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Channel: Gardenista

Epimedium 101: Everything You Need to Know About the Shade-Tolerant Groundcover

Too often, the term “groundcover” elicits a yawn. These low-growing plants are viewed dismissively, either as an obligatory filler for blank spaces, or as an institutional camouflage for exposed soil....

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Gardening 101: How to Transplant Seedlings and Plantlings

It’s May! Gardening season is in full swing this month. And whether you have purchased seedlings or started them from seed, you will need to transplant them this month. Here are a few tips for...

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Curious About the Outdoor Spaces of Interior Designers? (Spoiler Alert:...

The new book Glorious Gardens by Dara Caponigro, the editor in chief of Frederic Magazine, features a particular type of garden. Each of the 21 gardens in the book belongs to a prominent interior...

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10 Easy Pieces: Classic Outdoor Chair Designs

Design classics aren’t just for interiors. In fact, a crop of notable 20th-century designers made dining and lounge chairs for the outdoors (and/or their designs were later reworked for outdoor use)....

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Current Obsessions: Getaway

Met Gala-inspired paint palettes, a trusty bar accessory, jaunty attire inspiration from the garden, and more on our editors’ desks this week: Spring style inspiration. (Hat tip: Annie.) Block Shop x...

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Letter of Recommendation: The Garden Pouch I Plan to Use As a Purse

Sometimes it just takes a color, or a repositioning of a label, to elevate an item from great to need-to-have-now. The new iteration of Niwaki’s classic pouch, part of a collaboration with the Newt in...

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Ramp Leaf Oil: Like Green Gold in the Kitchen

Whether you are foraging for your owns ramps—the native North American onion that is all the rage in spring—or buying them at a market, extending their fleeting and precious season by making ramp leaf...

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Required Reading: Frances Palmer’s ‘Life with Flowers’ Is Deeply Personal

Flower-focused books have become enormously popular in recent years—and with good reason: Who doesn’t want to flip through a book filled with beautiful blossoms? The latest addition to the genre,...

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10 Things Nobody Tells You About Starting a Vegetable Garden

You’ve finally decided: a vegetable garden is in your future. Congratulations are in order because you could fill a basket with all the benefits of growing your own produce: nutritious food, cost...

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Garden Visit: The Fairytale Cottage of Brothers and Garden Designers Harry...

A transportive garden can owe as much to a magical setting as to the plantings. At the garden of brothers and award-winning garden designers Harry and David Rich, the surrounding landscape ramps up...

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Ask the Experts: How Do You Reduce Invasives Without Using Herbicides?

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.  Perfect Earth Project...

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Current Obsessions: Summer Forecast

Is it just us, or is summer starting to feel a little closer? This week we’ve been immersed in planning for summer: where to vacation, how to welcome more airiness into our homes, and what we need to...

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Quick Takes With Nishiel Patel

As soon as we spied landscape and urban designer Nishiel Patel‘s exceptional work on a Brooklyn Heights landmark home (see our coverage of the project here), we knew we wanted to tap her as our next...

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Gluten-Free Bread: Rich with Seeds, Dense with Nutrition, and Ready for Picnics

Picnic weather is upon us in the Northern Hemisphere. That means portable food that travels well, that is as good to look at as it is to eat, and that is as versatile as possible in terms of suiting...

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What’s Trending at the 2025 Chelsea Flower Show?

Sussing out plant trends at a garden show is a bit of a fool’s errand since colors and shapes are largely dictated by other factors besides the zeitgeist—such as what the main growers have on offer and...

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Before & After: A SoHo Roof Terrace Goes From Drab and Lifeless to Delightful...

When the editor of a literary magazine tapped garden designer Jarema Osofsky to conceive a garden for her SoHo roof terrace, she asked for “a slice of the High Line.” The client imagined her space as a...

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Magic Mushrooms: A New Use of Materials at the Chelsea Flower Show

“With a show like this, you have an opportunity to be experimental,” says furniture maker Sebastian Cox of the pavilion he made with Je Ahn, of Studio Weave, for the Tom Massey-designed Avanade...

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From the Editors’ Desks: 14 Memorial Day Sales to Know About This Weekend

Welcome to the long weekend—and the unofficial summer kick-off. Between cookouts, ice cream jaunts, gardening, and whatever else is on your holiday weekend wishlist, here are 14 sales to browse,...

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Current Obsessions: The Long Weekend

Here’s to the long weekend—and antiques, a new must-have gardening tool, a new series to stream, and more. Read on: Dream pool situation. (When both Fan and Annie save the same image, you know it’s...

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Quick Takes With: Nick Spain

Designer Nick Spain’s star has been on the rise the last few years—though technically his training isn’t in interiors. “My background is in theater,” he says. “I try to approach each project as a role...

