Garden Design and Installation

Faux Bois: False Wood

February 1, 2012 9 comments
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I admit it: I love Martha Stewart. She drives me crazy, but her involved-yet-ever-so-elegant craft projects? Her table centerpieces? And her recipes which cause me to swoon (when reading) and curse (when preparing – I mean, who wants to spend six hours on a cupcake recipe?). She’s the queen of aspirational living. So when Martha [...]

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Wildlife Miscellany: Trends, Native Plant Books, and Special Thanks to Carole Brown

January 26, 2012 1 comment
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A quick wrap-up of some recent posts on wildlife gardening from around the web. . . You know how I love to read the garden trend reports at the start of each year, and this year I’m seeing a lot of trends that I like. Over at Beautiful Wildlife Gardens, Carole Brown posted a list [...]

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Bored of Your Winter View?

January 25, 2012 0 comments
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Perk things up this winter by adding some winter-interest plants, attracting birds, and creating colorful containers out of cut stems and evergreen boughs. That’s my advice over at Landscaping Network, where I talk about some superstar plants and some non-intuitive ways of bringing birds to your winter garden. A special tip o’ the nib to [...]

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Don’t Do This: The Garden Designers’ Roundtable on Horrible Landscaping Blunders

January 24, 2012 23 comments
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This post might get a little ugly. Scratch that. It’s definitely getting ugly. Today, I’ve got a quick round up of some of the worst offenders I’ve seen in professionally installed landscapes. Roving bamboo, landscape fabric stifling tree trunks, unhappy plants suffering a variety of maladies. . . and all of it easily preventable. Want [...]

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2012 Garden Trends: What the Cool Kids are Planting This Year

January 16, 2012 26 comments
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I have a weakness for all the trend reports that come out at the start of each new year. While I have my own ideas about what’s going to be hot, I love to pore over these reports and alternately nod my head or think (hope!) the writer is crazy. Trend reports are a fun [...]

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Perennial Plant Pick for 2012: Jack Frost Brunnera

January 5, 2012 7 comments
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I have mixed feelings about the Perennial Plant Association’s plant pick of 2012. I mean, I love it and all. Jack Frost Brunnera (Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’) is one of those shade plants that seems to thrive wherever you stick it, looks elegant and classy in a variety of gardening themes, and is unusual enough [...]

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The Color of the Year, Adapted for Deer: The Garden Designers Roundtable on Deer

December 12, 2011 31 comments
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Pantone’s just released their top pick for 2012 color of the year – Tangerine Tango – so given the Garden Designers Roundtable topic for the month is deer – it seemed a perfect excuse to talk about Bright! Orange! Plants! for the deer-resistant garden. While selecting a color of the year is an obvious marketing [...]

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Selling Your Home? Score Some Curb Appeal Fast

November 17, 2011 3 comments
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When selling your home, it really stinks to spend money on improvements that you may not recoup. However, it stinks worse to have your perfectly lovely home sit for ages, unsold, because that first impression isn’t all it could be. Recently, I wrote about a few weird tricks that are inexpensive but generate some serious [...]

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Deep Dark Plants for Halloween and Beyond

October 30, 2011 4 comments
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Photo at left: Mackerel showing his love of Phormium ‘Black Adder’ October always makes me want to curl up with my gardening books and highlight the deliciously wicked black plants found within. But you don’t need to limit black and dark plants to Halloween. They can fit into pretty much any garden scheme, from English [...]

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Dark Designs (Garden Designers Roundtable on Darkness)

October 25, 2011 19 comments
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With Halloween around the corner, what more appropriate topic for the Garden Designers Roundtable to tackle than darkness? Specifically, dark and black foliage. Black is dramatic. Unexpected. It’s all about contrast – between dark and light, living and dead. Like a glittered Day of the Dead skeleton, there’s a playfulness there, along with a somber [...]

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