In My Garden:
Keeyla Meadows
Keeyla Meadows, Albany, CA
Open Days Host
Keeyla Meadows is a painter, sculptor, garden designer, and environmentalist who sees gardens as full-scale works of art. She is a pioneer in weaving the floors of the hardscape materials with the colors of the plants and making painterly expressions. Her 5,000 square feet of gardens in San Francisco’s Bay Area are vibrant in every sense of the word: color is used to invite, delights, and sustain people as well as local pollinators. Keeyla has been an Open Days garden host since 2010, is a regional ambassador for the program, and presented two sold-out Digging Deeper programs, “Fearless Color: Vibrant Habitat Gardens,” on May 8 and "Making Gardens into Works of Art," on June 19.
“I love living in a neighborhood where we connect with each other in so many ways. Including food and plants. Ali, one of the children in my neighborhood, came through the gate calling out. ‘Keeyla you can eat tulips! I didn’t know that!”
In My Garden, November 9, 2021
Keeyla is thankful for the recent rains in California as she welcomes a new season in her garden. Looking up to the skies, a bird sculpture planted with red cyclamen is viewable on the roof. 
In August, Keeyla cut back and fertilized the roses. Now, with the help of her neighbor, Ali, and a little helper, Isa, she harvests her most fragrant Cecile Brunner roses to make body oil.
More roses are harvested to be waxed and used in bronze sculptures for the garden. Keeyla emphasizes that "bronze can tolerate all sorts of weather, so it is a good material for garden sculpture."
In My Garden, October 12, 2021
Keeyla recently hosted guests for a photography workshop in her garden. "We talked about experimenting with taking pictures from different angles," she tells us. "I added new elements to the garden for the students to capture, including a new checkered tablecloth dress sculpture of painted bronze (below), made with flowers picked from the garden."
"Straight from the garden, anise is popular amongst humans and bugs alike," reports Keeyla. "The Anise Swallowtail caterpillar munched on anise for lunch, and so did we, in our salad of freshly harvested beans, lettuce, lemon cucumbers, herbs, and flowers."
In My Garden, September 14, 2021
Keeyla reports, "I've been pruning, replanting vegetables, and adding more summer color to get my garden ready for a late September photography workshop. Above, right: Beans, cucumbers, and tomatoes climb and intertwine on one of Keeyla's sculptures. "The vegetable garden is a great place for garden sculpture. It makes it more lively and more fun, and it's also very practical," she says.
"I was really surprised to see the delphiniums (above) come back into bloom after I cut them down to the ground in June."
"With hard pruning, the angel's trumpet (Brugmansia) returned to blow their horns. I made my Brugmansia arch with flowers from this very plant (above, left). I also cut the salmon angel trumpet (above, right) way back to the trunk and it came back blaring out a tune in flowers. I'm really looking forward to a day of photographing with a local garden club later this month."
In My Garden, August 17, 2021
Above, August shouts out the last hurrah of color in Keeyla's garden. Below are examples of how she has used contrasting colors in her container gardens to make the color combinations dynamic. "I often select contrasting colors for the plants and the containers, like bright reds and pinks set against the turquoise glaze on the pot (below, right)," she says.
Below is one of the planters that Keeyla just completed for her neighbor down the street. It includes her signature assortment of vibrant colors.
In My Garden, July 20, 2021
Summer color and plenty of visitors are keeping Keeyla's garden vibrant. She refreshed an area near a dress form (above, left, before the new planting) with summer color. "Aiya and Enzo (right) came over to help me clean and prepare the space," Keeyla reports. Below is a view of the new planting.
Above, left: "My little neighbor came over and asked if we could pick flowers to go with her outfit." Right: Summer blooms brighten another garden area.
In My Garden, June 22, 2021
Keeyla hosted a very popular Open Day on Saturday, June 12, and a sold-out Digging Deeper, "Making Gardens into Works of Art," on Saturday, June 19. "I love seeing old friends on plant buying trips to get ready for Open Days," says Keeyla. Zaida (above, left) is a third generation member of the Emerisa Gardens family. Keeyla says that she enjoys "matching the colors of the foliage and the flowers to the colors of the large pots and creating a whole garden scene that is based on color (above, right)."
"My garden is made for sharing... walking beneath an arch into a garden space opens you to receive, just as the flowers receive the sun," Keeyla says. Above, right, is her Flying Goddess sculpture, in bronze. "Your garden is like a painting come to life," one of Keeyla's guests told her. Below, left, guests enjoy the yellow and purple shade garden, which is always a favorite of Open Days visitors. "People made new friends in the garden, and then found one another on Instagram!" Below, right, is a Chinese Catalpa (Catalpa ovata) tree.
In My Garden, May 25, 2021
Keeyla reports that she recently met with arborists from the Professional Tree Care Company to discuss mycorrhizal fungal treatment for trees that are showing signs of distress from prolonged drought and unusual weather cycles. “The fungi help plants take up nutrients more thoroughly,” she tells us. “We are also applying a product that they recommended for the oak trees that are dying from Sudden Oak Death, a disease caused by the plant pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, in hopes of preventing the loss of more trees.”
Among Keeyla's recent projects are the creation of a new garden path and a rock planter, pictured above. "We removed a water thirsty lawn and replaced it with a path and a mix of water-wise plants, mostly Mediterranean," she says. "We constructed the stacked planters to have a focal point at the end of the long path. Having a place to display and change out annual color adds surprise and is a good way to keep pollinator plants in the garden. Zinnias are a favorite of butterflies."
Keeyla also worked with one of her clients to create ceramic mosaic pieces for ornamental containers (above), and will be hosting our Digging Deeper program "Making Gardens Into Works of Art," on Saturday, June 19.
In My Garden, May 11, 2021
Last Saturday, May 8, Keeyla hosted one of our first Digging Deeper programs of the season, "Fearless Color: Vibrant Habitat Gardens," which sold out quickly. "It all went really well," Keeyla reports. Above are some shots of the house and garden just before the event. "One of the questions I got," she says, "was, where did you get striped petunias?"
The workshop was focused on "Keeyla's Color Triangle" (above, left), and the primary principles of color and contrast outlined in her 2009 book, Fearless Color Gardens: The Creative Gardener's Guide to Jumping Off the Color Wheel. "I demonstrated some no-fail planting container schemes that showed harmony and contrast in color, texture, and height," she explained. "I filled in a pot in my 'mostly native' garden with monarch butterfly-attracting milkweed, monkey flower, and buckwheats (above, center). I also made several fruit tarts to show working with color in different shapes (above, right)."
Above, left, participants in the garden matching color chips with plant flowers and leaves. "It was a beautiful day, and visitors enjoyed walking around the garden both before and after the workshop," says Keeyla. Pictured above, right, is our gracious host after the event, looking as vibrant as her amazing gardens!
