Tag: Garden Design 101

Ask the Expert: Tom Eaglestone on How to Reuse Preexisting Materials in Your Garden – Gardenista

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We’ve been noticing lately that a talent for stonework is more than an extra feather in the cap for garden designers. Wilder planting can stand or fall on the hard landscaping; crisp edges are one way of signifying that “here is a garden.”

Ecological garden designer Tom Eaglestone, based in Bath, on the edge of the Cotswolds, is as stone-obsessed as he is plant-obsessed. The native stone there is glorious, but he uses other materials as well. It just depends on what he finds on site. “I’ve always tried to see what’s already in the garden and what we can find; that makes a lot of sense for me,” he explains. Crazy patchwork paving is one way of dealing with random shapes of stone: “It’s a funny thing—people think it looks complicated, or very hard, but when you work with what you’ve got, it’s so satisfying when exactly the right piece of stone fits into the jigsaw.”

Below, we ask him our burning questions about how to be more sustainable in our approach to hardscaping.

Photography courtesy of Eaglestone Gardens.

How do you match your materials to your setting?

Above: A Costswold home, through and through, from the ground up.

Eaglestone is fortunate to live and work in southwest England, known for its honey-colored limestone. The buildings seem to rise out of the rock, and it follows that pathways, edgings, and walls would be made from the same materials. When gardeners import Cotswold stone to other parts of the country, it can look completely wrong. Stone should to come from a local quarry. Materials found on site, hidden under hedges, in flower beds, lying around here and there, lead the way.

Above: A water spout made from a boulder that was helped along. Tom loves to use stone that “just feels right.”

“There is something deeply satisfying about taking characterful, trodden, marked, and weather-beaten stone—stone that must have been around a very long time—and repurposing into something new and cohesive and aesthetically pleasing,” says Tom. “It is very absorbing, tactile work.”

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February 20, 2026
Before and After: From Yard to Garden, London Edition – Gardenista

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Susanna Grant is a garden designer and co-director of Care, Not Capital, with the irrepressible John Little (we wrote about him here). With help from “lots of excellent gardeners and ecologists,” they offer a free program that helps to equip trainees with the skills needed for “modern gardening.” Susanna explains: “The main idea is shifting the emphasis and some of the budget away from hard landscaping and infrastructure towards planting, habitat creation—and gardeners.”

This little yard in North London was transformed by Susanna for like-minded clients, who had already successfully campaigned with their Islington neighbors to get the local authorities to install some planters on a sad stretch of sidewalk, which they described as a “disused piece of pavement.” They asked Susanna to make a wildlife garden there; then asked her to help them with their own disused backyard.

Let’s take a closer look at the transformation:

Photography by Susanna Grant.

Above: A lot of plants and a consistent palette in the hardscaping make a small space seem bigger. “It was a tough brief as the owner wanted interesting plants: lots of planting plus room. I think it shows what you can fit in a space.”

Above: “The back garden is tiny, north-facing and quite boxed in,” says Susanna. “It backs onto flats, and rather than try to pretend they weren’t there, I wanted to ensure the view from the house focused the eye on the planting—not up and beyond.”

Above: “The client wanted interesting plants,” continues Susanna. “Although my scheme was predominantly quite woodland because of the aspect, there was an existing banana, nandina domestica and acer palmatum which I needed to work around. I added an Abutilon ‘Canary Bird’ right next to the house as it flowers for most of the year and picks up on the vibe of some of the existing plants.”

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January 30, 2026
10 Ways to Save Money on a New Patio – Gardenista

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If you’re upgrading an existing landscape, you can reuse pavers from an old path or patio to create your new outdoor space.

7. Build a patio in stages.

Above: Photograph by Brett Wood, courtesy of Dirt Queen NYC, from Before & After: A Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, Backyard Reimagined.

To save money on construction costs, build a patio in sections. If you need to have soil compacted to create a solid base for a patio, plan ahead by leveling the entire area. Then build the patio in stages, as your budget allows for expansion. In the meantime, you can cover the unused area with mulch.

8. Mix and match materials.

Above: The concrete pad at the edge of the deck was existing when the homeowners bought the house. Photograph courtesy of Terremoto, from Before & After: From Desert to Redwood Forest, the Essence of California in One LA Garden.

“The first thing you do in a small garden project is to take inventory to do an analysis, so you can make decisions about the things that are existing and are good,” says landscape architect David Godshall of Terremoto, who elected to salvage an existing concrete patio as part of a garden rehab (shown above) in Los Angeles.

Mixing materials—such as redwood decking and poured concrete—can add interest and texture to a patio (while saving money).

9. Create a focal point with inexpensive furnishings.

Above: Ikea chairs flank a ceramic stool-turned-side table. Photograph by Matthew Williams.

Instead of expensive outdoor furniture, you can hang a hammock to create a focal point for the patio. Create a seating arrangement with flea market finds or outdoor furniture from Ikea—versatile pieces can do double duty indoors in the off season.

1o. Define a patio’s perimeter with potted plants.

Above: See more at Enchanted Garden: Whimsy and Wit at Palihouse in Santa Monica. Photograph by Bethany Nauert.

Building a fence or wall around a patio is an expensive undertaking. A budget-friendly alternative to create privacy is to group together a few tall potted plants.

See more ideas:

N.B.: This post was first published January 2019; it has been updated with new photos, prices, and links.

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January 22, 2026
Expert Advice: 9 Tips for a Moody Winter Garden – Gardenista

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In fall the Instagram feeds of many of our favorite gardeners, quite understandably, start to wither or move indoors. Not so that of Dutch garden designer Frank Heijligers. Indeed, much like the dames of imperial Russia, who, rather that retreating from the cold, donned furs and tiaras in anticipation of the social high season, Frank’s winter garden seemed to reach the height of its sparkling charm.

