Calling all cats: There's a surprise for you under the Manhattan Bridge, via 66SquareFeet:
And here's something your little mouse friends: a fort made of cheese, via Casa Yellow.
Gracie Mansion gets a new kitchen, via NY Times.
Goosefoot gardening in the desert, via The Field Lab.
Dwell on Design's modern home tours, via LA Times.
Gardens in the Mist, via Blackpitts.
We notice floating, mid-air gardens everywhere these days—including the flying centerpieces created by Laureen Barber, an owner of the sustainable-food mecca Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York's Hudson River Valley. Barber's latest design feat manages to achieve the same exalted heights as the food.
Time to demystify the trend: How, exactly, do you keep plants happy when their root balls are suspended overhead instead of planted in the ground?
Above: Working with the restaurant's general manager, Phillipe Gouze, Barber chose low-light and woodland plants that bloom continuously and can adjust to the sun-filled dining room. Root balls are wrapped in plastic, and then moss, to keep in moisture; they're watered through an opening on top once or twice a week. Gouze changes the plants after they are done blooming and adjusts wires, depending on the size of the replacement, to ensure a balanced arrangement.
Above: The mix of plants includes: Rhododendron 'English Roseum,' Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia), Lace Leaf Maple (Acer palmatum dissectum), Weigela florida 'Wine & Roses,' Smoke Bush (Cotinus obovatus), and Showy Medinilla (Medinilla magnifica). For a selection of similar potted Lace Leaf Maples, from $30 to $70 depending on size, see East Fork Nursery.
Above: The harvest table, originally designed to be a service station, has become the centerpiece of the restaurant.
Daisy Buchanan would look very comfortable lounging against the backdrop of an Edmund Hollander landscape.
It's difficult, in fact, to look at one of the many sprawling, luxurious estate gardens that NY-based landscape architect Hollander has created for wealthy clients on Long Island's East End without thinking about the Great Gatsby. And it's nearly impossible to flip through the 350 beautifully photographed pages of a new book devoted to the work of Edmund Hollander Design without feeling the inchoate yearning that Gatsby had for a distant green light that burned on a dark horizon. We all covet something beautiful; what that means, according to The Private Oasis by Philip Langdon, is drifts of high grasses and dandelion-puff alliums and impossibly glassy swimming pools.
Above: Hollander, once described as doing "beautiful work for the most beautiful people in the world," has a classicist's eye for symmetry. Here a backbone of boxwood supports lady's mantle, lavender, and alliums as they face off across a path.
Above: With partner Maryanne Connelly, Hollander uses paths to "establish a rhythm of movement within the landscape," according to Langdon.
Above: The interesting thing about Hollander's work is how well he can adapt his 1920s retro vernacular to simpler, modern tastes without forfeiting the approachability of his more sentimental gardens. Here, the pom pons of Allium giganteum 'Mount Everest' and 'Globemaster' are inter-planted with grasses.
Above: Grasses line the walk of a house designed by Steven Holl Architects.
Above: As an undergraduate at Vassar, Hollander catalogued every tree on campus; here the same bent for organization informs a succession of identical bluestone beds.
Above: A typical Hollander design, the infinity pool extends to the horizon and has a simple coping edge.
Above: An entryway to a property should feel like a journey, Hollander believes, and many of his entries reflect the romantic sensibility of Frederick Law Olmstead's naturalistic approach: A path should feel spontaneous.
Above: The Private Oasis: The Landscape Architecture and Garden Design of Edmund Hollander and Maryanne Connelly, by Philip Langdon, is $32.64 from Amazon.
During the nine and a half months of the year when they're out of season, I would pay anything for one delicious, ripe, homegrown tomato. In season, however, tomato values plummet faster than the euro. The cost of growing one yourself can fluctuate almost as much:
Above: The $85 tomato. This beauty was produced with the help of a tomato plant ($5), soil mix ($10), plant food ($5), insecticide ($15) and an Earth Box planter ($50). Image by Shutter, via Flickr. And now, a far less expensive alternative:
Above: The $9 tomato. Grown from seed, in a biodegradable pot, in an organic soil mix and with homemade fertilizer and pesticide. Image by Meytav Katzir, via Flickr.
