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I had heard about Flora Grubb through several un-related people. She's created a native, drought-tolerant beautiful oasis that has become the city's crown jewel of plant shops. One friend mentioned she'd been profiled in Vogue, another that he buys his fruit trees from her and that his kids love going there. While attending our good friends Kestrin Pantera and Jonathan......read more
With this succulent ornament, SHFT friend and garden genius extraordinaire Flora Grubb has created the most meta Christmas decoration of the season. Mounted on 3.5-inch handcrafted ornamental hooks, the live aeonium or echeveria cuttings look a bit like dangling earrings. "We got the idea for these ornaments when we noticed that succulent cuttings remain vibrant for months here......read more
Flora Grubb's fantastic plant boutique is Bay Area's hub for local, seasonal horticulture. Above and beyond the creative plant offerings on Grubb's menu are these Handcrafted Forest Floor Ornaments, containing living environments of Tillandsia air-plants, lichens, mosses and other forest trimmings. Adding an extraordinary element to holiday decoration, the Forest Floor Ornaments......read more
Clover Chadwick, owner of Dandelion Ranch here in Los Angeles, describes her approach to floral design as "natural, organic, balanced, with lots of movement." It's a design philosophy rooted in her experiences studying agriculture and working in a Napa eatery, where fresh, seasonal ingredients were the order of the day. Chadwick's creations involve wild, native plants that are outside the realm......read more
The grass lawn is as conventionally American as the white picket fence. Most homes in this country are surrounded by green grass. To stay healthy and green, grass requires large amounts of inputs, including water, fertilizer, and energy. Sure, grass lawns have some aesthetic and recreational benefits, but so do parks. Considering the state of the climate, it may be due time to reconsider the idea......read more
In New York City, hidden among the cement and concrete, there lie pockets of plantlife, carefully nurtured by denizens of the city. In the SHFT series Gardens NYC, we give some shine to these gardens and the people who grow them. In this episode, we pay a visit to landscape designer Jamie Hardy's backyard oasis in Williamsburg, where peas, peonies, and tomatoes thrive in the Brooklyn air. ...read more
Matthew Levesque is on a crusade to prove that landscape design doesn't have to be boring or expensive. In his new book, "The Revolutionary Yardscape: Ideas for Repurposing Local Materials to Create Containers, Pathways, Lighting, and More," Levesque offers inspiration and tips on using unexpected materials to spruce up the area around your home. The book is filled with images and......read more
Looking like scenes from some fairy tale and/or acid trip, the swirling landscape works of Charles Jencks are in fact informed by big scientific ideas like fractals, genetics, chaos theory, and waves. Take, for instance, The Garden of Speculation, in Scotland, where a Jencks designed a terrace that shows the distortion of space and time caused by a black hole, a "Quark Walk"......read more
In the arid American West, green grass lawns are as "natural" a part of the ecosystem as polar bears. Now California's drought is making well-watered lawns even less sensibles. Many homeowners are either replacing water-intensive grass with more suitable landscaping, or simply letting lawns turn brown. From The New York Times: With rainfall at below-normal levels for several years, and......read more
If there is such thing as a gardening superstar, then you can count both Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury among them. From the High Line and Battery Park in New York to the Lurie Garden in Chicago, Oudolf is the man behind some of the most high-profile planting projects in the world. Kingsbury, meanwhile, has written no fewer than twenty books on planting and garden design. "Planting: A New......read more
