designs FOR LIVING PRODUCTS & PRACTICAL ADVICE

GARDENS

Fabulous Ferns

Even wHen the summer sun nears the meltdown zone in Dallas, one oasis at the Dallas Arboretum stays green, moist, and 10 to 15 degrees cooler than its neighboring gardens. It’s the Palmer Fern Dell, where sprinklers automatically mist| everything in sight (including people, if they’re not careful) three times during every hour.

One look v ill tell visitors that the ferns love it. The plants unfurl their leafy fronds and thrive in this setting, which resembles the shaded banks of a country creek. Senior horticulturist Wayne Mann and other staff members make sure that the ferns flourish by giving their roots an abundance of drainage. Pine bark mulch goes into the beds, along with peat or compost.

The Arboretum’s fitst-hand experience with ferns over the last several years has shown that the varieties best suited to the Dallas climate include Christmas, cinnamon, tassel, southern wood, southern maidenhair, and lady ferns. Yet the garden’s staffers constantly test other, lesser-known varieties to see which ones will endure locally, and sometimes the results are spectacular. The Australian tree fern, for example, grows to a height of 12 feet.

A little-known fern fact: Dallas-based Casa Flora, Inc., the largest fern grower in the country, raises three and a half million plants annually. Look for some of its more obscure offshoots, such as the five-fingered maidenhair fern, the East Indian holly fern, and the Korean rock fern, in retail nurseries and garden centers.

Palmer Fern Dell at the Dallas Arboretum, 8525 Garland Road, 327-8263.

DECORATING

From Faucets to Fabrics

“A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE REALLY TERRI-fied of decorating,” says a Dallas interior designer who prefers to remain anonymous. “They’re scared by what they perceive to be the haughtiness and expense of it and by the air of mystery. These people need to start shopping at Rutherford’s.”

Robert Rutherford, for one, hopes they will. He’s the friendly and reassuring owner of the treasure trove of a retail decorating shop that bears his name on Lovers Lane. There, amid surroundings where every square inch seems to contain something glamorous or enticing, Rutherford and his staff members offer professional decorating services as well as luscious fabrics, trims, hardware, and accessories for those who want to try their own talents at design.

First-time visitors who seek snobbery will be disappointed at Rutherford’s. It’s much more down to earth. But those in search of bargains will be ecstatic. Rutherford buys discontinued lots from Brunschwig & Fils (“I cherry pick the best out of them”) and directly from several European mills. As a result, his fabrics sell for $8 to $98 a yard; comparable fabrics sell from $25 to $350 a yard elsewhere.

Rutherford, a trained and licensed interior designer with a wholesale showroom background, opened his store six years ago-and business has continued to grow ever since. “We have customers all over Texas and Louisiana, even California, Ohio, and British Columbia, who are always calling and asking us to send samples,” he says. “We do believe in taking care of the customer. After all, interior design is really nothing more than service. It’s providing what the customer wants.”

And whether that’s something as plain as a drapery rod or as elaborate as vintage, handmade beaded fringe from France, customers will find it at Rutherford’s.

Rutherford’s, 5647 W. Lovers Lane, 357-0888.

FURNITURE

Armoires, Encore

Something had to give. Repro-ductionarmoires,once considered the perfect solution for storing TV sets and all sorts of unattractive objects away from discerning eyes, had gotten out of hand: too heavy to move around, too bulky to fit into an average-sized room, and too massive to possess much grace or style.

Along comes a California company, Swimmer & Associates, with a line of “English garden sheds” for inside and outside use. Lo and behold, they’re slenderized armoires, most of them measuring 28 to 32 inches wide, 18 inches deep, and 84 inches tall. Painted in styles ranging from cozy (rabbits or grapevines) to classic (a Gothic guardhouse), they make dandy storage bins for wine, cookbooks, kids’ toys, garden tools, or whatever. And you don’t have to be Nate Newton to shift one around to a new resting place.

Custom styles are available, too. Outfitted with wine racks they carry the rather pricey tab of $3,400; with shelves, they’re about $2,950. However, if you’re handy with a saw or skilled with an artist’s brush, your own less costly version of the plus petite armoire can be within reach.

English garden sheds by Swimmer & Associates at Vivian Watson Associates, Inc., (available to the design trade only), 316 Oak Lawn Design Plaza, 1444 Oak Lawn, 651-0211.

SERVICES

Setting the Framework

TERRY NELSON WON’T go so far as to say that he can frame anything. But blending he skills of craftsman, carpenter, an i illusionist, he has managed to practice his ingenious brand of framesmanship on a fanned-out deck of cards, a collection of silver spoons, a miniature movie screen, a banquetsized cable cloth, and even Bette Davis’ earrings.

The owner of Frame Masters since 1989, Nelson relies on the old chestnuts of the picture framing business-weddings, birthdays, anniversaries and graduations-for the bulk of his husiness. But he’s energized “when someone really challenges me with an interesting or exciting request.”

Once he built a Plexiglas box to display a full-length Oriental silk kimono. He tore down an old fence to provide rustic, aged wood for frames for a series of old New Mexico icons. For the Belgian liner tablecloth, which measured 12 by 5 feet, he had to join lengths of molding to build a sufficiently large framework. For the cards and the silver spoons, he made shadow boxes, as he did for the small graphic of the movie screen. In the latter instance, he even added a miniature fabric curtain and tiny seats to complete the illusion.

The Bette Davis earrings had him temporarily stumped, though. A fan of the late actress had purchased them, along with one of Miss Davis’ necklaces, and wanted the jewelry mounted in a frame with an autographed photograph of the star. Bui the customer complicated the request by stipulating that his wife had to be able to remove the jewelry to wear it, Nelson’; masterful solution: a shadow box with a hinged glass-and-wood door on the front.

Frame Masters, 5014 McKinney 526-1700.

FINDS

Ralph’s Seeing Red

YOU KNOW THOSE SHEETS YOU’VE been thinking about buying? The ones in the soft pastels with the dainty floral designs? Forget it. At least that’s what the designers at Ralph Lauren seem to he saying. Just in time to celebrate July 4, they’re turning to red- in a bundle of attention-getting new bed linens that should make summer hotter than ever.

“Red is crisp, alive, and brave,” comments Nancy Vignola, senior vice president of Home Collection design for Ralph Lauren. Bedding takes on fire-engine shades for both traditional tastes (in the Boulevard collection) and young moderns (the Loft collection). Paired with other colors, including black and white, the all-cotton red sheets come in solids as well as stripes, plaids, paisleys, and florals. Suggested retail prices begin at $20 for a twin sheet in the Boulevard collection and $13 for the same in the Loft series.

Why should anyone really care? Because new ideas from Ralph Lauren evoke imitations in very short order. Thus plenty of big bucks will be riding on the buying public’s reaction. At the very least, you can expect before year’s end to encounter a sea of reds in bedding depart-ments both near and far.

Bed linens from the Ralph Lauren Collection: Boulevard Collection at Polo/Ralph Lauren, 58 Highland Park Shopping Village, 522-5270, and at Foley’s; Loft collection at Foley’s (various locations).