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.
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.”
Overhauling a townhouse backyard after a renovation is a fairly common assignment for a New York City landscape designer. For one recent project, Julie Farris, the founder of XS Space, was given different a task. “Rather than erase and start anew as most projects do, the goal with this project was to identify the aspects of the previous garden, and to try to magnify those aspects in a more targeted and precise way,” says Farris. The results are a garden that felt deeply personal from Day One.
Farris’s clients had lived in their Brooklyn brownstone for some time before deciding to add an addition to the ground level. The family loved their home and slightly wild yard, where they had built many memories. “It sort of had this secret garden kind of feel,” says Farris. But as is so often the case post-construction, the 20 x 45-foot garden was left in a sorry state in need of a total overhaul.
“They wanted it to feel very natural and organic—sort of revealing what was there rather than inventing a new landscape,” says Farris. The clients requested a stretch of grass for the kids and a little more privacy from the nearby neighbors, but they didn’t have a laundry list of outdoor rooms and functions they wanted to cram into their space. What they wanted was simply a garden.
“It was more about having a quiet sanctuary for their family and some friends and not being a showy kind of garden,” says Farris. The family was also intent on doing it as sustainably as possible. “They wanted native plantings, birds, and butterflies,” says Farris.
The resulting garden is something of a sleight of hand: It honors the spirit of the previous garden, but almost every inch of it was built from scratch. It’s a lesson in the power of restraint and resourcefulness: All the sustainable materials and climate-appropriate plants make this garden feel like it belongs here. Now it’s ready for decades more memories.
Above: Architecture firm Bangia Agostinho Architecture designed the two-story rear extension and deck on the house. The renovation resulted in three different outdoor spaces for Farris to design: The backyard, a new deck, and a little terrace off of the primary bedroom that sits on the roof of the extension. Above: Farris describes designing the garden as a process of “sculpting the edges” to draw the eye outwards. “There’s this negative space, and then you’re just kind of feeling how you want to structure the space in terms of hierarchy and softness,” she says.
Here in New Jersey, we have a stormwater problem. Due to climate change, the state is getting heavier and more intense downpours from hurricanes, nor’easters, and intense summer thunderstorms. We also happen to be the most densely populated state in the country, with a high percentage of impervious surfaces. All those houses, roads, and other built-up areas don’t allow water to soak into the ground. Not only does that water have nowhere to go, but those parking lots and streets, and the vehicles that use them, are the largest source of water pollutants in the state.
But one middle school in New Jersey is learning about stormwater and its runoff—and doing something about it. The South Orange Environmental Commission, with the help of the Rahway River Watershed Association (RRWA), recently created a rain garden at South Orange Middle School, in South Orange, New Jersey. The money to build the garden came from a grant from Sustainable Jersey and funds from South Orange Village. Students at the school are learning first-hand about stormwater runoff and how rain gardens can help solve the problem of pollution. The garden will be a part of the middle school’s science curriculum.
Above: Volunteers planning and planting the garden. Native species that like wet feet were chosen for the project, including red twig dogwood, Virginia sweetspire, switchgrass, and showy goldenrod. Photograph courtesy of Kirk Barrett.
Located between the school parking lot and the East Branch of the Rahway River, this rain garden is special. “It is one of very few rain gardens that is equipped with monitoring instruments to measure how much runoff is captured,” says Kirk Barrett, Ph.D., president of Rahway River Watershed Association. “Moreover, middle and high school students will be involved in collecting and analyzing the data.”
Above: The garden in late fall, collecting and filtering the stormwater runoff. Photograph courtesy of Kirk Barrett.
“The students will collect the data from the instrument that measures water level and calculate how much stormwater runoff was captured by each storm.” Barrett continues, “They will also measure rainfall to determine the percentage of runoff that is captured on an annual basis.”
Above: The rain garden ribbon cutting with students and community members. Photograph courtesy of Kirk Barrett.
This site was selected for maximum environmental benefit, as a rain garden here will capture the polluted runoff from the parking lot into the East Branch of the Rahway River. It’s estimated that it will absorb more than 100,000 gallons of stormwater runoff over a typical year.
Barrett describes how the garden works, “Before the rain garden, this runoff went directly into a stormwater inlet and then into the river. The rain garden will allow most of the runoff to soak into the ground, filtering out the pollutants. Furthermore, by reducing the volume of runoff, the rain garden helps reduce the physical disruption of habitat in the stream caused by high flows in the river.”
Above: The rain garden at work during a heavy downpour. Photograph courtesy of Kirk Barrett.
Barrett hopes that this rain garden will inspire people to put in their own rain gardens, since 95 percent of NJ’s waterways are considered impaired, meaning they don’t support one or more of the following uses: drinking water, biological habitat, or recreational uses.
This is part of a series with Perfect Earth Project, a nonprofit dedicated to toxic-free, ecological gardening, on how you can be more sustainable in your landscapes at home.
For more than two decades, Nancy Lawson has been living in harmony with deer. Sure, they’re in her Maryland yard every single day. Yes, they come to eat, rest, and, occasionally, rut. But, no, they don’t destroy her garden. In fact, it’s thriving. “We made a commitment to creating habitat for all animals,” says the nature writer, naturalist, and founder of Humane Gardener. “We manage for resilience.” Her garden is thriving.
