Archive for March, 2008
Gardens – woodland style
March 31st, 2008We’re all being told that we need to spend less time in the sun, for the sake of our health, and that our gardens need to be more natural, sustainable and wildlife friendly – and most of us don’t have that much time to devote to making a style statement outdoors – what’s the answer? […]
Garden style - screening
March 28th, 2008Making your garden work as an extra room in the summer is a good way to gain a feeling of increased living space but because you don’t want everybody watching you, you need to plan some screening – in the house you have walls ad curtains, in the garden you can use other structures, and […]
Designers are homing in on gardens
March 26th, 2008The most noticeable trend in garden style this year is the extent to which the ‘outdoor room’ has become a reality. Sofas, complete with full upholstery, and covered with scatter cushions; table lamps; coffee tables and footstools have all begun to appear in garden furniture ranges. Mirrors, tiles and even paintings created in new weather resistant […]
Storms, snow and gardens – are you covered?
March 22nd, 2008And I don’t just mean are you running around, like the rest of us, with armfuls of horticultural fleece and old newspapers, trying to protect spring growth from the bitter weather. Do you have insurance cover? It seems that 40% of property owners are uninsured or underinsured against flood damage alone.
To be sure you have […]
Preparing the garden for spring
March 17th, 2008With the cold weather and gales we’ve been having recently, it hardly seems appropriate, or even comfortable, to be getting the garden ready for Easter, but it’s almost upon us, so here are some ideas.
Get your old garden furniture out and give it a spring clean, or buy new. Fashionable styles for this year include […]
Garden style in March
March 14th, 2008The recent gales have left a lot of gardens looking more like builder’s sites than style destinations. What can you do to give your battered garden an instant lift while you repair, renovate and replant?
Use containers to conceal – nicely planted and placed pots, tubs and urns, or even whimsical containers, will distract the eye […]
Garden Style - movement
March 11th, 2008As gale-force winds rip across the country, leaving garden devastation in their wake, this is a great time to think about movement in the garden. We tend to think of gardens as being static, or at least very slow moving things, and the bigger and more formal they are, the more static we see them […]
Front Garden Style
March 7th, 2008Here’s a front garden that’s really doing it’s best at a time of year when there’s not a lot on offer to the eye. There’s a strong contrast of shapes between the triangular and upward-pointing porch roof, and the pendant, downward-pointing hanging baskets, which is very dramatic, and the bedding plants chosen to fill those […]
Garden Design - style by mulch
March 5th, 2008Mulches are usually considered to be the preserve of the ‘organic’ gardener, or the allotment owner, but what I’m thinking about here is the inorganic mulch, which lasts much longer than organic mulches but won’t feed or improve the soil. What they will do, however, is give you some scope for design and style emphasis: Gravel […]
Garden style – demystifying terminology
March 1st, 2008I was talking to a woman recently who was thinking of hiring a design consultant for her new garden but had interviewed two and ‘didn’t understand a word they were on about’. I sympathise!
There is a specific vocabulary that relates to most professions, but garden design can be one of the worst because it has […]
