUS COUTURE GARDEN TOOLS
just in time for Christmas…

But until then…you have never needed good gardening accoutrements more…

The Quintessential Plant Marker...to identify the plants you are cutting back

and the new ones you are planting.

The Luxury Hand-Made Pure Steel Shovel....nothing digs in
that dirt better.

The Dianne B. Tool Belt is indispensable at this time of year.

The English Garden Twine is just what you need for aligning your specimen trees
and the perfect thing for securing the burlap around the tender plants. It is terrific.