White-tailed deer populations have soared in this century. Since we wiped out nearly all their predators (grey wolves and mountain lions) and have taken over their natural habitat (developing 95 percent of the land in the US), they look for food and shelter anywhere they can find it, and that’s often in our gardens. As a result, their public image has gone from beloved Bambi to super villain—through no fault of their own.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Lawson shares with us how we can all happily coexist with deer.
Photography by Nancy Lawson, unless otherwise noted. (Featured photograph above by @anoldent via Flickr.)
Plant densely and employ “protector plants.”
Above: Lawson has combined tasty and less tasty plants along a pathway that deer traverse, including common sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale), blue mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum), late boneset (Eupatorium serotinum), and American burnweed (Erechtites hieraciifolius).
Walk through a nature preserve or forest and you won’t find plants spread out like polkadots poking out of a sea of mulch. “We never put a plant out in the open by itself,” says Lawson. “It’s not how it grows in nature.” In the wild, plants grow in communities. They mingle. They intertwine. Having an array of varieties growing densely prevents any one plant from being decimated. “If there’s a big mixture that includes some less palatable plants, deer are much less likely to devour a given area,” says Lawson. “But if I have all the same species lined up for 10 feet, and it’s tasty, then that’s really easy for them to eat it all.” Think about planting as you would companion-planting in a vegetable garden, says Lawson, and mix it up.
As more garden and landscape designers aspire to create sustainable gardens, there’s one significant but often ignored aspect of sustainability they should pay attention to: hardscape materials. For most landscapes, the materials for the decks, patios, paths, and stairs will make up the vast majority of the project’s carbon footprint.
When people think of carbon footprint they often think of actions like driving a combustion engine car and flying on airplanes, but materials also possess an embodied (or upfront) carbon footprint. The “embodied” carbon is not, in fact, embodied in the material. Rather, it is an estimate of the emissions that come from making the material and shipping it. Unfortunately, some of the landscape industry’s favorite materials, including concrete and tropical hardwoods like ipe, have a high embodied carbon. (Taking in all stages of production, concrete is estimated to be responsible for 4 to 8 percent of the world’s CO2.)
“I don’t think clients are aware of the carbon footprint that concrete has,” says Sara Brunelle, co-founder of the landscape design firm Lu — La Studio, based in Cambridge, MA. “People are interested in pollinators and ecological properties, but they’re not really thinking about the material implications of their project.” However, homeowners and designers alike should consider the climate impacts of the materials they choose for their gardens.
We spoke to experts who are designing with low-carbon hardscape materials to ask them for their best advice when it comes to low-carbon hardscapes. Here’s what they said.
Want to lower the carbon footprint of your landscape? Use less hardscape material. It’ll also be better for the environment overall. “Hardscape mostly prevents water from returning to the earth—and water returning to the earth is the first thing that has to happen in order to support or create life,” says David Godshall, co-founder of Terremotto, a landscape architecture studio with offices in northern and southern California. “So, the more hardscape a garden has, the more lifeless it is.” Of course, gardens need paths, patios and the like, but Godshall encourages garden designers to ask themselves what is the minimum amount of hardscape needed to make a space useful and enjoyable to everyone, including people who are differently abled.
At first sight, there’s nothing extraordinary about Alice Fox’s allotment in West Yorkshire, England. In fact, her garden community neighbors are “mostly oblivious” to the magic she weaves there. The addition of a flax crop may have been a novelty when she first rented the plot, but the size and layout of the land, sheds, and greenhouse seem pretty standard—until you look closer.
Peek through the window of the main shed and your eyes will be drawn to a wonderful organized jumble of plant pots, trays, tools, jars of homemade botanical inks, sketches, scribbles, samples, fragments of ceramics, wire, plastic, and other unearthed objects, as well as an ever-changing assortment of plant fibers in various stages of drying and hand-processing. This is where Fox’s uniquely beautiful and thought-provoking textile art begins to take form.
Alice took on Plot 105 in Autumn 2017 when she started her practice-based master’s program to explore ways to achieve greater self-sufficiency in her art. Although she’d had a share in an allotment previously, with a young family, she never really had the time to give to it: “The only way I could justify it was to make it part of my work,” she says.
In 2020, Alice self-published the story of her relationship with her allotment Plot 105 and how her engagement with the site has unfolded since taking it on. Today, her book sits in a shed, alongside the encyclopedia of gardening left by the previous tenant. Looking back, she acknowledges that her year of research “marked a fundamental shift in how I source my materials. It allowed me to grow as a gardener, giving a particular focus. It provides a space to be amongst nature, get my hands in the soil, and think while working there.”
We met Alice in West Yorkshire this summer to learn more about her allotment, her garden, and home studio, and the evolution of her sustainable creative practice that’s deeply embedded in land and place. Let’s dig deeper:
Photography courtesy of Alice Fox. Featured image (above) by Carolyn Mendelsohn.