Enchanted, we decided to ask Frank, who grows grasses, perennials, trees, and shrubs at his nursery, Plantwerk, to divulge his secrets for a successful winter garden. Here are his nine tips for adding sparkle and moody color:

Photography by Frank Heijligers.

Embrace black.

Above: Now a dramatic black, the once purple cones of Agastache ‘Black Adder’ still stand tall in the frosty winter garden.

“Successful winter gardens need a lot of plants with good structure in them,” says Frank. “The plants have to be strong and have more than one interest: nice foliage, bloom, color, seed head, change of color in fall, strong skeleton in winter.”

Showcase long-lasting seedheads.

Above: Like spectators at the ballet, crowds of Monarda ‘Croftway Pink’ seedheads watch a changing fall landscape.

Fill the gaps.

Above: Because plants with good structure tend to bloom later, Frank notes that the successful four-season garden “starts with having a little more patience in spring.” To fill in the gap, he uses bulbs. Alliums, which maintain a sculptural seed head after they have gone by, are a good choice.

Above: One of Frank’s gardens in summer. Though lust and leafy, it still maintains a textured feel.

Consider frost-proof plants.

Above: A similar border garden in winter, when the regal heads of Phlomis take on a silver sheen.

“Hosta or Alchemilla mollis are plants that look good early on in the year, but with the first bit of frost, they collapse,” Frank says. “You need plants like Phlomis, Aster, Eupatorium, Veronicastrum, and Anemone combined with grasses like Deschampsia, Miscanthus, Sporobolus, and Festuca mairei to make the garden look good until March.”

Above: Another sculptural favorite: Veronicastrum ‘Pink Spike.’

Bonus: Birds love all the leftover seedheads in Frank’s hibernal garden.

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January 15, 2026
Magic in Maidenhead: An English Garden That Glows in the Winter – Gardenista

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When Sarah Pajwani and her family moved into their house near Maidenhead (an hour from London) in 2011, it was surrounded by an “overgrown field.” Having created a design rationale with the help of professional landscapers, Sarah set about filling her garden with plants of her choice, border by border. Despite her best efforts, in winter she would gaze out of the windows and still feel that there was nothing to look at.

Now, every garden-facing room in the house frames a different aspect of the winter scene, and the house has a lot of windows. Dare we suggest that winter is the garden’s best season? We can report that Saint Timothee, as it is called, was the first garden of the year to be open for the National Garden Scheme and Sarah gave us a tour.

Read on for 11 clever design ideas from Sarah to make the garden glow in the winter:

Photography by Britt Willoughby Dyer, for Gardenista.

1. Red Twig Dogwood

Above: A row of glowing red Cornus sanginea ‘Midwinter Fire’ brings out the best in Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii. Famously vivid in spring, the euphorbia holds on to its structure and excellent leaf color in winter.

Saint Timothee is a picture of 1930s gentility, with an Enid Blyton kind of name. Yet the garden is not in a time warp. Sarah uses colorful stems, scented shrubs (such as Lonicera fragrantissima, Viburnum x bodnantese ‘Dawn’, Sarcococca confusa), sparsely flowering trees (Prunus x subhirtella ‘Autumnalis’) as well as grasses mixed with evergreens to brighten the winter scene. Several paths and borders lead the eye from one of the inside windows, across the garden.

2. Mixed Grasses

Above: Smoldering dogwood stems draw attention to the drama of super-sized pampas grass, flanking a pond.

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January 13, 2026
The Beauty of Decay: 10 Perennials to Add Structure to a Winter Garden – Gardenista

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As gardens fade and the days darken, it’s tempting to forget about what’s going on outdoors until early spring when everything jolts back into life. But this is a missed opportunity. Careful plant choices can reap major benefits in the winter.

It’s well known that certain trees and shrubs can play a leading role in the coldest season, but the right perennials and grasses also can look mesmerizing. By focusing on a plant’s structure and its ability to retain its shape, you can create schemes that look incredible in the fourth season. Read on to discover which plants will maximize this effect and learn to embrace the beauty of winter decay:

Thistles

Above: Thistles in February. Photograph by Feathering the Nest via Flickr.

Spiky plants and thistles including teasel, echinops, and eryngiums tend to hold their structure brilliantly in the winter.

Echinops

Above: Globe echinops. Photograph by Tobias Myrstrand Leander via Flickr.

In winter, the stiff purple-blue heads of echinops turn brown and maintain their posture.

Grasses

Above: Grasses and perennials in December at Torrey Pines Nature Reserve in La Jolla, California. Photograph by Anne Reeves via Flickr.

Play off these strong forms with billowing clumps of airy grasses such as Deschampsia cespitosa or Molinia caerulea which will fade to blond and buff colors over late autumn and early winter.

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December 4, 2025
Before & After: A 1940s-Suburban House Grows Up Gracefully in Mill Valley, CA – Gardenista

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In the first decade of America’s post-war boom, a million and a half new houses were built, creating vast tracts of suburbia and giving young families their first opportunity to own a home. Nowadays, however, homebuyers who stumble on a 1940s relic in vintage condition often wonder if it’s worth it to buy a house that needs a major remodel?

For Raleigh and Michael Zwerin, the answer was yes. In 2004 they bought a circa-1944 cottage in Mill Valley, California. From the moment they moved in, baby in tow, they started thinking about the house they wished they had. Nearly a decade later, after having a second baby (and learning firsthand that the charming creeks that crisscrossed the neighborhood were prone to flood in winter), they asked architect Kelly Haegglund for help.