Above: A packet of Pearson Tomato seeds is $2 from Baker Creek. For more about heirloom seeds, see Seed Bank: Heirlooms in Petaluma. Image by Tofutti Break, via Flickr.
Above: A bag of organic Potting Soil from Fire Escape Farms is $6.
Above: Start your seedling in a biodegradable Jiffy Pot (£0.20 from Greenfinger). For US gardeners, Jiffy Peat Pots are $1 apiece at Greenhouse. Transplant your seedling in one of those many empty terracotta pots you have lying around.
Above: For a recipe for homemade tomato fertilizer, made from ingredients like eggshells, visit My Pet Chicken. Image via Thermoforming.
Above: A simple homemade organic pesticides, made from onion skins steeped in water, can keep bugs away. Image via Tipnut.
French stylist and designer Caroline Gomez has the solution to hanging houseplants at varying heights: minimal leather planters with linen cord to suspend your next philodendron, croton, or schefflera.
Above: Two tiny house plants hang from the Suspension No. 2 holders. The holders include a white porcelain pot and linen string; €18 each from Caroline Gomez.
Above: The plant holders can be placed at different lengths with the linen cord measuring a maximum of 48 inches long. The cord is available in either sand or steel grey.
Above: The Suspension No.1 is smaller in diameter and available in white leather for €14 each.
Above: Each piece of leather is unique with a variety of grain, color, and natural patina.
The best room in the house (for your plants) is the bath. Houseplants perform well with natural light and shower mist; as an added bonus, they also purify the air and bring a touch of green indoors.
Above: House Balalla Kavanagh in Australia by Tribe Studio Architects.
Above: A courtyard of schefflera plants and light in the bath from Suppose Design Office in Japan.
Above: House plants near the bathroom window via Skona Hem (L). Potted rosemary in the bath from the home of Jason Gnewikow and Jeff Madalena; via Design Sponge (R).
Above: Mother-in-law tongues from Houseplants as Camouflage.
Above: A wild ivy plant wraps itself around the shower rod via Blood and Champagne (L). Succulents at The Sanitarium Spa in San Luis Obispo, California (R).
How clever! Admired in the garden of the Stable Cafe in San Francisco recently: artful arrangements of painted shutters sprouting succulents.
Lila B. Design, a San Francisco-based floral and garden design firm founded by Baylor Chapman, created this new take on the vertical garden. Chapman painted salvaged solid wood shutters and then transformed them into vertical potting boxes filled with soil, planted with a variety of low-maintenance succulents. Perfect for the urban gardener.
Inspired to try it yourself? Go to Deborah Prinzing for ideas on how to emulate Baylor's shutters.
Above: Lila B. Design Succulent Shutters are available by custom order; limited pieces are available at the Lila B. Design Online Shop.
Above: The vertical succulent garden requires minimal care. Lila B. suggests partial shade, indirect light, and a periodic squirt of water to keep the low-maintenance succulents flourishing. Photo via Debra Prinzing.
Above: The Lila B Design Small Succulent Shutter is currently on offer for $275.
Shade is the dirty secret of every garden. We all have it, so before things deteriorate further, let's get the professional help we need to face the situation like mature adults. Hello, Bart Ziegler.
Mr. Ziegler, who writes the Wall Street Journal's popular "Weekend Gardener" column, has turned shade into an asset on the two acres of lawn and gardens that surround his house in upstate Columbia County, about a two-and-a-half hours' drive from New York City. He's a free thinker whose public support of "Politically Incorrect Gardening" gave us the courage to just say no to the fanaticism of the "Natives-Only" movement. When we phoned him the other day, whining about having too much shade—"Don't tell anyone, but at night sometimes we lie awake fantasizing about taking an axe and chopping down all the trees in the world"—he perhaps heard a note of desperation. Coming to the rescue, he revealed his secrets, step-by-step, for creating a shade garden we'd actually prefer to sun:
Photographs by Bart Ziegler.
