We love outdoor fireplaces and are always looking for interesting iterations, like this big slab of rusting steel as a fireproof backstop, with a cast cement fireplace, and the one Constantino Nivola fashioned one out of ordinary brick to create his outdoor room.
Read MoreAnnals of Bad Design: Gigantic Glass Door Demands Clear Space to Open
The big glass picture window door looks great at first, affording an expansive view of the garden. But think of the arc of that door as it opens — a good 5 feet at least! You couldn’t have any furniture or planters in the way, because a door needs unobstructed space to open. The door then dictates…
Read MoreCrochet Anywhere, Even (Especially) On a Fence
We love this face of crochet bits that is peaking through the fence, that we think were done by Isabel Rower, who tends to embellish whatever is at hand. And as soon as we posted it, we found THIS image of a crochet-bombed benches at the San Francisco ferry building. Spring is here and it’s…
Read MoreTaking Rugs Outdoors to Make Comfortable, Colorful “Rooms”
As we turn our attention to getting our patio ready for hanging out, we’re inspired by this charming image we found on From Moon to Moon of a Moroccan-style garden ladened with brightly colored rugs. The rugs define and soften the space, and create an outdoor “room”, perfect for hanging out with friends. Creative use of colorful textiles, Moroccan-style, is a great strategy.
Read MoreDIY: Carefree Garden in a Bottle
50 years ago, David Latimer planted a seed in a glass bottle out of pure curiosity. He had no idea that it would flourish into a mass of greenery that would thrive untouched for several decades to become a wonder of lush plant life. Depending on the bottle you choose, bottle gardens can look like living sculptures.
Read MoreA Mirrored Fence to Reflect the Landscape
Spring is definitely coming —we just saw some hopeful shoots coming up in the park — and we’re more than ready for warm weather and enjoying the outdoors NOT all bundled up. Alison Schotz‘ ‘Mirror Fence” installation at Storm King fuels that dream: a picket fence that mirrors whatever is around it. Although we don’t know…
Read MoreShopping Cart Lawn Chair/Lounger
The supermarket shopping cart has always seemed to us to be a splendid raw material, its metal-grid walls and sturdy wheels rich with possibilities. Artists have long been hacking shopping carts, transforming them into moderne, beautifully-designed objects of leisure.
Read MoreHanging Out/Reading Spots Indoors and Out
Lately, we find ourselves collecting images of interesting spaces for hanging out: nests of various kinds both indoors and out. We view these little improvisied spaces as mini vacations —a transporting place to read and dream…
Read Moreair plant hanging sculptures, still-life objets, gifts UPDATE
We were browsing our old friends’ Gentl and Hyers Portfolio site when we came upon some lovely images of air plants in a stylish bedroom. They are from Bring the Outdoors In: Garden Projects for Decorating and Styling Your Home, photographed, we’ve discovered, in a mutual friend’s country home, and styled by Shane Powers. The air…
Read Morecultivating gardens real and imaginary
Rooftop gardens are still blooming in cities everywhere. No matter how small or large our gardens, or how large or small we gardeners, we all share a farmer’s joys and vicissitudes, so delightfully illlustrated in this New Yorker cover by Ivan Brunetti entitled “Urban Bliss”. Poet Marianne Moore observed that poetry cultivates “imaginary gardens with real toads…
Read Morebest of il: diy plant watering globes
www.sha.org/bottle/wine In tandem with Anthony Giglio’s summer sparkling wine recommendations, it seems fitting to reprise the idea we published a couple of years ago: using water or wine bottles as plant watering globes. These are simply inverted bottles that you fill with water and slam into the moist soil of a containered plant; they will slowly trickle…
Read Morediy window boxes and planters: modern to rustic
Julie Houston, whose home reno we posted last week, sent us this image of the clever window box she made using some of Hurricane Sandy’s twig debris, glued onto plywood frames (made to order by her husband). It came just as we’ve been collecting images of the various diy planters we’ve spotted around town. …
Read Moresolar-powered moon lanterns for summer nights
Installing hardwired, outdoor lighting can be a big, expensive, all-too-often unaesthetic hassle, forcing you to put lights where you really don’t want them, and use commercially produced fixtures that are less than enchanting. One elegant, inexpensive solution is solar lanterns. My favorites are Allsop‘s faux Japanese shoji solar lanterns available in a rainbow of lightweight polyester that mimics silk.…
Read Moreimprovised stacked stone benches and a secret circle
Landscape Designer Pat Brodie recently sent us pictures of her very cool stacked stone bench inspired by a passing vision: I was at the stone yard with my client looking at stones for her garden when we saw stones randomly stacked on a pallet and I noticed that it was suggestive of a sofa. We…
Read Morewhy the fermob tertio table is worth every penny
A few weeks ago, we wrote about our bistro table hunt, and our dilemma whether to go with the name brand Fermob or a cheap knock-off. While we weighed the pros and cons of each as well as our reader’s thoughtful comments, we periodically surfed the net to see what other possibilities or info we…
Read Morefab diy outdoor clawfoot hot tub
I see these outdoor junkyard tubs featured here and there, but I liked the rustic simplicity of this one, from a diy featured at Houzz: salvage transformed into elemental luxury. We had one years ago on our back deck in Malibu. I found an old tub for $5 in a junk yard with a flaking ocean…
Read Morea shift of view yields a ready-made tree trunk chair
While walking in the park across the way, I passed a tree stump left behind after Hurricane Sandy. Overwhelmed with fallen trees, the Parks Department had done their best to remove the huge tree bodies with chain saws that struggled against massive trunks; the cuts were often roughly-made or incomplete like this one: a tusk…
Read Morebistro table hunt: name brand or knock-off?
Recently, we went looking for a 24-inch round metal bistro table for our Harlem terrace and hit a dilemma: whether to buy the pricey classic Fermob table (top photo), made in France, (THE table used in many public spaces), whose durable finish we’ve tested in the guise of a rectangular table we’ve stored outdoors for 2…
Read More‘eat up’: how to create a rooftop garden
Wish you could create a rooftop vegetable garden like Chef J.W. Foster of the Fairmont Hotel, in San Francisco? Get yourself a copy of Lauren Mandel’s EAT UP: The Inside Scoop on Rooftop Agriculture.
Read Moresighting: porch built around a tree (urban tree house?)
Wandering around Harlem recently, we spotted this structure in the back of someone’s brownstone. It appears to be a clever combination porch and treehouse, literally built AROUND the tree growing in the yard. Whoever made it clearly didn’t want to mess with the old tree growing very close to the house. So they found away…
Read More