For Haegglund, who lives just a few blocks from the Zwerins, the challenge was to design a modern-family-sized house that didn’t loom like the Hulk over the rest of the neighborhood, where one-story bungalows and cottages were built on narrow lots. The result? A modern three-bedroom bungalow with pleasing architectural details borrowed from the Arts and Crafts era. A low-water landscape, designed by Mill Valley-based Bradanini & Associates, surrounds the house in year-round greenery.

Photography by Mimi Giboin.

Above: After searching for months for just the right dark stain color, Raleigh Zwerin suddenly saw it by accident when she drove by a house under construction in nearby San Francisco.

“I went back to that house in the city several times until I met the lead contractor and asked him for the color, but he said the owner of the house said it was proprietary information and he didn’t want to give it out,” says Raleigh. Luckily, though, the contractor took pity on her plight. “He said, ‘I’ll meet you somewhere and give you a shingle so you can match the color.’ We ended up in a rendezvous by the side of the road. He brought two shingles in his truck, I brought a box of cookies, and it was great.”

The custom trim color? The Zwerins also gleaned it from the same side-of-the-road exchange.

Above: A curtain of cape rush (Chrondopetalum elephantinum) will reach heights of from 4 to 6 feet, creating an airy screening layer behind the picket fece.

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September 5, 2025
Before & After: Should It Stay or Should It Go? In Praise of Inherited Plants (And Soil, And Concrete) – Gardenista

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When Jane Orvis and Steve Hanson bought their 1950s house in Seward Park, Seattle, they kept the original pink-tiled bathroom. But what about the mid-century shrubbery, arranged around a lawn—did that have to stay? Most people would reply, “absolutely not,” but Jane, who is a keen gardener, wanted to take a more closed-loop approach and consulted with the landscape architect Jonathan Hallet, of Supernature. On a joint visit to the Seattle Arboretum, a trio of plants in the New Zealand garden caught their attention: a topiarist’s hebe, red tussock grass, and a shrub similar to manzanita. They had all the “lightness and air and movement” that Jane’s garden was in need of.

“We stuck with the desaturated greens and off-greens typical of New Zealand plants,” says Jonathan. “We were trying to make it feel more like a dry garden, which it is.” He and Jane also planted natives, and plants from the coasts of Oregon and Northern California. “The overall tough and dry plant palette helped in creating a more climate-adapted garden that will tolerate Seattle’s increasingly long, dry and hot summers, with little supplemental irrigation required.”

“Most garden plants used in the Pacific Northwest are borrowed from Japanese or East Coast or British styles—plants like hydrangea that want summer water, which we don’t have,” says Jonathan. “Seattle has long, hot summers with a Mediterranean climate and we wanted to make a garden that was ready for that. We also tried to give it plenty of evergreen structure, so it feels full and good in the winter.”

Below, Jonathan explains what went into this mid-century landscape makeover.

Before

Above: The former front garden: A static combination of shaped bright greens and pinks in front of the mid-century house. “The typical landscape of the 1970s was lumps and lawn,” says Jonathan. “We wanted to break that up and we knew the lawn was always going to go. It was thirsty and spongey and wasn’t needed—and it was taking all the flat real estate that we wanted for making a lively counterpoint with plants.”

Above: “So many topiaries were removed and yet it still feels like there’s a lot,” he says.

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August 15, 2025
Tama Matsuoka Wong: An Interview with the Forager Extraordinaire

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We’ve been writing about Tama Matsuoka Wong for more than a decade—first in 2013 when we joined her for a foraging (and eating) adventure on her 28-acre property in Hunterdon County, NJ, then again in 2017 when she co-authored the cookbook Scraps, Wilt + Weeds with Danish chef Mads Refslund (of Noma fame). And more recently, earlier this year, we were swept up by her new book, Into the Weeds, which lays out her “wild and visionary way of gardening.”

All of which is to say, we are unabashed fans—of her forage-focused recipes, of her let-nature-take-the-wheel gardening philosophy, of her passion for plants that are often misunderstood and loathed. “Some are ecologically invasive plants, some are just ordinary garden weeds, and some are native plants that aren’t on the list of showy ornamentals but are part of a vibrant natural plant community,” she says.

Below, the self-described “garden contrarian” shares why she thinks planting doesn’t have to be a part of gardening, which tool she uses to maintain her meadow, and why she always has crates in her garden.

Photography courtesy of Tama Matsuoka Wong.

Above: The “ecologically minded forager, meadow doctor, and lecturer” has written three books. Her first, Foraged Flavor, was nominated for a James Beard award; her second, Scraps, Wilt + Weeds, received the IACP “Food Matters” award. Read about her latest, Into the Weeds, here. Photograph by Colin Clark.

Your first garden memory:

In New Jersey, mucking about in the garden dirt with my mother, and picking wild berries. My mother grew up in Hawaii, climbing coconut trees and she always told me she loved the feel of the earth in her hands.

Garden-related book you return to time and again:

It’s an oldie but goodie: Bill Cullina’s Native Trees, Shrubs & Vines: A Guide to Using, Growing, and Propagating American Woody Plants. I still have my dog-eared version of Weeds of the Northeast by Richard Uva. I’ve also read multiple times H is for Hawk by British author Helen Macdonald and My Wild Garden: Notes from a Writer’s Eden by Israeli writer Meir Shalev. They inspire me. And, of course, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Instagram account that inspires you:

@andrew_the_arborist. @minh_ngoc.