Above: In keeping with Alice’s local approach and quest for self-sufficiency, Plot 105 is a working garden providing fresh home-grown, seasonal produce. Few changes have been made to the overall structure of the plot, except for planting a couple of trees and some fruit bushes. Most of the growing beds are used for vegetables, and there are about 12 fruit trees, taking up approximately one quarter of the space. Photograph by Carolyn Mendelsohn. Above: Alice introduced a flax crop in 2017 and, since then, has learned a lot about this wonderful plant through growing and processing. Recently, she applied her knowledge to projects in new places, such as Kestle Barton in Cornwall. This experience culminated in her flax-focused exhibit Flaxen, shown at Northern Ireland Linen Biennale. Photograph by Carolyn Mendelsohn.
Happy pub day to us! Today, Gardenista: The Low-Impact Gardenfinally hits bookstores! We can’t wait for you to crack it open and enjoy the contents. Whether you’re a new homeowner looking for landscape guidance or a seasoned gardener in search of fresh ideas, you’ll find a wealth of inspiration inside.
To celebrate the release, the book’s indefatigable author, Kendra Wilson, offers another sneak peek, this time sharing all the cool lawn-free front yard ideas she encountered while working on the book.
Front gardens, stoops, driveways, and parking courts have the potential to spread cheer, absorb storm water, and harbor insects and birds. When there’s a clear design rationale at work, other people on the street will want to get on board. Here are some of our favorite ways to have a front garden that is more than “low-maintenance” (though it can be that, too). All the ideas are from our new book, out today.
Photography by Caitlin Atkinson.
Grow a sponge garden.
Above: The Philadelphia front garden of Kayla Fell and Jeff Lorenz, of design and maintenance practice, Refugia.
Jeff and Kayla removed their front lawn during their first year living in their house in Pennsylvania. Stormwater that used to flow over their compacted grass into the basement is now soaked up by closely planted perennials with mixed root profiles, and an absorbent swamp cypress.
Balance sharpness with softness.
Above: A mid-century house in Pasadena, which saw a light landscape renovation in the hands of Samuel Webb and Kara Holekamp of design group Terremoto.
The sharp lines of this classic house are made even clearer, not from subtracting but by adding lively planting around the edges. This, in turn, is in dialogue with towering trees that seem to be held back by the immaculate walls. Loose symmetry on either side of the doorway adds more contrast, with a pair of Arbutus that refuse to be identical.
Above: The preexisting parking grid lets its hair down around the edges, with a generous perimeter of permeable gravel and plants with varied root systems that soak up rain.
Re-wild the stoop.
Above: A front stoop in Brooklyn, the former home of horticulturalist Rebecca McMackin and her arborist husband Chris Roddick.
In pots on Rebecca’s stoop, long-lasting foliage of easygoing, northeastern perennials (Heuchera ‘Marmalade’ and Aquilegia canadensis) offers rest stops and shelter for small creatures. “Even in this tiny spot, it’s not hard to attract wildlife,” she says. And why let a tree pit go to waste? This one is fenced off with ad hoc railings and planted with tough natives that tolerate neglect as well as dogs. A sign directs dog owners’ attention to a couple of large rocks on the side, with the request, “Pee on me, not the tree.”
Say good-bye to mulch.
Above: With so much texture, green is never dull. Supported by trilllium, columbine, aster and ferns, the glaucous star is Fothergilla x intermedia ‘Blue Shadow’).
Above: A simple habitat pile tucked away in the meadow at Chanticleer. Horticulturalist Chris Fehlhaber built the stack around a center post. As the stack settles, gaps form around the post. “Bumblebees use this gap to gain access to the interior of the stack, which is likely relatively well-sheltered and dry, to make their nests,” he says. Photograph by Melissa Ozawa, from Habitat Piles: Turning Garden Debris Into Shelter and Sculpture.
Whether you call them snags or tree sculptures, dead trees are crucial to the ecosystem. According to the National Wildlife Federation, they provide habitat for a thousand species of wildlife in the U.S., including woodpeckers, bats, and squirrels. As the tree decays, insects, fungi, lichen, and moss move in, offering a feast for wildlife. As Smithsonian magazine reports, “Estimates suggest that one third of insect species in a forest rely on deadwood in some way—and these insects are food for other invertebrates, as well as birds and bats.”
Above: Wood “pavers” on Edwina von Gal’s property. She digs about three to four inches deep, embeds the tree slice into the ground, and then fills in the area around them. Photograph by Melissa Ozawa.
If you’re concerned about safety, remove any branches that pose a risk. Cut up logs and stack them into wood piles. Or slice 3- to 4-inch-thick rounds to create “tree cookies” to form into pathways, like von Gal does on her property. Tree cookies are especially good in high traffic areas or in places that have struggled to sustain grass or moss.
For smaller branches and other plant debris, craft habitat stacks or weave “dead hedges” out of branches. These areas offer shelter for small birds and other critters, protecting them from predators like hawks. (To see more examples of habitat stacks, read our story).
In a designated bin or a pile in your yard, add a mix of green materials (vegetable scraps and fresh garden cuttings) and brown matter (dried leaves, twigs, wood chips, and leftover soil). Each time you add green material to your compost heap, throw in some brown material to keep the pile fresh. If it starts to smell bad, add more “brown” bits. Turn the pile to speed up the process or simply let it be, to decompose gradually. You’ll know your compost is ready when it looks dark and crumbly.