Above: Accept the fact that it's the rare shade plant that has showy blooms. Woodland phlox (Above) is an exception. For a similar phlox, consider Phlox divaricata 'Mary Helen.' At Wayside Gardens, it's $13.95, or $10.95 if you buy six, which you probably should because, as Mr. Ziegler says, "They don't spread very much. After five or six years in my garden, they've barely grown."
Above: Control the weeds. In Mr. Ziegler's 100-foot-long shade garden, "luckily nothing grows as quickly in shade, including weeds. But the maple trees went crazy, and this year there was an amazing out crop of seedlings." Pull them out by the roots, rather than cutting them back, or they will return and develop, amazingly quickly, into pernicious little trees.
Above: Forget flowers; look at the leaves. Mr. Ziegler creates contrast and interest with giant hostas whose leaves are "crinkled, sort of like a waffle texture." For a similar look, consider Hosta 'Final Summation,' which is $26.95 and ships for spring planting from White Flower Farm.
Above: Variegated leaves create year-round interest. "I want every plant to have more going on than just one little season of blooms," says Mr. Ziegler. For a similar variegated Solomon's Seal, consider Polygonatum odoratum Variegatum; $24 for three plants and ships for fall planting from White Flower Farms.
Above: Look for unusual colors: this bleeding heart's yellow leaves stand out. "They just glow," says Mr. Ziegler. Dicentra spectabilis 'Gold Heart' is $21.95 and ships in the fall from White Flower Farm.
Above: Consider versatile plants that do well in either sun or shade. For a similar look, Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight' will tolerate light shade; $19.95 apiece, from Wayside Gardens.
Above: In the foreground, the red-tinged leaves of epimedium complement the yellow leaves of bleeding heart in the background. "Some people like a garden where everything blends together and touches; it looks like a tapestry," says Mr. Ziegler. "But I think that looks weedy, so I trim around the edges of clumps to keep them more distinct." For a similar look, consider Epimedium x. versicolor Sulphureum; $14 apiece from Amazon.
Good news for the slackers among us: a self-watering planter.
Designer Joey Roth's self-watering terracotta planter does require filling with water once in a while but that's it. Plants are placed in soil in the outer donut-shaped chamber, and the center chamber is filled with water. The natural porosity of the unglazed terracotta allows the water to move from the center chamber and into the soil, based on the soil's moisture (regulated by the plant's need for water). Joey Roth will be launching the planter at Dwell on Design. The planters are $45 at Joey Roth.
Want to meet Joey and see his self watering Terracotta planter in person? Come and visit us this weekend at Dwell on Design.
Above: The terra cotta wall both regulates and filters the water.
Above: A simple lid on the top of the water chamber prevents evaporation.
On any given day, it will take less than three hours to walk the perimeter of New York's 843-acre Central Park, as I did on Sunday. To see it all, however, will take a lifetime.
Among the sights: picnickers; popsicle carts; topless sunbathers (European tourists); robins feasting on scattered scraps of white bread; mountain bike teams whizzing by in identical Spandex; long-distance runners; long-distance power walkers; long-distance wheelchair riders; four generations gathered for a reunion under a specimen pin oak; skate boarders; shuffle boarders; a quarter-mile-long line of Shakespeare lovers waiting for free tickets to As You Like It; boys fishing in the Harlem Meer; girls practicing soccer kicks; several lively seniors' doubles tennis matches, and pit bulls straining at their barbed choked collars as appetizer lap dogs prance past.
What does Central Park mean to you? At 7 o'clock tonight, several writers will answer that question, in the third-floor rare books room of the Strand Bookstore at 828 Broadway (at 12th St.), as they read from a new anthology of essays, edited by Andrew Blauner, called Central Park.