Describe in three words your garden aesthetic.

Above: Outdoor dining on her property, surrounded by “weeds.” Photograph by Ngoc Minh Ngo.

Wild, wonder-filled, wabi-sabi.

Plant that makes you swoon:

A survivor plant in its natural habitat and community: whether desert, chaparrel, bog, pine barrens, highlands, low country.

Plant that makes you want to run the other way:

Callery pear tree (bradford pear tree).

Favorite go-to plant:

Above: Tama likes to forage staghorn sumac fruit to cook with. See her recipe for Sparkling Sumac Lemonade Recipe. Photograph by Tama Matsuoka Wong.

Rhus typhina (staghorn sumac).

Hardest gardening lesson you’ve learned:

Nothing is forever. Plants thrive when and where the conditions are uniquely suited. We can’t over-think, over-design, and over-control these conditions, especially now with changing and unexpected weather conditions. Just be grateful when a plant has an amazing year.

Unpopular gardening opinion:

My mission is not popular: Weeds, by definition are not popular.

Gardening or design trend that needs to go:

The idea that everything in a garden needs to be planted, that we need to “install” a landscape.

Favorite gardening hack:

Above: “These crates are covering newly planted turkey tangle frogfruit, an unnoticed, weedy native plant that likes to grow ‘in wet ditches.’ ” Photograph by Tama Matsuoka Wong.

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October 13, 2024
How and When to Plant Spring-Flowering Bulbs: A Beginner’s Guide

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I’ve always known in theory that if you plant spring-flowering bulbs (such as tulips, daffodils, crocuses, and alliums) you can fill your garden with successive waves of color for three months while you wait for summer. But in my garden, after the spring flowers on the azaleas and rhododendrons fade? Nothing—until June. I eye my neighbors’ more colorful gardens with envy and initiate late-night talks with my husband about why this is the year we should hire a landscape designer.

This fall I plan to be proactive and plant bulbs—which I know is a thing you do in autumn because one year I went to our local nursery and asked for alliums. (I’m particularly enamored with the extraterrestrial look of alliums, with their large pompom heads and tall, slender stalks.) But it was during the height of summer, and the nice lady who worked at the nursery had to break it to me that I’d have to wait until September or later for the bulbs to be available for purchase. Like many other bulbs, they are planted in the fall and bloom in the spring, she told me, with not the slightest bit of disdain.

A job requirement for working at nurseries must be an uncanny ability to refrain from rolling one’s eyes when asked idiotic questions. Thankfully, my interview with Barbara Pierson, nursery manager of White Flower Farm, in which I asked beginner questions about spring-flowering bulbs, was conducted over email. (Thank you, Barbara, for not inserting any eye-roll emojis.) Here’s what I learned:

Q: What are bulbs, anyway?

Above: Tulip bulbs ready for the planting. Photograph by Meredith Swinehart.

A: A bulb is “essentially a storage organ” for plants, says Barbara; all the food they need is concentrated in a compact, onion-shaped mass. “True bulbs have scales, which are fleshy and become leaves after the bulb begins to grow.” They’re often lumped together with corms, rhizomes, and tubers, because they all grow underground and produce plants, but they are different. Corms don’t have scales; rhizomes grow horizontally and can produce more plants; and tubers have eyes (like potatoes) that can grow into sprouts or roots. (See Everything You Need to Know About Bulbs and Tubers for a roundup of some of our favorite springtime bulb and tuber flowers.)

Q: Which bulbs are the easiest to grow?

Above: Barbara recommends ‘Globemaster’ alliums. “They are easy to grow and, most times, will flower the first year after planting in the fall,” she says. “Plant them four to five inches below the soil line in a border close to other perennials so the foliage is hidden when it dies down during and after flowering. Remembering to let bulb foliage die down naturally is the key to having them come back year after year.” Photograph by Justine Hand.

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October 10, 2024
10 Things Your Landscape Designer Wishes You Knew About Gravel (But Is Too Polite to Tell You) – Gardenista

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My clients are often in love with gravel, or at least with the idea of gravel. But as a landscape designer, I have a love-hate relationship with the paving material.

The other day I visited a clients’ newly purchased house—and realized that the sellers had put pea gravel between the entry pavers to “dress it up.” Instead of neatly tucked between paving stones, the gravel was scattered everywhere, making for an uncomfortable walking experience. I thought: right material, wrong place.

Here are 10 things I wish all my clients knew about gravel:

1. Not all gravel is created equal.

Above Beth Chatto’s gravel garden in Elmstead, Essex. Photograph by Clare Coulson, from Expert Advice: 11 Tips for Gravel Garden Design.

After you decide to add gravel to your landscape, the next question to ask yourself is: what kind? Each type of stone has its own distinct look and textural appeal, and its own purpose. Your selection will vary regionally, so I recommend the first step should be to visit a local stone quarry to see what is available.

2. Get to know the three most common textures of gravel.

Above: Pea gravel in a courtyard. Photograph courtesy of Verne, from Steal This Look: An Artful Gravel Garden in Antwerp.

After you settle on a variety and color of stone, you will need to consider size and texture: decomposed granite, crushed stone, or pea gravel?

In a nutshell: Decomposed granite (or DG, as it’s known) is a powdery granite that makes a fine texture of silt and little rocks. DG is a popular option for paths and patios. Usually yellow-gold and fading to tan in color and relatively affordable. Crushed stone is probably the closest to the typical idea of what a gravel driveway looks like. This material is also used for patios, retaining wall drainage, back fill, and grading. Pea gravel is tricky because its name has the word “gravel” in it, but some note that pea gravel is actually a small and smooth river rock. See Hardscaping 101: River Rocks to learn more.

