New York landscape firm Harrison Green is the name behind some of the city’s most interesting public and private gardens—on rooftops and terraces, and tiny, hidden backyards. Longstanding members of the Gardenista Architect/Designer directory, the team, run by husband-and-wife duo Damien and Jacqueline Harrison, is full service: they specialize in not only designing, but planting and maintaining their work year-round (The Row and Mark Jacobs are clients).
The Harrisons now stand ready to furnish and accessorize outdoor spaces: Galerie Green, their new online-only emporium, presents hard-to-find antique and vintage garden elements, from 1920s carved wooden mushrooms to carefully refinished French sunburst chairs and stone tables. Their offerings, they say, are about “craftsmanship, proportion, and patina” and the case for “longevity and authenticity over the new and disposable.” Caveat: this is a weighty collection in every sense of the word and prices are steep. Join us for a look at the initial offerings presented in Harrison Green’s own Brooklyn studio garden.
Gardening is often a gateway to birding: As gardeners spend more time in their yards, they begin to notice all the other creatures who enjoy their landscape—and observation quickly turns into a desire to see more birds. Bird-loving gardeners might consider adding a water source in their gardens. In suburban and urban landscapes, fresh water […]
Every so often a DIY project comes across our Instagram feed that stops us in our tracks–as was the case when Omved Gardens shared a video tutorial on building a “bug snug” for hibernating insects. Here was a truly easy to do-it-yourself project that uses materials gardeners likely have on hand (sticks and twine) and solves a common problem (what to do with extra cuttings and slow-to-compost twigs), all while supporting wildlife. We bookmarked it straightaway, but what was even more intriguing was that within a few weeks, we saw other gardeners recreating the bug snug or reposting OmVed’s video on their own feed: This humble garden DIY had gone about as viral as a garden post could go.
Founded in 2017 on a formally tarmacked piece of land in north London’s Highgate Village, Omved Gardens is an educational garden and community space with a focus on biodiversity and permaculture. John Gaffney, the landscape gardener at Omved, says inspiration for the bug snug came from a visit to the Royal Horticultural Society’s Wisley Garden last fall. “When leaving the gardens I noticed these pyramidal structures dotted around the car park,” says Gaffney. “There were signs posted explaining the purpose of these interesting structures and how they were made.” The towers of sticks support insects and invertebrates by providing a safe place to hibernate, and the hollow stems of dead plants, in particular, make excellent little hideaways.
So when Gaffney was left with piles of sticks and hollow stems after preparing Omved’s wildflower beds for winter, he decided to make a smaller-scale version of the pyramids he’d seen at Wisley. “As gardeners, it’s very easy to want to get in the garden and clean up all the mess and the cuttings off the floor. But actually what wildlife wants is a bit of mess,” Gaffney says.And not only are the structures functional and attractive, he notes, they have made for great conversation starters about how to “prepare” for winter and the need to leave a bit of untidiness around for wildlife.
Here’s how to create your own bug snug.
Photography by Will Hearle, courtesy of OmVed Gardens, unless otherwise noted.
Step 1: Build the frame.
Above: Gaffney demonstrates how to create the frame for the bug snug. Stills from video by Will Hearle for OmVed Gardens.
Choose a position for your snug in a sunny spot if possible. Gather three sturdy wood poles of equal length; Gaffney used hazel, but says you can use any straight pieces of wood, including bamboo canes. You can make your snug any size (OmVed’s snugs stand about chest high). Gaffney tied the poles together informally; if you want to get fancy, you can use a clove hitch to create a proper tripod lashing. Once you’ve secured the poles, they should stand up by themselves, but you can knock them into the ground with a hammer or mallet to make the pyramid more secure.
Birdwatching is perhaps one of the most surprising trends to find favor with Gen Z. On TikTok, #birdwatching has notched up 181 million views, and on the Birda app, which identifies and logs birds, almost a quarter of users are under 25, many of whom cite the calming, mental health-boosting effects of spending time in nature as a key reason for watching birds. As a pastime, it’s shrugging off its reputation as an activity for the geeky and older generations. And so too is the kit.
Bird houses and feeders are no longer consigned to twee wooden tables, but earlier this year we were particularly taken by John Hollington’s modernist boxes that appeared on the RSPCA Sanctuary garden at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. We caught up with him to find out more about his work.
Photography courtesy of John Hollington unless otherwise noted.
Above: Hollington’s Corten Nest Box, £52.50, originally designed as a college project.
Hollington’s first career was as an engineer, but one day he visited his local university in York, England, where there was an open day for the BA Product Design course. After a tour of the studios and workshops, he made up his mind to retrain and handed in his notice at work the next day. “Two months later,” he says. “I was studying product design as a mature student in a room full of 18-year-olds!”
Above: The steel nest boxes taking on their rusty patina.
Above: His collection also includes bat boxes, bird feeders, insect panels and the BeePlace designed for bees.
His interest in Brutalism and modernist architecture has been a key inspiration. Angular boxes—for birds or bats—in Corten steel, oak,or blackened oak are punctuated with bold contrasting circles and entry points. His insect habitats in similar materials take this one step further with panels of tiny circles contrasted with decorative panels.
The Corten Nestbox stems from a college project in his second year, when he realized that it was almost impossible to buy boxes with a more modern feel. The box went on to win a design award and was picked up by retailers at public gardens and galleries, including the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, The Hepworth in Wakefield, and Henry Moore Studios in Hertfordshire. The Hepworth has the boxes in their Tom Stuart Smith-designed gardens, too.
Above: The Brutalist Insect Habitat in blackened European oak and weathered Corten steel, £70.
Above: Martyn Wilson’s RSPCA garden at the 2023 Chelsea Flower Show, featuring John’s nest boxes.
This spring, the boxes had their most high-profile outing to date. Designer Martyn Wilson discovered the Nest Box at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and used the boxes in his design for the RSPCA garden at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. He incorporated the boxes into a stone wall, where they were used in groups to attract tree sparrows that nest in groups. Nearby single boxes were used on a blackened hide in Douglas fir and larch. The garden—sponsored by Project Giving Back, in which all show gardens are rehomed after the event—is being relocated to the the RSPCA’s education hub at Stapeley Grange Wildlife Rescue Centre in Cheshire.