Above: Eighteen writers contributed essays to Central Park: An Anthology. The book is $9.94 from Amazon. Reading tonight will be City Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, a contributor, along with writers Thomas Beller, Ben Dolnick, John Burnham Schwartz, and Susan Sheehan.
Above: The book's contributors include novelist Francine Prose (L), photograph via Amazon, and New Yorker writer Alec Wilkinson, photograph by Sara Barrett via Random House.
Above: Central Park in early spring, looking south toward the Plaza Hotel. Image by Doug Kerr, via Flickr.
Above: The gates to the Conservatory Garden. An idyllic spot, it remains undiscovered by the hordes of tourists who populate the southern end of the park. Image by Ccho, via Flickr.
Above: Lily pads at the Conservatory Garden. Image by Chris 9, via Flickr.
Recently spotted from Byggstudio, a creative consultancy in Sweden: standard wooden trellises and DIY sawhorse tables display plants in a pop-up vintage plant shop.
Founded in 2006 by Hanna Nilsson & Sofia Østerhus, Byggstudio opened a temporary vintage plant shop in the middle of Stockholm. The idea behind the instant shop is to exhibit and exchange secondhand plants and document their stories as they're passed from owner to owner. Byggstudio collaborated with architects Markus Bergström and Simon Jones to build out the tiny shop with plant pots custom made by ceramicists Linus Ersson and Andrea Djerf.
We like the hanging shelves in the window so much that we decided to sleuth out the perfect wooden trellis to recreate the look at home.
Above: Layers of wooden trellises hang from thick green cord lengths showcasing a mix-and-match of plants and plant pots.
Above: Indoor plants at different stages of their lives: robust jade, burgundy wandering jew, and philodendron plants.
Above: The exterior of the Vintage Plant Shop (L) and a detail view of the hanging plant stand (R).
Above: The Riveted Diamond Trellis ranges from £7.99 to £21.99, depending on size, from Crocus in the UK. A US option is to use part of this Extendable Instant Fence; $22.95 from Amazon.
Above: To replicate the look, consider using Toner Hemp Cord in green; $8.99 for a roll of 400 feet at Amazon.
Above: Ikea's Jattefin Plant Pot is made of powder-coated stoneware for $4.99 each.
Above: The Bauer Biltmore Pot in blue (L) is $150 for a 12-inch pot, and the Bauer Flower Pot in yellow is $28, both from Potted in Los Angeles.
Above: An inexpensive classic is the terra cotta pot, Ikea's Ronnbar Plant Pot is $5.99
N.B.: Thinking of recreating this look in your garden shed? See 142 images of Garden Sheds in our Gallery of rooms and spaces.
We'll call it an alley revolution: A neglected walkway in central London transforms into a bright, child-friendly destination during a weekend of mingling, dancing, and art.
Located in the city's King's Cross neighborhood, architectural firm Squire and Partners decided to give life to the cobble back street that runs through the firm's office location. Collaborating with landscape designer Jeremy Rye and artist Anna Garforth, the firm turned the space into an unexpected picnic area and pop-up garden, complete with grass seating, rope swings, and a large graphic moss installation. Deemed The King's Cross Picnic, the project attracted around 500 visitors (including one movie star) and made for a delightful weekend for children and adults.
Photography by James Jones and Mickey Lee.
Above: To beautify the several crumbling metal railway walls surrounding the space, the firm turned to artist Anna Garforth. With restrictions against permanent changes, Garforth used tape and Velcro to attach moss pieces, creating a large scale graphic art installation. Landscape architect Jeremy Rye supplied the native English flowers, waking early to buy them fresh from the market.
Above: The crowds gathered around the alleyway, resting on the moss beds and lounge seating. The firm purchased the trees and donated one to the local council after the event.
Above: To create the grass beds, the firm collected used pallets from local businesses and reinforced each with additional plywood. They attached heavy-duty castors and covered the pallets in Wow! Grass!, a soil-free grass that grows in felt made from recycled British textiles.
Above: Children were given sidewalk chalk to decorate the surrounding walls, making a mural.
