Serenity in the Garden

Summer is here...the magazines tell us to lay back, relax, go to the beach.... well, some of us have to work and for us, the back yard garden is our summer retreat. so in honor of those who are home, puttering away, here are a few ideas to Decorate Summer Style.. Flikr - joyeux artiste - a bird cage with herbs within..try this as a decorative deer protector for susceptible plants! Cox and Cox - Ice White LED Tree Lights Transform your garden into a fairytale in the evening with 250 pinlights.  These are on the lovely Willowleaf Pear. Also ideal for using indoors to decorate an entire room. Love the gate. Plow and Hearth Hang curftains on simple tension roads around your patio or deck...Use sheers for a luminous effect. Candle Lanterns Cox and Cox These fire-retardant paper bags are punched with a star shaped graphic to create a soft romantic glow. Place battery tea lightsinside (weigh down with a bit of gravel in case of breeze) and line them along borders and

The members of the rose clan are an intriguing bunch. These prickly prima donnas lure us with their beauty, enchant us with their aroma and then ....spear us with their thorns. With a 'come hither' look but a 'stay away' barbed body, roses definitely want to be admired but not touched. Sunny Knock Out Rose So it is with that admonition that I urge you to admire - and even plant - one of the seven  members of Conard-Pyle's Knock Out® Family of Roses. Why?  Because they bloom from Spring until frost, are easy to grow, are low maintenance and display great disease resistance. Double Knock Out Rose and Pink Knock Out Roses in one of my Landscapes My favorite is the double Knock Out rose. Its multiple petals give it a luscious look and it can fit into any landscape. Plant them individually among shrubs, annuals and perennials in mixed beds.  Or plant them in large groups to create an eye popping hedge. Double Knock Out Rose - A fantastic display in one of my lan

Green roofs are now being touted as the future but back in 1995 it was pretty radical when Emilio Ambasz and Associates extended Fukuoka's Tenjin Central Park with a terraced building covered in gardens. Ambasz successfully reconciled two opposing aims: maintaining the green space of the existing park while providing the city of Fukuoka with a multi-use, iconic building. The builder referred to it as a "a step-shaped rooftop garden... the image of a mountain as the view from the park." Genius. Go to Treehugger for more on this Project And here we are - 15 years later trying to catch up with Emilio Ambasz... I love his stated philosophy which says, in part: "Man should not see himself as a separate entity, detached from nature, but should accept his existence as part of it. Similarly, the artifacts we create should not be proud aliens, but rather should be designed as carefully and intricately woven extensions of the larger natural and man-made domains su

  There is a lot out there on healing spaces.... When architects and sociologists and others look at what it takes to create healing environments (what I term 'Hospital Makeovers') they end up describing a garden. Not really in those words, of course.... Actually they call it 'Healthcare without the Institution' Photo: Blender Nation - Espoo Hospital, Finland It is an exciting development to see architects list the physical criteria required for healing spaces and it sure sounds like a garden to me. Jack Lenor Larsen's Long House Reserve In a pdf of a slide show given to public health architects, (Public Health Group of the International Union of Architects, November 2009) Zdravko Trivic & Dr Ruzica Bozovic‐Stamenovic & Dr Limin Hee say hospitals should look to shopping centers for inspiration...(click below to see slide show) Multi sensory Healing : Learning from Seductive Design of Contemporary Consumption Spaces   but after looking at the s

Help Proven Winners win the Medal of Excellence Award for its 'Blackberry Punch' Superbell! Proven Winners - one of my favorite plant companies -  learned recently that their new annual flowers, Superbells® Blackberry Punch and Superbells Coralberry Punch Calibrachoa was up to win the prestigious Medal of Excellence Award. And no wonder! Look at that unique color -  its tricolor flowers are deep purple (almost black!) with a yellow center and pink edges. Superbells is Proven Winners' newest variety of Calibrachoa (which are often described as mini petunias).  In 1988 wild samples of Callibrachoa were collected from South America, grown here and then released in 1992 as the 'Million Bells® ' cultivar. They were an instant hit. Superbells® is an improved series that is disease tolerant, self-cleaning and stays compact and bushy even when stressed. This means the compact plant blooms profusely without deadheading and doesn't need to be pinched back to ke

"It is a question of discipline," the little prince said to me later on. "When you've finished your own toilet in the morning, then it is time to attend to the toilet of your planet, just so, with the greatest care.   - 'The Little Prince', Antoine St. Exupery On the planet of the Little Prince, the timeless book by the great Antoine St. Exupery, the baobab seedlings must be pulled up, otherwise they take over the planet:   "You must see to it that you pull up regularly all the baobabs, at the very first moment when they can be distinguished from the rosebushes which they resemble so closely in their earliest youth. It is very tedious work," the little prince added, "but very easy....   The Little Prince Digs up a Baobab seedling " Sometimes," he added, "there is no harm in putting off a piece of work until another day. But when it is a matter of baobabs, that always means a catastrophe. I knew a planet that was inhabited