Reimagine the Rose Garden

Long, formal rows of perfectly spaced bushes are not the only way to incorporate roses into your landscape. Planted among other perennials or evergreens, or bunched together in no particular pattern, roses can l

Garden Design Essentials: Color

Anyone who has walked into a room painted in a dull or garish palette knows the power of color. Color intuitively influences our emotions, whether we’re in a soothing spa environment or an electrifying casino. I

4 Fabulously Low-Maintenance Garden Focal Points

Fire and water make great focal points, but they are often high-maintenance additions to your landscape. There are plenty of other ways to draw eyes in a particular direction. Here are four focal points that ar

Garden Design Essentials: Unity and Variety

A work devoid of a unifying element is liable to seem haphazard and chaotic. A work that is totally unified, with no variety, can seem boring. These two principles are interlocked, writes Marjorie Elliott Bevlin

Unsung Garden Hero: Fantastic Foliage

Plant color in the garden is never just about flowers. Other plant features such as stems, berries and seed pods also give us an amazing diversity of color, but most of all its about foliage. Foliage is often o

6 Stunning Silver-Leaf Plants

I love all kinds of plants, its true, but if I had to choose, its no contest: Silver plants have been my biggest obsession for years now. You may be familiar with silver plants for sun, and there are many — inde

Lay of the Landscape: Create the Beauty of a Japanese Garden

A Japanese garden may seem bare and minimalist, but designing a true Japanese garden is not a simple task. Every element of its design is carefully chosen and placed to create a look of seamless beauty that refl

Garden Tour: Colorful, Serene Woodland Near Boston

Six years ago this garden in Massachusetts was a neglected landscape overrun with invasives like poison ivy, bittersweet and euonymus. However, a couple with a 2-year-old son and a dog saw past the tangled yard,

Soften Modern Landscape Lines With Plants

Have you ever stepped inside a space that was stunning but was just missing something you couldnt put your finger on? Have you walked into a room and felt like there were too many boxy shapes everywhere, too ma

Garden Design Gets Down to Details

Details often determine a purchase: the stitching on a jacket, the neat switches on a toaster or the smooth metal trim on an iPhone. Gardens are the same — those small touches of brilliance in the details comple

Garden Design Essentials: Balance

The idea of balance is deeply ingrained in our DNA. We humans couldnt walk without balance. We feel at peace when a scene is visually balanced; we are agitated when what we see appears out of balance. We almost

Lay of the Landscape: Cottage Garden Style

Mention the term cottage garden and most of us imagine a colorful, fragrant garden filled with billowing perennials, all surrounded by a picket fence. Ornaments, trellises, arbors and benches are nestled among t

Urns Hold Huge Potential for Garden Decorating

There have been odes written about them, and theyve stored everything from wine to cremated ashes. Today, we typically use urns in a range of styles as decoration throughout our homes and in the garden. Lately l

16 Stunners From an English Garden Center

After a dry, benign winter in England, the weather fought back in April. The country had the wettest April on record, and our gardens have suffered. With the arrival of May, weve had a respite as well as a chanc

Give Your Garden a Gate Mate

Do you need to keep little critters out of your garden? Or nosy neighbors? Or maybe you just need privacy in your backyard. No matter what your problem is, odds are that a great gate is the answer.Its easy to fi

Strokes of Genius: 8 Stunning Lap Pools

Maybe you long for a pool to cool you off during the hot months, but your skinny yard wont hold one. Or perhaps youre an all-business kind of swimmer: You want to get in, plow through your workout and dry off wi

Garden Design Essentials: Emphasis and Focal Points

When you view a beautiful room, where does your eye rest? Its usually on something special that commands your attention, such as a piece of artwork above the fireplace or a dramatic floral arrangement on a coffe

Flower Spikes Nail Impact in Summer Gardens

Is your perennial garden lacking in structure? Consider the spike. Sure, it might not be the most romantically named shape, but man, does it pack a visual punch. There are spikes for every season, but its always

Highlights of the 2012 Chelsea Flower Show

In spring 2012, landscape designer Cleve West, who not only won Best Show Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2011 but also repeated the feat at the 2012 show, addressed a meeting of the British Society of Gard

Garden Tour: Formal French Design on Lake Minnetonka

When homeowners who love to entertain bought this house on Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota, the house and grounds needed a complete renovation. They wanted to enjoy the yard with their children and guests and create