AboutMarc Chapelle, ASLA Expertise As a licensed Landscape Architect, I can answer general questions about style and design, ideas and suggestions for site amenities, larger site-planning issues, or recreation and park design.
IF YOU JUST WANT A PLANT SUGGESTION GO HERE: http://www.growit.com/PlantInfo/LandScape.htm
I prefer you ask somebody else why your petunias are not as perky as they should be...I'd LOVE to tell you how can use those petunias to increase your home's value!
Experience Member, American Society of Landscape Architects (ALSA.org); Past clients have been mostly contractors, developers and local civil engineering/architecture firms, plus the occasional homeowner. Currently, I design recreational facilities for the National Park Service (DOI).
I am located in the dry Great Basin area (Greater Nevada/Utah), so the use of landscape materials OTHER than plants is emphasized. As a licensed Landscape Architect on the East and West Coasts, I have been in practice over 20 years.
Organizations ASLA (ASLA.org)
Education/Credentials BSLA in Landscape Architecture, 1989
Many additional seminars, educational venues, and classes (both taught & attended)
Awards and Honors Best Multifamily project, 1993
Best Model Home Landscaping, 1993
Question I have removed English ivy from painted brick. How do I clean the glue-residue from English ivy from my painted brick walls? Is there a product that will work?
Answer If the wall was previously painted, use a coat of paint remover. If you paint over them again, it will look hideous... Paint will merely preserve them where they are.
You can leave them for a few years to become brittle and dried and then you can remove them with much work and pain by using scrapers & wire brushes Very little, apart from time and natural decay, will make it easier to remove these.
Is there anything wrong with just using a pressure washer? Yes; it won't work in removing ivy tendrils, no matter how high the pressure, and you can literally blast out the brick's mortar or gouge the surface, causing visible marks, once re-painted. Ivy ‘glues’ itself to the face of the wall, leaving thousands of tiny tendrils attached - and brick's surface is porous enough to let the little buggers go ahead and do it!
It may sound drastic but if you want it gone NOW, one solution *may* provide a 'quick fix'. That would be to use a small blow-torch (I have 2 that screw on top of those small camping propane bottles) and a wire brush. I haven’t tried this method, but some have claimed success with it. Be careful of only "cooking" hte tendrils and not the house!
It will problaby look terrible, with blackened areas of old paint, until you re-paint it...The fumes are probably not good to breath with this method, either. (Paint-remover fumes are probably not much better for you!)
Another solution I ran across in a blog was to soak it for a week with a paste, made up of diluted dish washing liquid. Then use a wire brush. Haven’t tired that one either. The wire brush is probably doing all of the hard work.