Above: One of the surrounding walls; by the end of the weekend, the chalk art stretched across two streets of space.
Above: Every hour, The Place Dance School youth dancers performed.
Above: To provide an escape from the quotidian London rain showers, the firm transformed 06 St. Chad's Place, a restaurant/bar in the old Victoria warehouse along the alley. The space provided an indoor setting that was fluid with the outside; the grounds were covered in more grass, refreshments were served, a bespoke games table offered chess, and two large swings hung from the rafters (equally popular with children and adults). The ladies from the London artisan shop The Poundshop were also present, selling artistic items at low prices.
Above: A knackered participant takes a respite in the grass.
(N.B.: Interested in seeing more gardens? Browse our gallery of rooms and spaces to see more than 400 images of outside inspiration.)
An idea that falls into the "why didn't we think of that" category: picnic baskets lined with insulating Styrofoam and rattan baskets with galvanized liners to keep food and drinks cold all afternoon:
Above: The Rattan Party Bucket with galvanized lining; prices start at $40 for the small at C.S. Post & Co.
Above: The Peterboro Tailgating Cooler Basket is $44.
Above: The Peterboro Ice Master has a removable Styrofoam insert to keep food cool; it's $49.
The ultimate luxury for city dwellers? A balcony, a terrace, a rooftop garden—no matter how diminutive—for cultivating a bit of green in the urban cityscape.
Above: A terrace garden in Chelsea featuring custom-designed planter beds intermixed with pots of varied shape and size by Brook Landscape.
Above: A sliver of outdoor space in a project by Dufner Heighes.
Above: A planter by Verdant Gardens features a mix of blooms.
Above: An outdoor fireplace in a West Village project by MADE LLC.
Above: A terrace garden planted with fast-growing bamboo, photographed by Norman McGrath for Rooftop Gardens (Rizzoli); via Treehugger.
Above: A penthouse garden by New York architects Rogers Marvel A downtown terrace garden by Goode Green (winner of an AIA Excellence Award) (L). A downtown terrace garden by Goode Green (winner of an AIA Excellence Award) (R).
Above: LA-based Elysian Landscapes created a California-style roof garden in New York.
Above: A terrace garden by NY architects Rogers Marvel.
Above: A must-read for the urban gardener: the just-published New York Rooftop Gardens, with photos by Charles deVaivre, is $37.77 at Amazon. N.B. For a preview of images from the book, go to Charles de Vaivre.
When temperatures rise, awnings are an essential weapon in the cooling arsenal—blocking direct sun and creating zones of shade. The best development we've seen in a while is the tensioned shade sail, a triangle or rectangular of UV-blocking fabric.
Whittier, CA-based Shade Sails offers an extensive range of sail shades in different configurations; prices range from $59.95 for an eight--foot triangle to $239.55 for a 15-foot square. Off-the-Rack Shades by Gale Pacific are available at Stacks and Stacks.
Above: Simple lean-to shading via a canvas awning at Kasbah Bab Ourika in Morocco.
Above: Photo via OWI.
Above: Shade Sails from Backyard City.
Above: This is an update of a post originally published April 14, 2009. (N.B.: Looking for more backyard solutions? For 35 images of Terraces, see our Gallery of rooms and spaces.)
Above: A Square Shade Sail by Gale Pacific is 11 feet, ten inches square; it's $159 from Stacks and Stacks.
The typical city lot in San Francisco is 25 feet wide by 100 feet deep. Put a townhouse on this. How much space is left for a garden?
"You have to design every inch," says Scott Lewis, of San Francisco-based Scott Lewis Landscape Architecture. "The garden has to work in every single corner." For a young family whose kitchen and dining areas look out onto the back garden, "the idea was that the garden should be kind of like a jewel box that's an extension of the family living areas," Mr. Lewis said.
Photographs via John Sutton Photography.
Above: Floor to ceiling windows extend across the back of the house. To make the space between the house and the fence appear larger, Mr. Lewis divided it into separate areas with plantings that partially obstruct the view, "like a scrim, so you can see partially through it, but not all the way through it," he says.
