Mud Office complements a modern Ivanhoe extension with this magnificent green retreat!
Mud Office complements a modern Ivanhoe extension with this magnificent green retreat!
Once a Permaculture garden or yard is established, it is self sustaining, with very little maintenance. We'll cover some tips and resources for permaculture.
Mud Office complements a modern Ivanhoe extension with this magnificent green retreat!
Stroll through our gallery of 15 inspiring suburban gardens with clever landscaping ideas that celebrate the great outdoors.
Mud Office complements a modern Ivanhoe extension with this magnificent green retreat!
Mud Office complements a modern Ivanhoe extension with this magnificent green retreat!
Mud Office complements a modern Ivanhoe extension with this magnificent green retreat!
Stroll through our gallery of 15 inspiring suburban gardens with clever landscaping ideas that celebrate the great outdoors.
IF ANN LE AND STEVEN HUYNH’S GARDEN INSPIRES DAYDREAMING, THAT’S BY DESIGN. A few years ago, the couple hired Terremoto, a landscape design firm known for its “wildness and creativity,” as Ann puts it, to replace their patchy lawn with a garden that would fuel their young daughters’ imaginations. Lead designer Sarah Samynathan’s vision—“to contrast the clean architecture of the midcentury modern house with a soft, playful meadow”—delivered just the kind of landscape the couple had in mind.
You don't often think of grandma's hosta patch as the best place to harvest lunch, but hostas are edible (and delicious). Perhaps it's time to open your eyes to all the wonderful edibles lurking in
These photos are just part of this total transformation of a Chicago suburban yard. A pond and waterfalls were added, along with many other features that we'll…
"The Suburban Micro Farm" by Amy Stross helps you start & maintain your own backyard farm no matter how small your yard might be!
Over 13 years Lily Langham has intuitively transformed her husband's inherited family farmland into a breathtaking, bountiful paradise.
How I'm planning to rewild my Gold Coast backyard to create a pollinator friendly garden filled with Australian native plants.
Plan a front-yard landscape that boosts curb appeal and welcomes you home
Over 13 years Lily Langham has intuitively transformed her husband's inherited family farmland into a breathtaking, bountiful paradise.
THERE IS ONE punctuation mark I shy away from in writing that I should, however, use more in the garden. That’s the exclamation point—which translates
A green-and-white palette and enveloping masses of tiered planting helped shape this suburban Melbourne “country garden in the city”.
Edible landscaping can be an easy way to grow food in the front yard. Learn some strategies for designing a beautiful, low-maintenance edible landscape.
Discover these dream backyards to inspire your own Native Plant Project.
Create a soft, romantic feel in your yard with these garden design ideas and plans.
See how to ditch thirsty turf grass in favor of beautiful, easy-care gardens
Thoughts about our garden. “We desire,” the Emporer dictated, “that in the garden there should be all kinds of plants.” Charlemagne the Great I do a lot of writing about gardens, but our own personal garden has never been the subject of this blog. Our garden is always a backdrop to my thinking about gardens and gardening—a sort of character in my story whose face is never revealed. There are many reasons for this: first, our garden is just in the process of being established; I’m a terrible photographer and our garden is surrounded on three sides by unattractive roads and on one side by our unattractive house; and mostly because the act of gardening feels profoundly personal to me. It was designed for us, for our own pleasure, so the idea of opening for public consumption is a bit terrifying to me. BEFORE: The garden area when we bought the house. But I love other blogs that openly share their own gardens. James Golden’s View from Federal Twist is a brilliant blog about two wonderful gardens. That James bears his own soul through the garden is a source of endless inspiration to me. I’m just not that brave. And Scott Weber’s Rhone Street Garden is another fantastic blog. Scott transforms his small garden into and endless expanse through the lens of his camera. Through his images, I see and enjoy Scott’s garden much in the way he probably does. Nasella tenuissima and Salvia 'Caradonna' So in homage to other bloggers who bravely open their own gardens to public scrutiny, I am adding a few images of our own “in-process” garden. This spring marks two full years since I began smothering a triangular wedge of lawn in our sunny side yard. This area was too small to be a usable lawn, and too close to the road to be an enjoyable outdoor use area, so it seemed like a practical area for a garden. The sipping terrace which my brother-in-law calls the "duck blind" in late summer The house we bought was a neglected mid-century ranch which we essentially gutted, so my wife and I have poured our resources and time into renovating the house room by room. The only way to afford the renovation was to do everything ourselves, so that has left little time and money for the garden. The assembly of plants—and assembly is a much more accurate term than design—is a result of what we could get cheaply, what we could divide, what was available, and what would survive the mid-summer heat and humidity. This approach is probably entirely familiar to most gardeners, yet entirely problematic from my point of view as a designer. The garden becomes a product of impulse purchases and ad hoc decisions, not careful planning. Kniphofia 'Salley's Comet' with Pleioblastus viridistriatus, Nepeta "Walker's Low' and Eschscholzia