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October 4, 2024
Privacy Landscaping: The Best Plants to Use to Enclose Your Outdoor Space

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If you’re lucky enough to have a garden in a big city, you learn to accept the fact that while you’re out there, you’re in full view of everyone whose windows overlook your yard. Hanging an awning over your entire backyard or planting a tree big enough to screen everything isn’t a good option, since usually, getting the light you need to grow things is already a challenge.

So what are the best ways to make a small urban garden feel more private—or at least to create the illusion of privacy? For advice, we asked landscape designer Susan Welti, a partner in the Brooklyn-based Foras Studio. Susan has designed countless urban spaces; two of her gardens appear in our Gardenista book.

Here are some of her ideas to create privacy in a small city backyard.

Photography by Matthew Williams for Gardenista, except where noted.

Above: An eastern white pine tree draws the eye away from the neighbors’ houses in a Brooklyn garden designed by Foras Studio.

Is it really possible to have privacy in an outdoor city garden?

Let’s admit that it’s almost impossible to create as much privacy as you might want. “There are so many buildings surrounding you, and they’re so much bigger than you,” Susan says. “But while you can’t block out the buildings, what you can do is to create something beautiful and compelling that will hold the eye within the confines of the site, and make you feel enclosed and secure.”

Above: The neighbors’ Japanese maple trees (at right) create a bower and privacy barrier.

How can you use trees to create privacy?

“You can’t just throw in a big tree to block the view, because that also blocks the light,” says Susan. “In most city gardens there are trees in your sightline, but they’re often really big—such as oaks or maples or ailanthus. It’s nice to put in a tree that’s a more human scale. We use a lot of fruit trees—crab apple, dwarf apple, even pomegranate and fig. These all flower, which is always nice.”

Susan also recommends small understory trees like Chionanthus virginicus, known as “old man’s beard”; Amelanchier x grandiflora ‘Autumn Brilliance’ (serviceberry); and Magnolia virginiana—native magnolia or sweetbay. And if you’re not going for bloom, consider a Japanese maple—“They fit beautifully into a pared-back grassy landscape.”

Above: A row of small hornbeam trees (Carpinus caroliniana) are pruned tightly to create a flat screen against a fence.

What are the best trees for fence-line privacy?

When space is at a premium, Susan often uses trees that are pleached—trained and clipped to grow on a flat plane, like an espalier.

“Pleached trees are a powerful visual element, and you can control where they canopy out,” she says. Susan’s choice is hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana), a native tree that takes well to pruning; she buys them already started off from Brooklyn’s Urban Arborists. “Pleached trees don’t bloom; it’s more about the shape and the beauty of the foliage.”

Can vines and climbers be used to create privacy?

“Vines are great for adding a green layer to a fence or pergola,” says Susan. “For an airy look, you want plants that have some visual porosity. We use Wisteria frutescens ‘Amethyst Falls,’ a native plant that’s less vigorous than Chinese or Japanese wisteria, and has a nice bloom.” For other flowering vines, she recommends clematis, honeysuckle, and crossvine, such as Bignonia capreolata ‘Tangerine Beauty.’ To create a wall of green, Susan suggests the vigorous, shade-tolerant Akebia ‘Shirobana’—but be aware that it’s considered invasive in some areas, so check with local authorities before planting, and be prepared to monitor its growth carefully.

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September 20, 2024
Landscaping on a Budget: 10 Ways I Saved Money on My Garden Remodel – Gardenista

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All week, we’re republishing some of our favorite Garden Visits that have a personal connection to our writers. No public gardens here, no vast estates, no professionally designed landscapes—just the backyards, vegetable patches, and flower beds that remind our writers of home. This story by Gardenista founder Michelle Slatalla is from 2017.

Whether it’s a new patio or a complete garden overhaul, any landscaping project can quickly outgrow its budget unless you plan ahead. I speak from experience.

In the six years since I moved into my house on a small lot (0.15 acres in downtown Mill Valley, California), I’ve changed nearly every aspect of the outdoor space, from the backyard to the front garden. The upgrades included a new patio, garden beds, paths, a gate, and a privacy hedge. Every step of the way, there were decisions to make on where to splurge and where to save.

As with most budgets, mine required more saving than splurging. Here are the top 10 ways I saved money on landscape design without cutting corners.

Photography by Matthew Williams for Gardenista.

1. Don’t toss; transform.

Above: My backyard gate is a repurposed vintage iron trellis, which we discovered leaning against the facade soon after we moved to the house and began to liberate the garden from years of overgrowth.

“Don’t toss; transform” is a lesson I learned from my friend Jean Victor, who wrote the chapter on Expert Advice: Garden Design in our Gardenista book: “Avoid the temptation to rip out and discard everything in your existing landscape,” Jean recommends. “Repurpose bricks from a planter for a new pathway; use old fence pickets to make a gate; dig up hardy perennials and move them to a new bed.”

2. Embrace the slippery slope.

Above: Rather than trying to change the grade of my sloping front garden, I planted perennials and grasses that would accentuate the lay of the land.

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August 29, 2024
Landscape Visit: The Ultimate Indoor-Outdoor House on 36 Acres in Coastal Maine – Gardenista

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“There isn’t another site like this available anywhere near Portland, Maine,” said Russell Tyson of Whitten Architects, “and it’s the site that makes this house so unique.”