Welcome to Meanwhile, on Remodelista, in which we take a look at the goings-on over on our sibling site. We’ve been noticing recently, both there and on our own site, a new love for the unpolished and uncultivated in landscape design. We know it’s not a look for everyone (hello, HOA!), but when the rewilded […]
It’s always a delight to catch up with our friends at the California design studio Terremoto. Talk inevitably ranges beyond the confines of gardens, touching on issues within the landscape industry that are rarely addressed.
Appreciation of laborers and the creativity that they bring to a project is part of the Terremoto DNA. Co-founder David Godshall explains how this dynamic collective of garden thinkers and doers continue to meet the moment, while showing us around a lovely little garden in Ojai, northwest of Los Angeles.
Photography by Caitlin Atkinson except where noted.
On the Client Brief
Above: At the back of the house, old Chinese elm trees provide protection from the elements.
“The bones of the property were very beautiful but needed updating to be more functional for the clients, as their needs were softly different from the previous property owner’s. An avocado orchard existed, which we, of course, preserved and protected, and coast live oaks surround the property in a beautiful halo,” says David.
Above: For an area in full sun, “We created a mosaic of native and non-invasive Mediterranean plants.” These include sage and lavender.
“The magic of Ojai (I say this as a plant nerd) is that it sits at the confluence of multiple horticultural typologies,” David continues. “It’s a place where coastal sage chaparral crashes into agriculture (most notably avocados and citrus) and more cottage-y, slightly old-school garden-making traditions. Opuntia and geraniums have a surprisingly synergistic relationship. Our clients wanted to bring their garden into a thoughtful new era while being respectful of the innate qualities of Ojai that make it the place that it is.”
Byró Architekti’s smallest project to date is its biggest scene stealer. Located in a garden enclave just 20 minutes from Prague’s city center, the shed was built on the foundation of a dilapidated cottage. The owners use the property as a retreat and wanted an outbuilding that serves as a library, gathering space, shelter from the rain, and extra bedroom, while communing with the surrounding greenery.
To tick all those boxes, architects Jan Holub and Tomáš Hanus devised a pavilion with built-in bookshelves, a sleeping loft, and a façade that pops up to fully connect indoors and out. It’s a practical folly.
Above: “The building is designed as a wooden structure in a two-by-four construction system,” write the architects. It’s finished with blackened spruce cladding aka shou sugi ban. Above: Doors fold back to reveal a polycarbonate window. Above: The structure’s defining feature is a delightful surprise.
“We thought about how to connect the building as closely as possible to the surrounding garden, and we ultimately came up with the idea of a folding panel that allows one side of the house to completely open,” write Holub and Hanus.”This way, the interior seamlessly transitions to the outdoors, with the garden penetrating the building, creating a kind of paraphrase of a garden loggia, which was our architectural inspiration.”
That moment when you’re winding your way up to The Penny Bun inn in the picturesque village of Askwith in Wharfedale, England, car window down, breathing in all the beauty of the wild hedgerows, drystone walls, and patchworks of lush greens, and you are obliged to stop in your tracks for a carefree pheasant out on a very leisurely stroll? It’s a reminder to slow down, to reconnect with nature, the heart of everything at Denton Reserve.
Set within 2,500 acres of spectacular Yorkshire countryside, this estate has embarked on an ambitious journey to re-imagine, re-wild, and regenerate the land in a bid to tackle the climate crisis, improve biodiversity, and restore balance for generations to come. Rooted in the local, its intent is global. And armed with long-term vision and a profound sense of purpose, the entire Reserve team, supported by members of the neighboring communities, are rolling up their sleeves and pitching in—because the future starts today.
We visited two of the five main properties on the Denton estate in May: the recently opened Denton Hall, a Grade-1 listed Georgian Manor, and The Penny Bun, a 150-year old inn—both redesigned by architecture practice BOX9. We were greatly impressed by both the scale of the undertaking and the thoughtful attention to detail. (For a tour, read our story over on Remodelista.)
Here, we take a closer look at the land recovery project, as the Reserve celebrates some exciting milestones, including the creation of a beaver enclosure, the appearance of nightjars, and the promise of honey from black bees…
Above: Focusing on three key interrelated areas of action—carbon reduction, food production and nature—Denton Reserve has decided to “rethink everything” in order to create a new flagship model for land management and rural hospitality that will benefit both people and the planet. Above: By prioritizing nature, adopting soil-friendly farming methods, regenerating its woodlands, moorland, upland pastures, and arable land, and re-inventing agricultural properties, the Reserve aims to restore balance and harmony.
On a quiet side street dotted with older homes and industrial buildings in downtown Petaluma, California, is a secret garden: the unexpected Balinese-inspired “backyard” (you’ll understand why this is in quotes as you read on) of commercial photographers Stephanie Rausser and Lawrence Cowell. The space is thoughtfully named “Alchemy,” for the way it seamlessly combines gardening, cooking, and design. “Each element enhances the others to create something greater than the sum of its parts,” explains Lawrence.
