Gardenig in city New York. Tips & Guides

Starbucks | Design: Better Homes & Gardens

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Rachel Marek. Prop Styling: Addelyn Evans

This week we’re going to do something a little different on the GPOD: We’re going to be looking back over the years of gardens we have shared and pull out some of our favorites to visit again. And today the posts are all going to be stunning shade gardens. Gardening in shade can feel a bit like a challenge or limitation, but lots of GPOD contributors have turned that challenge into an opportunity and made beautiful gardens.

The summer I was 18, I worked a few hours a week on a small farm just outside of Portland, Oregon. It was a perfect gig for between school terms—I would help harvest things for the farmers market, pick weeds and occasionally round up a turkey that had escaped its enclosure. 

Left: James Devaney; Right, Rob Kim / Getty Images

(Deut’zia). A group of leaf-losing shrubs that are beautiful in bloom but are otherwise undistinguished. The flowers are produced from the side buds of the previous year’s growth. Many kinds are known, chiefly natives of China, Japan and the Himalayas. The majority are not perfectly hardy in the North against winter cold and should be given sheltered positions even in the climate of New York City and its environs. The Deutzias are closely related to the Mock Orange, or Philadelphus; they belong to the Saxifrage family, Saxifragaceae. The name Deutzia was given in honor of John van der Deutz, a patron of botany and at one time Sheriff of Amsterdam.

Small, hardy, evergreen shrubs which grow wild in many parts of Europe and in a few localities in North America. They belong to the Heath family, Ericaceae. The name is derived from kallunein, to sweep. Branches are used as brooms. Only one species. is known, Callunas vulgaris, the common Heather or Scotch Heather, but it has many varieties which differ widely in stature, the color of flowers and color of leaves.

Evergreen shrubs, 5-6 ft. high, with large, glossy, laurel-like green or variegated leaves and clusters of red fruits, each containing a single seed. The flowers are small and not showy, and male and female flowers are borne on different plants. They grow wild in Japan, China, and the Himalayas, and belong to the Dogwood family, Cornaceae. The word Aucuba is derived from the Japanese name of the shrub, aokiba. Aucubas will live outdoors in very sheltered locations near New York City but are generally hardy only where milder winters are the rule.

Joe Amabile and Serena Pitt must be doing something right—they are one of the few success stories from The Bachelor franchise, now happily married and living together in New York City.

A particularly tough house and greenhouse plant with long, broad, evergreen leaves. It is a suitable plant for planting outdoors in shady places where winters are mild. Even at New York City it has been known to live outdoors for several years, but the winters there are too severe for it to thrive. It is a native of China and belongs to the Lily family, Liliaceae. The word Aspidistra alludes to the form of the flowers and is derived from aspidiseon, a small, round shield, and probably refers to the shape of the stigma.

Dylan Chandler

Luiz Jiménez, 39, has been working on American dairy farms for 20 years. He is used to working long hours for little pay, fearful of losing a vital source of income for his family. A father of three, Jiménez is originally from Oaxaca, Mexico and came to the United States undocumented. He is one of an estimated 238,000 undocumented agricultural workers in the US. Like many others, he is without a visa, credit or health insurance, making it difficult to safely advocate for better working conditions without putting his livelihood at risk. 

LET THE seed shopping season begin. The 2024 offerings are being loaded into seed-catalog websites, and the earliest print catalogs are already arriving in our mailboxes, as if to help soften the separation anxiety we may feel if we’ve already put our gardens to bed for the winter.

As we look ahead to 2024, it's important to reflect back on what colors we should leave behind. Since interior designers work with so many different color palettes throughout their projects, we asked a few to share the colors they'd be happy parting ways with and why.

Cake stands are timeless, versatile, and stellar centerpieces for any table. Whether you top them with seasonal decor, plants, charcuterie, jewelry, or dessert, our best cake stands never go out of style. 

When you dine in or order delivery from a pizza parlor, you’re likely doing so for the pies. Whether it'sDetroit-style, grandma, deep-dish, New York-style, Neapolitan, or pan, chances are that the pizzas themselves are luring you in.

Some of Buddha Lo’s first, fondest memories of cooking involve walking to a lake near his childhood home in Port Douglas, a tropical small town in Australia that draws in tourists wanting to explore the Great Barrier Reef, to set up crab pots. Before going into his parents’ restaurant in the morning, he and his cousins would put the traps in the water. They’d return at night to collect their catch, steam them as they were, and have a dinner of fresh boiled crabs.

Ben Fink Shapiro | Design: Better Homes & Gardens

There’s no understating the importance of a kitchen backsplash. Not only is a backsplash practical—sparing your bare walls from spaghetti sauce splatters—but it sets the tone for your kitchen’s personality. Think of it as an opportunity to flex your design skills, whether that means including a jolt of color, choosing an unconventional material, or sticking to a classic-as-can-be style.   There’s a caveat, though: if you veer too trendy or too conventional, a backsplash can quickly look outdated. To spare yourself from inevitable regret, we asked three interior designers for their honest take on backsplashes they’re sick of seeing. Warning: controversial opinions ahead. Read on to learn which popular backsplashes they think need to retire, so you can invest in a conversation piece (not a controversy) that you’ll love for years to come.  

Invasive Plant Species in New York pose a significant ecological challenge. These non-native plants disrupt local ecosystems, outcompete native species, and threaten biodiversity.

Tile countertops: love them or leave them in the past? While some designers like New York City-based Emma Beryl think they bring «the '70s and '80s back into the kitchen,» others believe they should stay in the time capsule.