He’s describing a jaw-dropping 36 acres perched along the oceanfront in Scarborough, Maine, the site of many native habitats—rocky coastline, woods, wetlands, and meadows included. Most of the land is in a conservation trust to preserve its natural character, but that didn’t deter the owners, a young couple with two children who wanted a weekend retreat that was “the antithesis of their high-rise life in New York City.” Two acres could be developed, so they removed an existing 1980s house that had “no sort of relationship to the landscape,” said Tyson, the project architect. In its stead, they designed a four-bedroom, mostly single-story house and detached car barn with guest quarters above.

Whitten partnered with landscape architect Todd Richardson to create a strong connection between the house and landscape. They knew each other well and had collaborated before, so they designed the project’s indoor and outdoor elements in tandem. “Here, the exterior spaces were just as important as the interior ones,” said Tyson. Let’s take a look.

Photography by Trent Bell except where noted, courtesy of Whitten Architects.

Above: At the entryway, a Rockport granite boulder directs visitors from the parking court toward the front door just off to the right. A small apple orchard flanks the walkway.

The site was once part of a farm, full of rolling meadows that drop down to the shore.

Above: In the front garden are salvia and ornamental grasses mixed with lawn. “The walls extend outward from the house to throw the architecture out into the landscape,” said Richardson.

The previous house had an asphalt parking lot prominently featured in front; in contrast, said the architect, “we wanted you to park your car and forget about it for the rest of the time you are here.”

Above: Flanking a porch off the bedroom wing: A birch tree at far left hovers over highbush blueberries, northern bayberry, low huckleberry, lowbush blueberry sod, and hay-scented fern. The patch on the right side of the walkway also includes black chokeberry, rhodora, and cinnamon fern.

The landscape architect chose native plants that thrive in this part of Maine.

Above: Each bedroom has a porch to encourage residents and guests to head directly outdoors in the mornings.

The house is framed in Douglas fir and stained in Cabot Nantucket White. The decking is water-resistant ipe wood, and the roof is standing seam metal in slate gray.

Above: Bordered by full-height sliding glass doors, the living room links a courtyard in front of the house to a patio on the opposing side. The landscape architect planted pitch pine here, centered on the axis of a single large pitch pine hovering over the water’s edge—the only tree along the waterfront for about 1,500 feet, visible beyond the living room.

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August 16, 2024
A Garden from Scratch: 8 Mistakes I Made as a Beginner Gardener

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Hindsight is a wonderful thing: After you’ve planted, say, a tree in the wrong spot, everything becomes clearer and more crystallized—including where you should have planted it. Making mistakes is a vital part of understanding why a design works, or why a plant will thrive in one place but not in another.

When I started my garden from scratch ten years ago, I knew very little about actual gardening. My experience was limited to arranging a few pretty pots to have around the house, my plantsmanship was near zero, and I had very little funds to throw away on errors. Yet, that didn’t stop me from making them. Here are a few of the bigger mistakes I made when designing and planting a garden from scratch.

Photography by Clare Coulson.

1. Being impatient.

Above: I’ve learned patience the hard way. I can still be impulsive but nowhere near as impulsive as I used to be, when I thought nothing about pulling out shrubs without truly understanding their value—and I removed some real beauties that had been long planted.

Recently I’ve been working on a book, interviewing many landscape designers, and a commonality that emerges is that, in their own gardens, they all watch and wait. The time spent doing nothing more than staring at the garden allows them to observe trees, shrubs, and plants in all seasons. Watching and waiting also allows them to understand how the light falls in the garden at different times of year, how the weather moves through the garden, and how they themselves move through it—all of which will then inform their eventual garden design and planting.

2. Making the beds too narrow.

Above: Narrow borders rarely work—unless they are a neat monoculture that adds a formal note.

Without exception, I’ve made almost all of my borders wider over time where possible, and if I were starting over again, I’d make them even deeper. Generous borders are more impactful and allow bolder views across plantings and more complex compositions.

3. Planting trees too late.

Above: Maturity takes time and while perennials and most shrubs will bulk up fairly quickly, trees will take a decade to really have any presence—and several decades to reach maturity.

If you have space to plant trees, then make this one of your earliest interventions since they take years and years to mature. I wish I’d planted a field of trees or an orchard when I arrived at my garden; instead I procrastinated for years and my field is still a relatively blank canvas.

4. Not prioritizing soil quality.

Above: I had an obsession with flat spaces and neat lines when I started my garden, a habit I’ve since grown out of. But as a result, I moved topsoil from a sloping site to try and correct the slope. What I didn’t realize then was that I was removing the best soil. (See Your First Garden: What You Need to Know About Topsoil.)

Consider carefully your dirt. If you’re moving earth around or taking up turf, keep it in a pile to reincorporate into the garden as topsoil. When creating new borders, add as much humus-rich organic matter as you can into any planting areas—it’s far easier to do this at the outset of your garden-making, when you have room to work and make a mess. And if you are creating paths or borders with straight lines, then take the time to get them truly straight—a wonky straight line will annoy you for years to come.

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July 11, 2024
Hardscaping 101: Ground Covers to Plant Between Pavers – Gardenista

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Too often pathway gaps are neglected and become a home for weeds. But where some may see awkward spaces between stepping stones, I see potential. Plants between pavers can soften hard lines, adding a lush, living element to a design.

It’s relatively simple to fill the cracks between pavers with creeping plants that will stay low, won’t mind being squashed a bit, and may even be fragrant. Ground cover can triumph over weeds, too. Read on for everything you need to know:

How do you choose a ground cover to grow between pavers?

Above: White blooming Isotoma grows in a pathway, framing pavers with texture and color in a California garden designed by Elizabeth Everdell. Photograph courtesy of Everdell Garden Design.

