8 Ways to Rev Up Your Garden Color With More Than Just Plants

Dare to add some dramatic color to the garden this year. There are many ways to bring bold splashes of color to your patio, border or lawn, such as simply throwing a few bright accessories around, painting a cha

Roll With Boulders for High Landscape Impact

Boulders are sometimes overlooked by homeowners for landscape use, and Im not sure why, when these oversize rocks can be used to address any number of issues. It may be that people believe that anything that lar

Koi Find Friendly Shores in Any Garden Style

Koi ponds are almost a staple of certain landscapes, particularly Asian- or tropical-inspired styles, and are easily at home in many contemporary gardens. If you love koi but these landscape styles dont appeal,

Your Mini Guide to Great Garden Edges

Most of our landscapes have an assortment of materials — plants, mulch, gravel, grass — so how do you keep everything neat and orderly? We want grass to stay in the lawn and out of the beds and mulch to stay in

Small Garden? You Can Still Do Bamboo

Bamboo is amazing. There are few other plants that provide such an elegant screen for unsightly views while requiring very little horizontal space to flourish. The plethora of varieties, sizes, colors and growth

Lets Revisit Some Revolutionary Garden Thinking

I grew up in the 1950s, and I remember our garden as being typical of the period: composed of a central lawn surrounded by borders and a vegetable patch with fruit trees at the back — a result of the U.K.s Dig f

5 Structural Plants to Frame Your Garden Beautifully

First and foremost a plantsman, I have always been lured by rarity, charmed by botanical minutiae and enthralled by novelty. As I turned my attention to art and design, I learned to look at and think of plants i

How to Pick the Right Floor for Your Garden Room

Every room needs a floor, and outdoor garden rooms are no exception. Paths, decks, patios, overlooks, trash can storage pads, lawns, ground cover plantings ... they’re all floors. If you can walk on it, store so

Living Sculptures Delight at the Montreal Botanical Garden

If you wander through the Montreal Botanical Garden this summer, youll find furrow-browed gorillas peering from the shrubs, a row of ring-tailed lemurs walking down the road and massive red cranes towering over

Great Design Plant: Catalina Ironwood, a Tree for Antiquity

Native to the dry, lonely islands off Southern California, Catalina ironwood is like a shaggy, well-worn page out of California history. Its a striking tree with the peely-bark look of an antique relic — perfect

Get the Mystery of a Gothic Garden for Yourself

Gothic gardening may bring thoughts of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein and Victorian novels, but Gothic garden design simply follows the architectural style predominant in Western Europe at the time; from the 12th ce

Get Backyard Privacy the Subtler, Stylish Way

Lets face it: Even though we love our neighbors, we all occasionally want to step outside without having to strike up a conversation. Although fences and brick walls can do the trick, adding an extra divider, sc

In Austin, a Backyard Wall Provides More Than Privacy

We put up walls to divide space, to enclose or drive things away. In this Austin backyard, however, an 8-foot-tall wall brings everything together. An unsightly three-story apartment building behind a familys ne

From the Wild, Home: Elements of a Landscape of Experience

The palpable experience of nature teaches us some powerful lessons when developing our home gardens. In the wild, meadows of tawny orange broom sedge in the fall, boulder-laden streams that meander around gnarly

Why the Art of Restraint Is So Good for Your Garden

The era of classic English gardens brought the beauty of herbaceous plants to public light. Eventually, these beautiful works were brought across the pond to the United States, where the same plants melted in th

Sublime Coastal Woods Gain a Healthy New Foothold in Maine

This woodsy coastal Maine landscape looks as if it has been this way for centuries, but a few years ago it had been devastated by construction damage at its edges plus insects and Hurricane Hanna. The understory

Energize Your Landscape With Masses of Grasses

Growing up with a meadow in my backyard informed my love of grasses in the garden, but building, observing and managing gardens gave me confidence in grasses effectiveness. The way they dance in the wind, reflec

Dare to Mix Things Up in the Landscape

We gardeners have many reasons for doing what we do: for braving mosquitoes and poison ivy, for dragging mud into the house on our shoes, for drenching our clothes in sweat. At the end of the day, our efforts sh

No Fall Guys, Please: Ideas for Lighting Your Outdoor Steps

The garden at night can be magical. But we humans arent the best at seeing in the dark, so it also can be dangerous, especially if you have stairways, steps or uneven surfaces. With the right lighting, though, y

6 Great Ways With Garden Ground Covers

Ground cover plants play an important role in the garden. Characterized by their low-growing forms and ability to strangle weeds with a carpet of vegetation, ground covers provide many benefits to almost any out