Join me as we take a tour of this magical space:
Photography by Stephanie Rausser and Lawrence Cowell.
Above: Lawrence, Stephanie, and their rescue dogs, Stan Lee (smuggled in from Bali) and Chicqui, in front of Alchemy. Their actual home is just a block away.
Alchemy’s slender 34-by-100-foot lot was weed-infested and bordered by droopy fences when Stephanie and Lawrence purchased it in 2005. Originally, the couple intended to build an office there for their photography business, but life and work and kids have a way of slowing—and altering—plans. Not to mention, the space lacked basic essentials like electricity, sewage connection, and water hookup. So, instead of building their office, the couple bought a two-story townhouse a block away that is now both their home and office. “It was a big decision as the townhouse has no outdoor space, but we convinced ourselves it could work if we could make Alchemy work as our ‘backyard’,” remembers Stephanie.
Above: Stephanie and Lawrence remodeled a 1966 Airstream so that friends and family can stay here during visits. It also serves as the property’s restroom, as there is no other bathroom on the property.
Over the past three years, the once neglected space has evolved into more than just a yard. Today it exudes a thoughtful combination of beauty, productivity, and sustainability.
Above: Lawrence feeding the chickens in the homemade coop, complete with a festive disco ball.
Alchemy has become a place to harvest fruits and veggies, collect eggs—and do some serious barbecuing with friends and family. “Our neighbors often see us carrying eggs, flowers, and vegetables from Alchemy to our home down the street,” says Stephanie.
Above: The meandering pathway, according to Lawrence, is a metaphor for life: Things get rocky, life is a bit unpredictable, and you don’t always know what’s around the bend. At the end of it is the gladak he and Stephanie had custom-made in Bali. The pieces were numbered so that the couple would be able to easily assemble it according to the artisan’s instructions. A large patch of comfrey grows on the left and towering sunflowers skirted with California native white yarrow borders the right.
The Javanese design accents were inspired by the couple’s three-year sabbatical in Bali. They, along with their two children, moved to the island in 2017 and promptly fell in love with the region’s unique design elements that are now peppered throughout Alchemy. “We had furniture built in Bali and in October 2o2o, our 20-foot container from Bali arrived. Several of the pieces in the container were especially made for Alchemy, the most important being the gladak [a traditional Javanese wood house] and pergola,” shares Stephanie. The gladak stores all of their utensils, cups, plates, and tools so that they don’t have to haul items all the way over from their home kitchen when they want to dine outdoors. “We have an actual kitchen at Alchemy, with a sink with running water and a propane stove, and the lights run on solar power.”
Earlier this week, Remodelista readers were treated to a tour of a row house in Ghent that was was formerly “charmless” and now fresh and chic thanks to its resourceful new owners, Arthur Verraes and Kelly Desmedt, who did much of the remodeling work themselves. Today, we’re visiting the elements that make the outdoor space equally cool.
While Arthur, architect and founder of Atelier Avondzon, led the house renovation, his girlfriend Kelly, a corporate lawyer, is the mastermind behind the overhaul of the back garden. She had no prior experience with gardening. “I grew up without having a garden myself and knew nothing about plants,” says Kelly, who discovered her green thumb during the COVID pandemic, when they purchased the house. “Ever since, I’ve been thinking about studying to become a landscape architect or to do something with it in a more professional way. For now, I’m indulging this passion by helping out friends and family from time to time and by designing our next project.”
The landscape design was actually the first thing the couple tackled, before turning their attention to the house renovation. “I would definitely recommend this sequence. The moment we were able to move, it already felt like home and the garden was already in full bloom,” she says. “Not to mention, this allowed us to plant trees that we wouldn’t be able to plant afterwards (urban townhouse).”
Below, she gives us a tour of the newly reimagined outdoor space. (Be sure to scroll to the bottom for the before images.)
Above: Arthur and their dog posing at the front door of their remodeled row house. Two simple changes to the exterior transformed the entire look: 1) painting the garage door, gutter, and window frames green and 2) adding a wisteria to frame the front door.
Above: The couple tackled the backyard before renovating the house. Next to them on the lower left is a Mediterranean spurge shrub (Euphorbia characias). Above: “We wanted to create an intimate, green, and cozy environment. a perfect place to catch some morning sun, to have a coffee next to the master bedroom or a place to cool down on a hot summer day. That’s why we decided to plant multiple trees in it, despite the small space,” says Kelly. The tree on the left is an Amur cork tree (Phellodendron amurense).
Above: Arthur and Kelly added these concrete steps that lead to a green roof above. The stairs serve as plant shelves as well for their collection of potted succulents. Above: Kelly chose gravel for the hardscaping for environmental reasons. “We really wanted to ensure a permeable surface. [Flooding] is a big problem in Belgium.”
David: Filter or weed fabric is an entire industry that, if I could, I would delete with the push of a button. Weeds go through it, it’s plastic, you always see it (and it’s ugly), and it impairs the ability of insects or worms to move through soil horizons, and that seems incredibly unkind.
Dawn: Impervious surfaces in general! We should really stop pouring concrete.
Old wives’ tale gardening trick that actually works:
Dawn: I talk and sing to my plants at home, and they’re happy.