As a landscaper, I routinely feel like a boss on the plant employee search, hunting for highly qualified plant candidates for the position of ground cover. Listed below is my required criteria:

Height: A plant should be low growing, raging in height from basically flat to 2 inches tall. Anything taller could be trip pedestrians and make the pavers look as if they are sinking, even drowning. Rule of thumb: the larger the scale of the pavers, the taller the filler plants can be.

Foliage: The ground cover should be vigorous (but not invasive) and dense like a carpet to smother competing weeds and cooperatively traverse the spaces for continuity.

Above: Photograph by Matthew Williams for Gardenista. Cotula leptinella ‘Platt’s Black’ (dollhouse fern) grows densely and has a shallow root system, which makes it ideally suited to creeping between stones to fill cracks. See more of this garden in our Gardenista book.

Hardiness: A plant that grows between pavers should be tough and durable to withstand occasional trampling by foot or paw.

No-Fuss: Ground cover plants for pavers must require as little maintenance as possible. A total given.

Design: The ground cover needs to meet the design needs of foliage color, texture, and form. The choice also should complement the colors and textures of the pathway material rather than compete with it, and be congruent with the current landscape theme.

What are the best plants to grow between pavers?

The options below are by no means the only ones, just some of the popular ones, and you have different options depending on whether your path basks in sun or hides in shade.

Above: Different varieties of thyme such as ‘Minimus Russetings’ and ‘Purple Carpet’ soften the pavers in this Brooklyn rooftop garden. Photography by Marni Majorelle. For more, see Brooklyn Oasis: A City Roof Garden, Before & After.

Full Sun:

Creeping thyme (Thymus spp): Considered one of the finest ground covers for filling in between flagstones. It meets all of the criteria of a good plant employee. This petite herb comes in many varieties, all with tiny, rounded fragrant leaves in shades of dark green, lime green, and even yellow with a white edging. Elfin or woolly thyme are especially good varieties that will grow in difficult soils, stay flat and are frighteningly easy to grow.

Above: Between the pavers grows a carpet of creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum ‘Elfin’) at this landscape in Northern California. Photograph by Jason Liske, from California Dreaming: A Golden Landscape on the Edge of the Continent.

Dymondia (Dymondia margaretae) is a good alternative. Its phenomenally flat, tidy appearance bears slender leaves that are green on top and gray underneath. A slight upward curl on each leaf edge provides a frosted, two-tone look and it occasionally bears small yellow daisy flowers.

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June 14, 2024
Designer Visit: Sheila Jack’s White Garden in West London – Gardenista

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A career in art direction is a useful grounding for anybody wishing to go into garden design. Sheila Jack’s career shift was not so much a break as a continuum—of research, editing, and presentation. Before designing the pages of Vogue magazine, her first job was for the architect Norman Foster, and these visual strands from the past feed into her present-day career as a landscape designer.

We visit the project which turned Sheila’s design ideas into something more three-dimensional: her own urban garden.

Photography by Britt Willoughby Dyer for Gardenista, except where noted.

Above: A work studio faces the house in Sheila Jack’s garden in Hammersmith, London.

“When we installed my husband’s garden studio, we needed to create a pathway to it,” explains Sheila of the garden’s layout. “Our children were beyond the need for lawn, so there was scope to include more planting.”

Above: Photograph by Sheila Jack.

I first met Sheila by the photocopying machine at Tatler magazine, several decades ago. Amid the madness, Sheila stood out as a beacon of clarity, in a crisp white shirt. A few years later I spotted Sheila, ever crisp, at 444 Madison Avenue, a recent arrival at Condé Nast in New York. While I failed to take my job on the 17th floor seriously, Sheila worked hard downstairs, in the scary offices of Vogue. Fast-forwarding a few years, she suddenly appeared on Instagram, with beautifully composed pictures of gardens, in focus. How had she got from there to here?

Above: Sheila’s London garden of mainly green and white.

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June 7, 2024
A Garden from Scratch: How to Choose the Plants and Put Them Together

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After all the planning for the garden layout is done, being able to buy (or grow) your plants feels like something of a victory, the fun bit when you can finally get to see a garden taking shape. In my previous column in this series on making “A Garden from Scratch,” I broached the bigger picture of the types of plants you might want to consider for your garden. In this column I get up close to the plants themselves and investigate what to choose and how to put it all together.

Your own tastes are key here—it’s all very well meticulously planning, but ultimately you want to step into a garden full of things you love. (A chaotic jumble, in fact, can feel just as magical as a considered design—often more so.) Ideally as you plan your garden you will have drawn up a wishlist of everything you love that will also thrive in your garden conditions. The goal for most gardeners is to find a space for as many of the plants on that list as possible.

Below, my tips on how to choose your plants wisely.

Photography by Clare Coulson.

1. Sketch a planting plan.

Above: This border has a line of Chanticleer pear trees and is enclosed by copper beech hedge. The borders are filled with perennials in blue and apricots, including Geranium ‘Rozanne’, Baptisia australis, hardy geraniums, and Iris pallida, as well as textural grasses and hydrangeas for later in the season.

If I’m planting a big area from scratch, I draw out a flat plan that roughly marks out the plants, taking into consideration both how those plants will look mingling next to each other and how much space they will ultimately need. It’s not an exact scale drawing but an approximation of the size (height and spread) I think a plant could take up. If you’re not familiar with the plant, you can usually get a good sense of its growth habit and mature appearance from its nursery label.

