Beyond Blooms: 8 Bold Ways to Inject Color Into Your Garden

Plants arent the only path to a vibrant garden. From painted furniture to colored glass, structural elements can deliver year-round drama that flowers alone cant match. Here are eight strategies to saturate your outdoor

Transform Your Landscape with Boulders: High-Impact, Low-Cost Solutions

Homeowners often overlook boulders when planning their landscapes, perhaps assuming these massive rocks come with equally massive price tags. As a landscape designer, I can assure you that boulders are frequently one of

Koi Ponds: Beautiful in Any Garden Style

Koi ponds are staples of Asian and tropical gardens, but they adapt surprisingly well to traditional, rustic, contemporary, and even Mediterranean designs. The key is integrating the pond so it feels inevitable, not impo

Your Guide to Garden Edging: From Free Trenches to Premium Stone

Gardens mix plants, mulch, gravel, grass—edging keeps them in their lanes. Heres a rundown of popular edging materials from least to most expensive, with pros, cons, and maintenance notes. 1. Trench Edging (Free) A sh

Growing Bamboo in Small Gardens: Clumping, Running, and Container Tips

Bamboo is amazing—few plants provide such an elegant screen for unsightly views while requiring very little horizontal space. The plethora of varieties, sizes, colors, and growth habits ensures a bamboo for almost any ga

Revisiting John Brookes' Revolutionary Garden Design Philosophy

In the 1950s, British suburban gardens were lawn-centric with borders and vegetable patches—a legacy of Dig for Victory. Then came John Brookes 1969 book Room Outside, which reframed gardens as places for people, not jus

5 Structural Plants to Give Your Garden Strong Bones

Plants with bold silhouette, opacity, and durability are the first building blocks of a landscape. From Italian lake gardens to urban courtyards, structural plants impart rigidity, symmetry, and year-round presence. Here

How to Choose the Right Flooring for Your Garden Room

Every outdoor room needs a floor—paths, decks, patios, lawns, groundcovers. If you can walk, store, or roll on it, its a floor. Dirt is cheap but muddy. The right choice balances practicality, beauty, and sustainability.

Living Sculptures at the Montreal Botanical Garden: Mosaiculture 2013

Summer 2013 brought a menagerie of living sculptures to the Montreal Botanical Garden: gorillas, lemurs, cranes, and more—crafted through mosaiculture, the art of installing pruned plants onto 2D and 3D forms. Fifty part

Great Design Plant: Catalina Ironwood – A Tree of Antiquity for Dry Gardens

Native to the dry Channel Islands off Southern California, Catalina ironwood (Lyonothamnus floribundus ssp. asplenifolius) looks like a shaggy relic from Californias past. Its peeling reddish-brown bark and ferny foliage

Creating a Gothic Garden: Mystery, Serenity, and Victorian Revival Style

Gothic gardening isnt about horror—its about the Victorian revival of medieval architecture: slender vertical pillars, pointed arches, emphasis on height and light. Combined with naturalistic plantings and rich colors, t

Stylish, Subtle Backyard Privacy Solutions

Even friendly neighbors deserve boundaries. Fences and walls work, but freestanding screens, wood slats, pergolas, and plants offer privacy with personality. Landscape architects Bruce Clodfelter and Stephanie Bartron ag

An Austin Backyard Wall That Does More Than Block a View

An unsightly three-story apartment building loomed over a renovated bungalows backyard. Designers Jennifer Orr and Ilse Frank of Studio Balcones didnt just screen it—they designed an 8-foot moviewall that redirects the v

Designing Gardens of Experience: Simplicity, Exploration, Mystery, and Local Roots

Wild landscapes—meadows of broom sedge, boulder-laden streams, tapestries of bluebells—need no irrigation, fertilizer, or truckloads of mulch. They teach us to seat a home in a landscape, not decorate it with landscaping

The Art of Restraint: Why Simple, Bold Plantings Make Better Gardens

Classic English gardens demand constant management and large budgets. The New American garden takes a different cue: look to regional landscapes for inspiration. Large masses of plants in restrained, monocultural blocks

Restoring a Coastal Maine Landscape: From Construction Damage to Ecological Renewal

A 3-acre coastal Maine property, devastated by construction damage, insect infestation, and Hurricane Hanna, has been reborn as a thriving Acadian garden. Landscape architect Matthew Cunningham healed erosion, planted na

Energize Your Landscape with Mass Plantings of Ornamental Grasses

Grasses bring movement, light, shadow, and seasonal evolution to the garden. Planted in masses, they become the landscapes dominant voice—harmonizing architecture with the regional environment through simple, bold palett

Mastering Juxtaposition: Contrast and Compare for Dynamic Garden Design

Great gardens, like great dishes, thrive on tension—sweet vs. sour, smooth vs. rough. Juxtaposition places contrasting elements side by side to create visual energy. By pairing plants or hardscape that share one or two t

Lighting Outdoor Steps: Safety Meets Style

Nighttime gardens are magical—but dark steps are hazardous. The right lighting ensures safe navigation without turning your yard into a parking lot. From subtle riser lights to dramatic colored LEDs, heres how to illumin

6 Creative Ways to Use Ground Covers in Your Garden

Ground covers do more than suppress weeds—they unify plantings, soften hardscape, and add texture. With varieties for sun, shade, wet, and dry conditions, theres a ground cover for every niche. Just research growth habit