Diego: Love your plants!
Favorite gardening hack:
Dawn: Sticking my finger in the soil seems to answer a lot of my client’s questions.
David: I love that answer, Dawn! I have a bathtub in my garden and I use it to water my Sycamore Trees (which like a bit of water). Feels like a solid hack to me.
Diego: Hire Carmen Orozco of Barranca Landscape. Everything comes out beautifully.
Every garden needs a…
Diego: A low-tech water fountain for birds and insects.
Dawn: A birdbath!
David: Well, I don’t want to ruin this, so I will also say birdbath, but it’s true—inviting wildlife into your garden is the ultimate baller move.
Favorite hardscaping material:
Dawn: Reclaimed brick! The classics never go out of style.
Diego: Urbanite (broken concrete). We’re increasingly trying to use recycled materials in our projects and urbanite transcends aesthetic worlds in a really cool way. We’re trying to learn how to build mostly native, spiritually Japanese gardens out of trash—that’s one of the present goals of the office.
Go-to gardening outfit:
Above: Terremoto’s Flap Hat is $43 at Plant Material.
Dawn: My old Terremoto shirt.
David: I have a flap hat that protects my red neck from getting even redder, and when I put it on and put glasses on, I go into GARDEN BEAST MODE.
On your wishlist:
Dawn: Owning a fucking house someday hopefully.
David: A small cabin in the woods next to a creek. Ideally with no cell reception.
Favorite nursery, plant shop, or seed company:
Above: Plant Material is the retail arm of Terremoto. Photograph by Caitlin Atkinson, courtesy of Terremoto.
David: Absolutely shameless plug alert, but Plant Material! It’s our Los Angeles nursery with three shops and an ecological point of view. And, of course, shout out to Theodore Payne and Artemisia Nursery. It’s a big city and we’re trying to push it in an environmentally positive direction together, which is lovely.
Dawn: N-K Bonsai Tree Nursery.
Diego: Plant Material!
David: Hey, Diego, you’re getting a raise—awesome answer!
Not-to-be-missed public garden/park/botanical garden:
Diego: Casa Azul, Frida Kahlo’s house in Mexico City.
David: California Scenario shreds. The Test Plots in Elysian Park (and everywhere) are a constant source of joy for me.
The REAL reason you garden:
Dawn: Mental health!
David: Yeah, kinda also mental health and well-being.
Diego: Community and bonding, with co-workers and soil.
Thank you, David, Dawn, and Diego! If you want to see what the team is up to, follow them @terremoto_landscape.
Currently dreaming of adding a sweet Bonni outbuilding to my garden (even though there are two insurmountable obstacles in my way: I don’t have the space, and the company is based across the Atlantic in Oxfordshire, UK).
Bonni’s prefab outbuildings are both good-looking and planet-friendly. Mainly manufactured off-site, the structures are made from materials sourced within a 10-mile radius of company headquarters. The wood is FSC-certified, brought in from the owner’s nearby family timber business. The roof is corrugated steel, a durable and recyclable material. The buildings are meant to be powered by either solar, wind, or biomass energy. And the construction calls for building on stilts instead of a carbon-intensive concrete foundation.
Above: Bonni offers a pitched-roof design as well as a flat-roof option (pictured), and each is available in small, medium, or large sizes. Above: This is the large size, which measures 4.9 x 7.4 meters and features two sets of French doors. Clients can choose from corrugated steel or timber for the exterior cladding, in vertical or horizontal design, left in its natural form or painted in one of six available colors.
Above: Add-ons include a wood-burning stove, kitchenette, and furniture. You can find the range of offerings here.
Above: Circular windows are in every Bonni outbuilding. Above: A sweet powder room can be added. Above: The small size, perfect for a home office.
I remember the first time I heard the word “snag” in reference to a standing dead tree. While touring Edwina von Gal’s property as part of a Garden Conservancy Open Day, von Gal pointed out a decaying tree with pride, telling the visitors about the snag’s many wildlife benefits: It would provide a home for insects, which would attract woodpeckers, who would make holes that would become home to dozens of species of cavity-nesting birds—and when it eventually fully decomposed, it would nourish the soil.
After that, I noticed snags, also known as “wildlife trees,” everywhere I went: On walks through the woods and even on New York City streets. However, one place I didn’t see snags was in people’s yards. As much as they benefit our ecosystems, gardeners don’t seem to love their somewhat rugged appearance.
Above: A black locust snag sat at the center of Norris’ ‘A Beautiful Disturbance’ garden at the Philadelphia Flower Show. Photograph by Jaime Alvarez.
Seeing a dead tree left standing in a garden is unusual, but seeing one in the center of a show garden at the Philadelphia Garden Show was even more so. But that’s exactly what visitors encountered in Kelly D. Norris’s ‘A Beautiful Disturbance’garden. Norris describes the design as a recreation of “an abandoned lot, an artifact of the human-urban century, that finds new life as a novel ecosystem.” It was also a celebration of how nature quickly fills the void. Norris chose to put a dead tree trunk in the center as a symbol of the imagined garden’s past.