2. Put perennials on repeat.

Above: The same border seen from the opposite direction. Alchemilla mollis, catmint, and pennisetum are repeated all along the border, which makes it feel visually cohesive. Peppered between them are plants with a shorter season, including alliums, camassia, foxgloves, asters, and hydrangeas.

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April 2, 2024
The Art of Garden Etiquette: 10 Ways to Show Respect to Neighbors – Gardenista

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It’s always a good idea to give the gift of courtesy to your neighbors. Even if they’re not the type to fly into a yard rage, they’ll still appreciate a little kindness in the garden.

What do the basic tenets of neighborliness require? Keep your yard tidy (dazzling horticultural displays are always welcome, but not mandatory). Mow your grass (if you have any), rake the leaves, and try not to leave stuff like bikes, toys, and garden tools littering the lawn. A good rule of thumb is to consider how you’d like your neighbor’s yard to look, and then apply it to your own. Oh, your standards aren’t that high? Then try imagining yourself as a discriminating person with a penchant for orderliness and good taste.

City gardeners, you’re not off the hook. The neighbors whose windows overlook your backyard or balcony may be a tad jealous of your outdoor space. If you can’t invite them over for a barbecue, at least keep your outdoor space looking decent (and, OK, enviable).

For garden etiquette insights we talked with Melissa Ozawa, the former gardens editor at Martha Stewart Living (and now the director of content and communications at the Perfect Earth Project). Ozawa herself tends a small outdoor space in New York City and also gardens upstate in Columbia County. Here are 10 common-sense good-neighbor suggestions:

Respect Property Lines

Above: Photograph by Matthew Williams for Gardenista. See more of this garden at Garden Visit: At Home with Architect Kelly Haegglund in Mill Valley, CA.

Prune your trees, shrubs, and vines so they don’t encroach on your neighbor’s space. “And keep safety in mind,” says Ozawa. “Remove any big branches that look damaged or diseased—a storm could make them more precarious, and it’s better to be safe than sorry.” Trimming overhanging branches also helps prevent your leaves from falling into a neighbor’s yard—and you don’t want your leaves in the neighbor’s yard.

Plant Natives

Above: Sunflowers (Helianthus). Photograph by Britt Willoughby Dyer. For more, see Field Guide: Sunflowers.

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March 12, 2024
Garden from Scratch: How to Choose the Type of Plants You Need in Your Landscape

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You’d think choosing plants was easy enough—just find the ones you like, right? And for single specimens in a pot or a monoculture of, say. roses or hydrangeas, it is as simple as that.

But what about designing a border where plants need to relate to each other in a well-thought-out design? And what if you have a large blank canvas to fill with a whole range of plants. This is when it can get a little more complicated. For the third post in my column on creating A Garden From Scratch, I tackle how to figure out the kind of plants you might want in your landscape. Before you get too excited, let me clarify that I’m not talking about choosing specific plants here; this is about the bigger, long-term picture of how to put plants together in a space and why.

(To read my earlier stories in the Garden from Scratch series, go here, then here.)

Photography by Clare Coulson.

Above: Where to even begin? My cottage garden, photographed here in midsummer, is an ever-changing tableau of favorite plants and supporting acts that lurk in the background. It’s always good to remember when you start out that plants can be moved, replaced, or relocated and that the picture is never final or complete—there’s always something that can be tweaked or improved—and that is half the enjoyment of gardening.

1. Get trees in first.

Above: Early spring in my garden and there’s still not that much flowering, but the Amelanchier lamarckii tree provides starry white blossoms. By the time the spring bulbs really get going, the pretty bronze foliage of this tree will emerge providing an interesting contrast with the bright colors below. Additional structure here comes from the domed forms of Choisya ternata, hebes and Ilex crenata. In the distance, a lot of euphorbia.

Planting design is about a series of layers, from the woody plants, including trees and climbers, to the shrubs, herbaceous perennials, biennials, and annuals. Most gardens will have a mix of all of these types of plants to create a succession of interest throughout the year, and a balance of structural plants that will provide a backdrop to herbaceous plants that will flower and die back.

It’s logical to begin with the trees since they generally need the most time to mature. They are also arguably the most important thing to get right, being the least ephemeral. Incorporating some trees, or even a single specimen, can instantly ground a space, bringing strong structure, height, and impact—as well as, in many cases, year-round interest. For this same reason think very carefully before removing any mature trees or shrubs from an inherited space.

It’s the one place perhaps where it’s worth spending some money to buy something really beautiful—a trio of Amelanchier or Prunus multi-stem or specimen trees, for example, may feel like a big investment, but it will have instant impact, as well as blossoms in spring, lush foliage through summer, and then great leaf color later in the year. In winter its form has its own allure. Tip: Buy young trees—they are far more economical and will usually settle in faster than mature specimens. Buying bareroot plants also helps to keep down costs.

2. Invest in evergreens.

Above: Controlled chaos. There are a lot of frothy plants in this border snapshot including Valerian officinalis, hesperis, roses, Allium sphaerocephalon, catmint, and hardy geraniums. But the structure from clipped boxwood, hebes, and other foliage helps to ground the space and provide moments of contrast.

Another worthwhile investment: evergreen forms that will provide four-season structure. Boxwood would have ticked all the boxes, but now that these are under the dual threat of box blight and box caterpillar, few gardeners would take a risk with them. There are plenty of alternatives—yew, Ilex crenata, many pittosporums, rosemary, hebes, daphnes can all be grown into shapes that will provide permanent year-round forms and act as a foil to herbaceous plants. Deciduous plants like beech and hornbeam can also provide structure, too. (See Landscaping 101: Boxed in by Boxwood? 5 Shrubs to Try Instead.)

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March 5, 2024