Above: "There are some serious privacy issues, because you can see houses with each side, and neighbors with taller houses, back in the corner and adjacent," Mr. Lewis says. To solve the problem, the vertical shape of bamboo—Phyllostachus aureosulcata ‘Yellow Groove’— provides an immediate screen.
Above: The design relies on very simple geometry: Two long planters bisect the space, slipping between each other. Reinforcing the garden's separate spaces, visitors have to make a turn and descend three steps, at which point the flooring changes wood to stone. The hedge is Pittosporum tennuifolium and the bamboo (Above) is Phyllostachus dulcis.
Above: "Japanese maples have a lovely, upright, lacy character," says Mr. Lewis. "You can prune them to do whatever you want." In the planters, Acer palmatum trees are underplanted with bearded iris, Heliotropum arborescens ’Alba’ and Viola hederacea.
Above: "This was a client who wanted a design that was cleaner and more geometric," Mr. Lewis says.
Above: The concrete planters were poured in place, then covered with a tinted parge coat that looks like a thick, troweled finish. "We worked on six different color samples to get something kind like a blue-green-gray, and it has a lovely weathered finish," Lewis says.
Above: Purple-Leaved European Dog Violets in concrete pots by Mary Martha Collins. (N.B.: For 178 more images of Townhouses with Gardens, see our Gallery of rooms and spaces.)
What happens if an impromptu pop-up garden doesn't ever pop back down?
The Dalston Roof Park in northeast London's Hackney neighborhood shows no signs of disappearing; it's in its third summer of entertaining the locals—students, immigrants, artists, and hipsters—with a tongue-in-cheek interpretation of a traditional English garden. Created by the Bootstrap Company as a serendipitous community gathering space, the park has a white picket fence, a swath of green lawn, and the requisite allotment garden raised beds. Oh, and also concerts, a bar, puppet shows, and film screenings:
Above: The park's pop-up bar serves cocktails every evening after five o'clock. Photograph via the Bootstrap Company.
Above: The park's summer calendar: yoga classes, barbecues, and live music. Photograph by Alex Pink, via Flickr.
Above: Lettuces, herbs, and other edibles flourish in donated Gro bags. Photograph by Julian Walker, via Flickr.
Above: From the park, a view of the building that houses the CLR James Library, named for the historian, and the London Borough of Hackney Archives. Photograph by Julian Walker, via Flickr.
Above: Photograph by Alex Pink, via Flickr.
Above: Photograph by Brad, via Flickr.
Above: A white picket fence and rooftop solar panels (L). Photograph by Julian Walker, via Flickr.
Above: Solar panels supply electricity to the Print House on Ashwin Street. Photograph by Julian Walker, via Flickr.
Above: Photograph by Martha Pichey. (N.B.: For 204 images of Roof Gardens, see our Gallery of rooms and spaces.)
A beautiful potted plant generally provokes the same wary reaction from me as the sight of a baby in a stroller: lovely, but looks like a lot of work to keep happy.
Not so, according to Real Simple (at least not when it comes to house plants). Here are a few ideas, spotted on the magazine's website, to turn the tables; house plants can actually make your life easier:
Photographs via Real Simple.
Above: A phalaenopsis orchid loves humidity, so a moist bathroom is an ideal home; you won't need to water the orchid as often.
Above: If you have an assortment of potted succulents, you can create still-life vignettes—in the living room, down the center of a dining table, or lined up on a window sill.
Above: A low maintenance fern, which doesn't require a lot of sunlight, will thrive in a bedroom.
Above: Put a heavy pot on a wheeled caddie to make it easy to move around.
Above: Create an inexpensive tabletop tableau by mixing three colors of African violets in an urn. (N.B.: For more ideas, see 360 images of Flowery Tablescapes in our Gallery of rooms and spaces.)
I used to live in a basement flat near London's King's Cross, with a little courtyard. It was full of pots and was lovely really, except for two things. It was overlooked by hundreds of people (there was a hotel next door), and there was no soil.