Norris has left a few small dead trees on a slope of his own yard. They have become an informal trellis for trumpet vine and Virginia creeper. “It adds both to the layers of the hedgerow,” says Norris. Then, this past winter, a large hackberry that Norris fondly calls “the Queen” split; Norris says he hopes to “negotiate a truce” with his neighbor to leave part of the tree and let it slowly decline. “It’s a beautiful tree and it’s heartbreaking to deal with the idea that it’s not going to be there anymore,” he says. “I’m asking myself, ‘How could we just honor its life and just give it more life?’ ”
Above: A red-bellied woodpecker on a snag. Photograph by Emily Mills via Flickr.
It’s a sentiment Tama Matsuoka Wong, the author of Into The Weeds, shares. When an ash tree near Wong’s house succumbed to emerald ash borer, she asked the arborist to remove the hazardous upper limbs only. “As a standing trunk it is fine,” says Wong. “You don’t need to chip it all the way to the ground or take out the roots: A standing dead tree can provide rich organic nutrients and shelter for a host of animals, birds, insects, and seedlings, as well as fungi.” Now Wong is treated to frequent visits from pileated woodpeckers.
Ecologically-minded garden designers like Norris, von Gal, and Wong are increasingly encouraging their communities to consider trimming hazardous branches and leaving the dead trunks standing. Safety is, of course, the first concern, and in some areas dead trees may also pose a wildfire hazard, so always consult with a seasoned arborist if you have a dead tree you’d like to keep.
Caption: A sculptural snag at the Mount Cuba Center. Photograph by Heather Evans.
If you do determine you can save part of a tree, Norris says the trick to snag success is to convey intention. “When people see snags and decay, they tend to associate those cues with a lack of care,” Norris says. “If somebody in a small yard wants to leave a stump or a snag, it needs to be the most well-loved snag in the neighborhood.” When Heather Evans, the founder of Dear Avant Gardener, had a tree on her property die, she asked her arborist to strategically cut it into a safe and sculptural shape like she’s seen done at the Mount Cuba Center. However, the tree man was perplexed, so Evans took a photo of the tree, printed it out and showed him what she imagined.
Above: Wong’s snag is decorated with tassels and the markings of woodpeckers. Photograph by Ngoc Minh Ngo.
Wong suggests going one step further. “You can mark these trees in the Japanese Shinto tradition of respect by wrapping them with rope or hanging cord with raffia tassels or white paper streamers from them,” says Wong. After removing the upper canopy of her ash, Wong celebrated her snag with decorations.
Public gardens like the Mount Cuba Center that incorporate snags may be key to persuading homeowners to embrace the wildlife tree. Another example is Sweden’s Gothenburg Botanical Garden, where a large snag was left standing. “Rather than take down an existing tree that has died, it has been allowed to stay and become art,” says Carrie Preston, the landscape designer behind Studio Toop and an admirer of the snag. The old tree has hundreds of holes drilled into it. “The holes not only become a graphic pattern, but create habitat,” says Preston.
Another tactic to help the neighbors understand your choice? Evans suggests “a combination of artful landscaping and proactive communication.” She suggests getting your yard certified as a wildlife habitat, noting that there are several local and national programs, including the National Wildlife Federation’s program. “Announcing it with a sign will also suggest that your snag and other ecological features are intentional, not neglect,” she says.
The cost of a photovoltaic system is an up-front investment; the exact amount depends on how much electricity you use and what percentage of that you would like your solar energy system to supply. The more electricity you require, the larger the system required (see chart below for a ballpark figure).
Government-funded solar incentive programs vary from country to country and even from state to state. Some solar-incentive programs pay you back over time based on the energy you generate. Other solar incentives are one-time payments of rebates or credits. To find out the incentives in your area, consult Wholesale Solar’s Solar Incentives by State.
The average cost of installing a solar system varies across the US, and some of the differential is due to these local, regional, and state incentives. But estimates show that solar energy systems create monthly savings across the board: According to EnergySage.com, the average savings from use of a solar system over 20 years can range from $7,000 to over $30,000 (but varies, depending on locale). For estimates based on your specific area, try Google’s Project Sunroof feature, which allows you to plug in your home address for personalized figures.
Above: The photovoltaic panels in this building have been integrated into the standing-seam metal roof. Photograph via Fabral.
How much can I expect to save on utility bills?
The answer depends on what you currently pay for electricity and how much credit your utility company will give you for the amount of power you don’t use. This estimate can be determined by approximating how much power your solar system will provide compared to your current usage.
Are solar panels ever good-looking?
Don’t like the bulky look of solar panels? The next generation of solar products, Building-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV), show great promise: photovoltaic cells are being incorporated into shingles, windows, siding, and other building materials, enabling structures in the future to have seamless solar solutions.
Had firsthand experience with solar paneling? In the Comments section, fill us in on your finds.
Above: On Telegraph Hill, in San Francisco, a flat-roofed building by Feldman Architecture has solar panels mounted at an angle to catch the sun’s light. The optimum angle to mount a solar panel varies throughout the year depending on the seasons and geographical location. In an ideal world, solar panels would track the location of the sun minute by minute to optimize their harnessing capacity, but this is expensive and energy consuming. Instead, the panels remain stationery at an angle that is calculated to achieve optimum overall performance within the constraints.
