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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
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
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
There's nothing new about urban gardening. The Romans grew food on rooftops. Schoolyards and vacant lots have hosted veggie plots for centuries. So today's city agriculture explosion is really just a reclamation of our heritage. And nowhere is it more prevalent than Brooklyn, where Patrick Nagel (no, not that Patrick Nagel) gets his green thumb dirty every day. Born and raised near Detroit,......read more
Ten years ago, when artist Greg Van de Hey felt the creative impulse, he'd make a painting. But now, with two young kids, there just isn't enough time to make art. That's where his garden comes in. Whether it's building a rain barrel, making a grapevine trellis, or making wine, the young dad can always find a garden project that satiates his creative drive. It all plays into......read more
Growing up on a farm in Greece, New York restauranteur George Iliopoulos learned a thing or two about growing food. At 12, he hopped on a ship and headed to America. He finally settled in Staten Island, where his garden now produces plenty of fresh veggies for his family's table. But it wasn't always easy; despite his understanding of farming, things didn't always grow like he thought they......read more
If you were in New York City in the late '60s, you may have come across a longhaired Stephen Rutsky out in the streets with his hippy brethren, advocating for social and political change. These days, you're more likely to find him among the abundant greenery of his Park Slope garden, where he practices a quieter, more personal form eco-activism... by growing plants. From beans for his table to......read more
Native New Yorker Peter Manerva comes by his love of gardening honestly. His parents were into plants, and when he was a kid, instead of building forts out of sheets and couch cushions, he would create his own little jungle worlds from all the plantlife around the house. That childhood interest in greenery blossomed into an adult obsession. Peter was kind enough to show us around his spectacular......read more