I could have done something about the latter problem if I'd come across Alex Mitchell, author of The Edible Balcony. Instead, I carried countless bags of compost down into the flat, due to an unfounded fear of using anything that was "tired," and got rid of said compost in the park across the street when no one was looking.
Photographs by Sarah Cuttle via The Edible Balcony, except where noted.
Above: One of the questions I would have asked Mitchell would have been: Don't I need to replace my soil constantly? "Luckily, no," she says. "Otherwise you would have a backbreaking time ahead of you... It would not be a very sustainable way of gardening and it would be pretty expensive."
If your balcony is shady, grow woodland plants such as raspberries. "If you grow hungry crops in fresh compost you can then reuse it for less hungry crops," says Mitchell. "To reuse compost, sift it through your fingers, removing as many roots as you can since these can stop water draining through and make it difficult for new roots to spread out."
Above: A thriving roof garden in central London.
Above: A rooftop in London's Bermondsey, near the River Thames. Wind is cunningly kept back with box balls at head height. Mitchell says: "Hungry crops, such as tomatoes, (growing here in rows), potatoes, sweet peppers, aubergines, zucchini and squashes, do need fresh, fertile compost to grow really well, but others, such as carrots, peas, beans, salad and herbs, don’t require so many nutrients."
Above: Turn a problem into an advantage. Unfriendly railings are ideal for climbing crops. Mitchell: "You can add the old roots in your used soil to your wormery or compost bin. Top this old compost with a third fresh multi-purpose compost and, if you have a wormery, a few scoops of fresh worm compost. A handful of slow-release plant food will re-vitalize old compost too."
Above: Beans are one of those crops that just keep giving, though they do require feeding. "Most crop plants need feeding," says Mitchell. "A good all-rounder is organic, sustainably sourced liquid seaweed feed; tomato feed can be used in the same way. A bottle should be enough to see you through the whole growing season and will ensure your plants get all the nutrients they need."
Above: The Barbican is a concrete landmark in the middle of town: once reviled but now loved. The living spaces are well-designed with generous balconies. This one is cheered immeasurably with sunflowers, tomatoes, cosmos, and an olive tree, all ideal for a sunny spot.
Above: Herbs are easy, and don't mind the harsh conditions of a small pot. The thyme here is in easy reach of a comfortable window seat, perfect for crushing the leaves to release scent while reading.
Above: A fig also has a faraway scent and is a reminder of warmer places. Because its roots like to be constricted, it is ideal for a tight space and its branches can be spread out against a south- or west-facing wall which will warm it up for more productivity.
Above: A wormery is a fantastic solution for people with hard surfaces. Instead of requiring worms and other invertebrates to emerge from the ground to aid the breaking-down process, these worms are self-contained and only require feeding from your kitchen and the small amount of garden waste of a balcony or courtyard. They provide invaluable worm 'wee' to be diluted and used as plant food: it drips into a watering can under the tap which is left open. The compost produced by wormery worms is amazingly rich. Can o' Worms available from Wiggly Wigglers, from £88. Photograph by Kendra Wilson.
Above: The Edible Balcony by Alex Mitchell (Kyle Cathie, £16.99) is also available to US gardeners for $14.95 from Amazon. (N.B.: For more inspiration, see 499 images of Roof Gardens in our Gallery of rooms and spaces.)
Strange but (happily) true: there are least 10 heart-shaped wonders of nature, via Listphobia.
Above: Coming in at No. 7 on Listphobia, a heart-shaped garden in Waltrop, Germany.
Once upon a time, there was a Coney Island engineer named Vernon Keenan, who dreamed of building a big roller coaster called the Cyclone....via Brownstoner.
Forget about her White Garden; let's take a peek inside Vita Sackville-West's bedroom, via News from Nowhere.
Ikea garden hack: a canopy to keep the sun off the bees, via Ikea Hacker.
Ah, so that's how you style a chocolate cupcake, via Coffeeklatch.