A few years ago, a pair of New York artists Heidi Neilson and Douglas Paulson started a fun project called “Menu for Mars“, aiming to figure out what astronauts might eat on Mars. Every month for a year, the Menu for Mars Supper Club met at a New York restaurant, “gathering recommendations, suggestions and opinions from restaurateurs about what food they would prepare on Mars”. During these research missions, the group hosted a wide range of experts and learned about related topics such as horticulture and composting, nutrition and culinary anthropology. Mission 3, the Meal Replacement Picnic, was particularly gruelling. They sampled an array of meal replacement products and found most of them to be barely edible (and certainly not a replacement for a genuine meal). Afterwards, they had to send someone to get emergency sandwiches.

It’s time for another exciting podcast episode, and in this I’m talking with Dr Emily Sessa, the director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden. Now Emily’s job might just be one of the coolest in the Universe, but she has also recently been working on some NASA-funded research that could tell us a lot about the history of life on planet Earth, but also give us some hints about how to live well on other planets.

Every year, Better Homes & Gardens celebrates the movers and shakers, authors and bakers, designers and makers who push the design envelope in ever-beautiful ways. They're called Stylemakers, and this year we're highlighting nearly 40 of our favorite creative thinkers, dreamers, and doers. Here, you'll find a bit about each 2023 Stylemaker, plus their current projects and passions.

Britain is known for introducing us the best of the best — think Princess Diana, Harry Potter and fish and chips. Now we can thank the UK for bringing us a fantastic sun safety idea: the 3-hour-gardening rule.

This functional rooftop garden in London has vegetables and herbs growing in containers and raised beds/planter boxes that are movable.

Everyone could use a little extra space for storage, but if you feel as though you've exhausted all of the possibilities in your home, you're going to want to read on, as there is definitely still hope.

MY UPCOMING DROPOUT MEMOIR (“And I Shall Have Some Peace There,” February 2011, Grand Central Publishing) is no longer a private matter—not some secret document whose life plays out on my dining table and my editor’s desk. Recently it pulled itself together into what’s called an Advance Reading Copy, resembling a paperback version of the book-to-be, and showed off at BookExpo America, a trade fair at the Javits Center in New York City.

My original piece of Farfugium japonicum ‘Giganteum’ (then known as Ligularia tussilaginea ‘Gigantea’) came many years ago, from a friend at a New York City public garden. Summers, it was lusty and bold, growing mightily in a pot and showing off like crazy. But I could never make the plant completely happy in the offseason, or so I thought, and after torturing it in my house one winter and in my basement (trying to force dormancy) the next, I gave the exhausted creature to a friend with a greenhouse.I kept his likeness here with me, and I guess I pined for him: A mid-century tray I’d bought at at antiques store bore an image of Farfugium, though not to scale. The plant bears ultra-shiny leaves that get to about 15 inches across.When I saw its shining face not long ago in the Plant Delights catalog, which credited the same person I’d got

Such expressions by Church and other artists in the Hudson River School marked the start of the American environmental movement, many experts believe today. Standing in my neighbor friend’s garden recently and looking out at the same landscape they did, I was reminded how few of us get to witness that kind of majesty very often, and how precious a resource such viewsheds are. No wonder they inspired an entire movement.Today a number of historic sites like Church’s astonishing home near here called Olana are working to protect their viewsheds, in part thanks to work by groups like Scenic Hudson, and to unique events like the one coming up Nov. 1 for Olana’s benefit (see details of their ‘Viewshed Tour’ below).Nearer to New York City, the dramatic stretch of Palisades acr

I first met Deb Perelman in my former life, when I worked for Martha Stewart. It was late 2007 or early 2008—a millennium ago in internet years—and we’d invited in a group of bloggers we admired to get better acquainted.  Deb sat to my left (and beyond her was Heidi Swanson of 101Cookbooks.com, with the founders of Apartment Therapy and theKitchn.com across the table, and more). I think that gathering is what crystallized my intention to start a website: such an inspiring group.But I digress. If you haven’t visited Smitten Kitchen, prepare to be entertained, educated, and called to action.DEB PERELMAN is a self-taught home cook, and is funny in that self-deprecating way I love (often using the cross-out strikethrough key on her editing dashboard to good effect). On the blog, and in the new cookbook, Deb invites you into her kitchen, and family, teaching you (her Tips section online alone is worth a visit, let alone all her recipes) while tempting you. You always come away hungry…until you get out the ingredients

WHAT A TREAT: THE TEAM AT APARTMENT THERAPY brought my recent appearance and slideshow at their New York City Meetup to life on their site, and even transcribed the fun interview that AT founder Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan did with me that night, to accompany my images. Might be a first; not sure I’ve ever been transcribed before.

YOU MAY RECALL LAST SUMMER’S VISIT HERE by the Apartment Therapy founders Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan and his wife, Sara Kate, the expert in charge of The Kitchn blog within that giant network. They wanted to see my kitchen (huh?) and just hang out.

We talked about the advantages of growing from seed, about extra-cooperative little plants like certain sedges and Erigeron (fleabane) that can beautify even tough spots like at the roots of trees, about using pots to announce garden areas and the signature plants of each of the distinct gardens at Wave Hill, too—like larkspur, to name one.the plants of wave hill, with louis bauerQ. Glad to have you on the show, Louis.A. Thanks for asking me.Q. Thank you for saying yes because I need a little help with my plantsmanship over here. [Laughter.] So for people who haven’t visited Wave Hill, which is a must stop for any keen gardener, do you want to just give us the teeny version of why we need tocome visit—a little bit about Wave Hill?A. Well it really i

COME AND JUST TAKE A WALK with me. No big plant lesson, nothing to prune or weed or sow.