californica But I’ve decided to embrace this non-designed approach. Design has its limitations, too. Any designer who has ever installed a garden, walked away, and then visited that garden five years later learns that design is not a singular vision set to paper; design is a thousand of little decisions and actions made through the life of the garden. Iris 'Persian Berry', one of the most exquisite colors I've ever seen With no real design to speak of, the garden has only a sort of guiding philosophy: plant only that which gives us pleasure. To use an admittedly pretentious term, our garden is a sort of “pleasaunce” by default, an archaic term for pleasure-garden. The concept of a pleasure garden is a bit antiquated these days. We are now much more likely to call non-food bearing gardens ornamental gardens. But “ornamental” is such a poor descriptive phrase. Who picks plants like they would pick wallpaper? To match their exterior trim? The worst gardens are those that aim to be merely decorative. No, we pick plants to live with us because they give us pleasure. I was recently re-acquainted with the idea of pleasure gardens when I re-read one of my favorite garden books, Rose Standish Nichols’ English Pleasure Gardens. It is a book I often pick up, read a chapter, and then put it away for a while. This century-old book is a compelling story of the English garden as viewed through three centuries of garden history. Throughout the book, one theme keeps emerging throughout the millennia: gardens exist for our pleasure. Christopher Lloyd’s writings have also been an inspiration of late. Perhaps I’ve spent too many years designing gardens, too many years of balancing client’s desires with safe plant selections. I love the almost garish quality of Dixter’s Long Border. The way it thumbs its nose at “tasteful” gray, pink, and blue color harmonies. The way it mixes tropicals, shrubs, perennials into one boisterous expression. Like Dixter, I would love a garden dedicated to nothing but horticultural craftsmanship. ''Beware of harboring too many plants in your garden of which the adjectives graceful and charming perpetually spring to your besotted lips,'' Lloyd warns as he clutches a black-leafed Canna. I love that. Dixter’s great triumph (and perhaps its downfall) is that it employs every tool in the planter’s toolkit all at once. The result is a hot mess, but one of the purest expressions of horticultural exuberance I’ve ever known. And what a joy that is. Cotinus 'Royal Purple' center (coppiced yearly), Savlia sclarea, Miscanthus 'Morning Light' and Alliums Perhaps all gardening is an attempt to re-create Eden, but our garden has absolutely no paradisiacal qualities. As a result of its placement next to an ugly house and an ugly road, we’ve adopted a more postlapsarian style. In the border, we have an ecumenical selection of wetland plants, desert grasses, South African bulbs, native forbs, and color foliage shrubs. Anything goes as long as it goes. The other side of our yard, we are beginning another more restrained garden evocative of a woodland edge. But in the border, there is no room for restraint, only more and more plants. Nasella tenuissima, Salvia 'Caradonna' and Allium 'Purple Sensation' In this blog, I am often guilty of heaping too much meaning on gardens, burying a simple act under too many metaphors. Perhaps it is an effort to justify my own profession, to add more significance to my calling than actually exists. If a garden exists simply for our own pleasure, what then? Perhaps that is enough. All I know is that gardening is hard work that reveals many agonies and few ecstasies. So despite the garden’s many flaws and failings, when the afternoon sun hits a patch of Feather grass and silhouettes the violet stems of Salvia ‘Caradonna’, it is enough for me. For now, I am pleased. Phlomis tuberosa and Hibiscus 'Fantasia' The ever ubiquitious, but entirely useful Spiraea 'Goldflamme' with Zahara Zinnias Our native-ish garden, planted this srping.
Early mornings have a bad reputation. Everyone wants to sleep in. Nobody wants to wake up early. But then that’s modern living, I guess. Early mornings have been tainted by their associated with work
Not sure what type of garden suits your style and taste? Use this page to inspire your garden dreams.
The downside of a lot of typical American neighborhoods is that from the outside, all of the houses look almost exactly alike. But if you want to make your house stand out from the pack, or just make it a little easier for visitors and delivery men to find your home, there plenty of things you can do to give your home a unique look that don’t involve remodeling. Some of them might even be allowed by your HOA. 1.
Not everyone has the land available to create a grand entrance to their back garden.If you live in a suburban community, it is very likely that there are two na…
A lusciously leafy little garden in Brunswick, Victoria proves that size isn't everything.
When it comes to gardening, anything goes. These ideas will show that all you need’s a little creativity and some elbow grease. Anyone can use number 5!
Stroll through our gallery of 15 inspiring suburban gardens with clever landscaping ideas that celebrate the great outdoors.
In the first decade of America’s post-war boom, a million and a half new houses were built, creating vast tracts of suburbia and giving young families their first opportunity to own a home. Nowadays,
In the first decade of America's post-war boom, a million and a half new houses were built, creating vast tracts of suburbia and giving young families thei
I think I struck a cord with my last post highlighting a small suburban shade garden. Obviously gardeners are hungry for planting suggestions for shade. In this…
