Design Style and Theme Posts
5 Container Tips and 5 Recipes
Follow These Easy Container Tips get the most beauty from your patio plants Use sphagnum moss to retain moisture. Planting in sun? Don’t use dark colored containers which soak up more heat. Use the largest containers to give your plants the best root growing environment. Larger containers look more impressive, too. How you water is an extremely important part of container gardening. Use a good potting soil, water often. Choose plant companions with similar water, soil, and light needs Add worm castings to your container soil and...
read moreYour Own French Potager
There are Kitchen gardens, and then there is the French potager. Like saying, there is cuisine, and then there is French cuisine. You may interpret the distinction in your own mind, but I think there is a subcategory that the French potager holds as all its own in the concept of kitchen gardens. Just as we have come to appreciate the special inflection of the Cottage garden in feeling and style, the French potager has its own flavor that springs from the context of a rich cultural history that holds food, art, and beauty and enjoyment of...
read moreWinter Outlines Garden Bones
Winter is a stark time for most of us in a temperate climate. Doubly so when a fresh snowfall creates lines and shapes, filled in with snowy white. We then see our garden in silhouette, and all its features are outlined for us to better judge the proportions and dimensions of our larger plantings and hardscaping. This is when we can decide how to improve the garden’s structure to give shape to the billowing foliage and blossoming flowers of the growing season. The winter garden is a feature in its own right, as well. “Good bones are...
read moreGarden Ornaments: To Have or Have Not?
Garden ornaments are a tricky topic. You are going to risk offending someone or another if you say something is tacky… and it is just your opinion, anyway, right? Well, though my own taste tends towards the garden of little and classic ornament, I have seen all sorts of flourishes done well. From the Medicis influenced by Hadrian’s sculptures and garden to fifty’s style flamingos and those ubiquitous garden gnomes, there is such a breadth of design sense in gardens that we might almost say there is none at all, but I...
read moreContainers of Flowers
Pretty Up Just About Anyplace Be sure to see…Favorite Container Ideas5 Container Tips Creating your own brightly colored accents Containers make eye catching focal points, or can even comprise an entire garden picture when grouped together. With the variety within the components of container style, size, and combination of plants the effects and uses are many. Container gardening has become increasingly popular due to the easy effects and versatility for the busy gardener. Traditionally, containers are often seen as urns on garden...
read moreThe Cutting Garden
Like the kitchen garden, and sometimes a part of it, the cutting garden is made in response to desire for fresh bouquets and flowers for arrangements. “Arrangements” sounds formal, like the professional florists art, and you may have that in mind, but many people just like to pick a bunch of flowers, stick them casually into a Mason jar on the table, a simple water pitcher, or a humble vase, and enjoy! A cutting garden serves in both the formal art of flower arranging for floral artists and the mood brightening everyday bouquets...
read moreThe Herb Garden
An herb garden is a delight, learn more about how to incorporate herbs into your own landscape plan.
read moreA Serenity Garden
Garden Retreats Making a peaceful place Any portion of a garden can become a place of peace and repose, and I think it is well worth making at least a spot in the garden a place of quiet and reflection. Better yet, creating a theme garden dedicated to a feeling of calm and relaxed enjoyment. Many of the accouterments in making this type of retreat would depend on what the gardener finds personally peace-invoking, but there are certain aspects of a garden generally found to be important to a calm and peaceful feeling in an outdoor space....
read moreNew American Garden Style
Lower Maintenance Gardening……..letting the ‘genius loci’ speak to you While there are erudite books and articles on the topic, I will give you my own interpretation of how I see this style, especially as it is developing in popular gardening. Previously, if you read the components of xeriscaping, you likely read a bit about the New American garden style. The idea or feeling of a place is comprised of many things, and it is this that makes a “style” as we recognize it. A worksheet to help you think out...
read moreEnglish Garden Style
There will always be a place in our gardens for the English style to be a choice, but it is tempered with realistic notions of what our time, space, and interest will allow. English gardening will always require constant attention to a carefully cultivated landscape, that is what makes it so beautiful and intensely personal a style of design.
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