For more on eco-friendly upgrades, see:
N.B. This post is an update; the original story ran on Remodelista on July 3, 2014.
As a regular reader, you may already be familiar with Perfect Earth Project, as Gardenista has partnered with them on an ongoing series about nature-based, toxic-free gardening. But you may not know much about the group’s tour-de-force founder, Edwina von Gal. The venerable landscape designer-turned-sustainable gardening advocate has been calling for less lawn, more wildlife for decades, via both her projects for clients and her nonprofit. She is currently on the board of What Is Missing, Maya Lin’s multifaceted media artwork about the loss of biodiversity, and an honorary trustee of the Native Plant Trust.
Edwina, who resides in Springs, NY, recently responded to our Quick Takes questionnaire from her retreat, Cocoloche, in Panama: “I built it with minimal resources to explore just that. How could I keep my footprint light and—with good design and the materials at hand—make a place that would engage and awe people?” It’s her philosophy to garden design as well.
Read on to learn Edwina’s favorite hardscaping material (hint: it’s not hard), her go-to work pants (we want them now, too), and why she thinks it’s imperative for designers to push back on client’s misguided requests.
Above: Edwina counts Cindy Sherman, Calvin Klein, and Ina Garten among her clients. Photograph courtesy of Perfect Earth Project.
Your first garden memory:
The patch of silver dollar plant (Lunaria annua) that always returned in a spot by our swing set. I looked for it every year, and would open it and spread the seeds without realizing I was its dispersal agent.
Above: Edwina visiting one of her projects. Photograph by Allan Pollok-Morris.
Experimental. Exuberant. Engaging.
Plant that makes you swoon:
Sourwood (Oxydendrum arboretum). It blooms late in the summer and then follows the show with brilliant fall color. It is relatively small, so it won’t outgrow its space or out-compete the plants beneath it. Since it is a southern plant, it is a bit of assisted migration for me, providing familiar blooms for wildlife that are moving north to escape the heat.
Plant that makes you want to run the other way:
Crepe myrtle (Lagerstroemia). It’s overused and under-useful for biodiversity. One good thing about it, though, is that in the conventional landscapes where it is so popular, it doesn’t need to be sprayed with pesticides.
Favorite go-to plant:
Above: Edwina can’t get enough of spotted beebalm (Monarda punctata). Photograph by Edwina von Gal.
Monarda punctata. It tends to be short lived—it might act like an annual—but I am willing to replant it as I never tire of its odd combination of wacky complicated bloom and understated presence. Not to mention how many pollinators love it, too.
Hardest gardening lesson you’ve learned:
When to stop.
Unpopular gardening opinion:
Designs that are harmful, but the designer does it anyway, because it is “what the client wants.” We are hired for our expertise. But how can we, the ones who are expected to know, allow even one more garden to be harmful to the environment and the people who enjoy them?
Gardening or design trend that needs to go:
Monocultures: large swaths of one plant.
Every garden needs a…
Above: A place for thirsty wildlife in Edwina’s own garden in Springs, NY. Photograph by Edwina von Gal.
I’ve known artist Emma Kohlmann since she was a kid and am a huge fan. I’m not the only one. Her beguiling, dreamlike paintings were discovered on Instagram 10 years ago when she was in her mid-twenties and she now has an impressive CV of shows near and far (she’s represented in NYC by Silke Lindner and in Copenhagen by V1 Gallery).
Emma began by self-publishing zines and continues to make printed matter (with her sister, Charlotte Kohlmann, she runs Mundus Press in Northampton, Massachusetts, where the two live). Emma also frequently collaborates with other creatives—with Simone Bodmer-Turner, for instance, she produced a sell-out line of vases, and she’s currently designing tableware for a major Danish brand. Emma Kohlmann Watercolors, a large-format monograph on her work of the past decade, is being published any minute by Anthology.
Today, we’re featuring her latest collab: the Emma Kohlman Lamp Collection for online art and design shop Slow Roads. The brand’s founders, Catherine Costanza and Evan Dublin, supplied Emma with custom canvas lampshades to paint. They sized the shades to pair with vintage tree root lamps that they ferreted out on road trips in Upstate New York, Seattle, and California, and carefully restored. The sculptural collection debuted on the Slow Roads site on March 11, with prices starting at $1,450. Take a look. There are only six lamps (and three have already been sold), so speak up if you want one.
Above: Here are the just-finished shades in Emma’s studio, in a former paper mill in Western Massachusetts. Emma grew up in Riverdale, in the Bronx; she studied at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. and has lived in the area ever since (but has friends and toeholds around the world).
Emma typically works spontaneously without advance sketches, and has developed her own benevolent universe of reclining figures, floating faces, plants, and animals. She painted the lampshades with watered-down acrylics; each is one-of-a-kind and displays evolving patterns and scenes.
Above: Catherine and Evan of Slow Roads are artist-designers themselves, based in Rochester, NY; their shop showcases contemporary and vintage housewares, all rooted in nature. Like the shades, each of the lamp bases is a one-off. This one is Lamp 4.