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Sunbird Safari: The Feathered Jewels of Cape Town

The sunbirds of Cape Town are to the local flowers (and humans) what hummingbirds are in the Americas: Small, bright, enchanting, and impossibly photogenic, but less impossible to photograph...

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10 Easy Pieces: Outdoor Bistro Table and Chair Sets

Tiny bistro tables and and compact chairs are eminently more practical for outdoors than big hulking monster pieces, because you can easily carry them from patio to lawn and back, to follow the sun....

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Tips and Tools: Are You Weeding Correctly?

Weeds are an inevitable part of gardening life. While gardening tends to be stress-relieving, weeds can cause a lot of stress—especially on your body. Thankfully, there are plenty of sanity-saving (and...

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DIY Scrap Paper Flowers: Sandy Suffield’s Garden-Inspired Art

Like many freelancers, Sandy Suffield’s work schedule ranges from round-the-clock to nothing doing. During lulls, the London-based art director and set designer is self-occupying in all sorts of...

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Garden Designer Visit: How James Alexander-Sinclair Uses Color in His Own Garden

Color in a garden can cause angst, aided by fears of errors in taste. And yet, we know deep down that color is good for us. “Color makes people feel alive,” says leading British garden designer James...

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Current Obsessions: Armchair Travel

Just ahead? A Shaker exhibit, the cool cookbook we’re pre-ordering, a French guest house, tomato (wallpaper) summer, and more on our radar. Read on… Love tomatoes? Love a good wallpaper? This is for...

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Quick Takes With: Toshi Yano

For our series with Perfect Earth Project on how to be more sustainable in your landscapes at home, we often turned to its former executive director, Toshi Yano, for his expertise on ecological...

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Flocks of Phloxes: A Primer on Spring Phlox

Well before summer hits its often-humid stride, three enchanting spring phlox species offer months of flowers, from the beginning of that budding season through early summer. Woodland phlox, creeping...

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Before & After: A Modern Landscape Design for a Traditional Washington, D.C.,...

Landscape architect Joseph Richardson’s clients wanted to create a better connection between their stately Washington, D.C., home and its surrounding garden, while also bringing more light inside. But...

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Garden Visit: A Hidden, Beautifully Wild Rhododendron Sanctuary in Maine

Just 20 miles east of the picturesque coastline in Maine, on a long winding country road, beyond an unassuming sign, tucked beneath a tree canopy, is the Harvey Butler Rhododendron Sanctuary. Even when...

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10 Garden Ideas to Steal from Superstar Dutch Designer Piet Oudolf

If the world of gardening has rock stars, Piet Oudolf qualifies as Mick Jagger, David Bowie, and Prince rolled into one. The Dutch landscape designer—whose work is instantly recognizable for its dreamy...

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The Editors’ Cut: 11 Must-Haves for the Prettiest Picnic

Welcome to The Editors’ Cut, our monthly newsletter dedicated to all things beautiful and useful for the garden, patio, porch, and terrace. In anticipation of picnic season, we’ve rounded up the...

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Current Obsessions: The Artist’s Atelier

It’s June, and everywhere nature is at its peak—but handmade beauty abounds, too. This week we’ve been noting a 1600s stone house decorated with blue illustrations, whimsical works by “the Picasso of...

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Quick Takes With: Michael Breland and Peter Harper

The next design duo to watch? That would be Michael Breland and Peter Harper, the partners (in life and in work) behind LA-based Breland-Harper, an interdisciplinary design firm that blends...

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Sea Kale: A Worthy and Ornamental Victorian Vegetable

Sea kale is a robust and peppery brassica that grows wild on its rocky home shores of the British Isles and the North Sea. The salt-tolerant vegetable was popular in Victorian England. In the fledgling...

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Father’s Day Gift Guide: For the Outdoorsy Dad

For the fathers and father figures in your life who are their best selves when they’re communing with the great outdoors. And be sure to check out Father’s Day Gift Guide: Myles Tipley’s 16 Picks for...

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Trend Alert: Rocks and Boulders in the Garden

As gardens trend toward naturalism, we’ve been spotting a design element popping up in gardens from Southern California to Maine, and everywhere in between: rocks. Yes, every garden has rocks...

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Gardening 101: Lithodora

Lithodora I once believed that true blue flowers were like unicorns of the garden world—until I discovered a slew of them, eventually stumbling upon the ultra-blue, evergreen, pollinator-friendly...

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Pruning and Naturalism: The New Rules

Shrubs used to be so easy. In a world of lawns and trees, clipped shrubs provided the middle story. Inspired by the Sissinghursts and Great Dixters of our imaginations, they were clipped into balls and...

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The Garden Decoder: What Is ‘Hugelkultur’?

Perhaps, like me, you grow herbs and vegetables in traditional garden beds made from lumber, nails, and bolts, and filled with organic soil and compost. There’s another way to build garden beds,...

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