Beyond Ideas, Tips & Guides

Susan Burke’s home and garden on the Nantucket shoreline off the coast of Massachusetts were designed from scratch when she and her late husband first purchased the property. Featuring tall borders of naturalistic plantings and hardscaping that weave off into nature in the backyard, this space also has a more formal garden in the front yard consisting mostly of native plants. A large dune comes up from the beach, where a buffer of native flora divides the garden from the beach beyond.

Anthony Masterson

Let's face it: even if you're totally on top of your regular laundry schedule, you may not be taking the time to wash items that go beyond the basic essentials, which generally include sheets, clothing, dish towels, and the like.

April has been a mixed and breezy month, with April showers and sunny periods, and although it has been pleasant in the sun we have not really felt much warmth from it, with temperatures rarely rising above the mid teens (centigrade). Today has seen a change, however, with a mild night and blue skies from daybreak onwards, and our weather monitor recording temperatures over 19°C – but we still have the breeze! We are forecast more days like this, and I feel confident of beginning to plant up the cutting beds.

If you want to repurpose your old glass kitchenware, just Grow these Purple Plants in jars, bottles, and vases. Now, you may wonder that why “Purple”? Purple, the color of royalty and luxury will vibe up your space to the next level. Beyond its aesthetic appeal, it will infuse your space with positive energy and a calming aura.

If you love decorating with the flowers that you've worked hard to grow in your backyard garden but are looking to change things up a bit when it comes to display, we're here to provide you with plenty of creative ideas.

IKEA

Thanks to their quality and affordability, it's pretty easy to love IKEA furniture. Though the pieces often feature basic lines and simple structures, they make the perfect blank canvas to personalize, and from that came IKEA hacks.

Little Greene

If you think there’s no such thing as a faux pas in selecting and installing window treatments, think again. Mistakes can range from mismeasuring the window to miscalculating the occupiable space on either side of it. It can also be purely aesthetic in nature, such as using curtain panels that look ridiculously short and choppy for the window they’re dressing.

Before you add any plant at home, it is important to check whether it is safe for your kids or not. To make it easy for you, I’m going to list some of the safest and beautiful options that you can have with a peace of mind.

We’re just a few days away from the first official day of spring, which, in our opinion, is one of the most beautiful seasons. With its blooming flowers, sunny days, and misty rains, it really is a breath of fresh air after a dark and cold few months. But, one thing not everyone is excited about every spring is spring cleaning.

Last spring, when moving from a one-bedroom apartment to a three-bedroom house, I knew that we would need to do some furniture shopping. However, it was still a shock to see the furniture that once filled our apartment to the brim barely furnish the space. Most of our home is wood laminate, and it has an open-concept great room that screams for rugs and defined living spaces. We gradually found the best places to purchase rugs (I even took weeks shopping around for the perfect bathroom runner) and in the span of a year, have curated a home full of rugs that are functional, look pretty, and are all affordable at under $300.

Now that we’re firmly planted in March, it feels safe to say it out loud: spring is practically here. Along with bluer skies and brighter days, it also brings the perfect time of year for cleaning and organizing.

In a world increasingly focused on sustainable living, the choices we make extend to every corner of our lives, including our outdoor spaces. When it comes to garden furniture, the term "sustainable" goes beyond a mere buzzword – it's a commitment to a greener and more ethical lifestyle.

February has been an almost surreal month in many ways, so it comes as a surprise that I have remembered that today sees the end of it, allowing me to post a timely review of that garden – not a detailed review, I hasten to add, but just a quick romp round, so please excuse its brevity. We start, as always, with the view from behind the house (above) and of the adjacent streamside and shrub border, the latter from both directions.

Ziploc bags are household necessity, serving kitchens for years to help with food storage. And it makes sense why they're so beloved—they’re easy to store, you can reuse them, you can buy a ton of them at once, and you can use them for everything, from storing soups in the freezer to packing carrots into a kids’ lunch box and creating a DIY piping bag.

A contemporary cottage garden fuses traditional cottage style with ‘naturalistic planting’, according to garden designer, Tim Pilgrim.

As the new year unfolds, it brings fresh opportunities to revitalize your living spaces. You don’t have to change everything about your home all at once, but just a few changes can make a huge impact.

Valentine's Day gifts have long been symbolic expressions of love, and none capture the essence more poignantly than a bouquet of red roses. These timeless blossoms speak a language of their own, conveying deep emotions and passion. As you explore the vast array of floral arrangements, each petal tells a story, making red roses an enduring and classic choice that transcends the test of time. Their vibrant hues and delicate fragrance serve as a captivating reminder of the beauty and intensity of your affection.

Do you store countless cleaning products under your kitchen sink—perhaps some that have only ever been used a few times or have never even been opened? Sussing out the good cleaning products and tools from the subpar ones usually requires a lot of trial and error. But if you don’t have the time or patience for all that guesswork, looking closely at customer ratings and reviews is a tried-and-true way to find which cleaning products are actually worth the hype. Reviews are full of helpful anecdotes that give you a better idea of what to expect; say you’re looking for a scrubbing brush and you find that someone shared that it was able to remove a months-old stain, wouldn’t that convince you to give it a chance? Shopper favorites with loads of high ratings are more likely to be the ones you’ll actually reach for over and over again—and they’re also more likely to get the job done right, too.

IKEA

It’s at this time of year that our little farmhouse begins to be love-bombed by butterflies, which flutter into its rooms through open windows to perch on the centuries-old walls and bask on its sunny windowsills. They are small tortoiseshells, a common species easily identified by the tiger-like stripes and series of tiny, pale blue dots stippled along the edges of its dark-orange, paper-thin wings. In early autumn the adults go in search of somewhere safe to overwinter, during which time our house is strangely irresistible to them. Clearly the building has always had this special charm. When we first bought it, its old, sun-filled rooms were filled with their tiny, dusty remains, poignant reminders of summers long gone.

Cooler days and cozier evenings are just around the corner, and we’re officially craving some Halloween-inspired decor in our lives. While it’s still a bit too early to set up our autumnal displays, it’s never too early to get a feel for some of the great options that are out there for the coming season.

At times, usually when I supposed to be doing something else because I’m a grad student and procrastination of some form seems to be part of the gig, I find myself planning what plants I would include in an imaginary biodome on a inhospitable planet many astronomical units away. Imaginary biodomes are one of my favourite thought exercises – to me it is the perfect fusion of my love of space exploration and my attempts to grow as much as my own food as I can in my small backyard.

Today we see the most important launch of the year, as Lightyear is released in cinemas. A sci-fi action-adventure movie, Lightyear tells the origin story of Buzz Lightyear, the astronaut hero who inspired the toy from the Toy Story movies. Marooned on a hostile planet 4.2 million light-years from Earth, the Space Ranger must find a way home through space and time with a group of ambitious recruits and his charming robot companion cat, Sox. The biggest threat to his mission is Zurg, an imposing presence with a mysterious agenda and an army of ruthless robots.

The last episode of 2022 is here, and it’s a good one! I’ve been talking with Amy Padolf and Carl Lewis from the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden about their citizen science/education project Growing Beyond Earth® (GBE). GBE is really something special, because it allows school students to collect data that influences which plants NASA grows in space.

Header image: shutterstock. Supamotionstock.com/shutterstock

On Saturday, September 5, just as Mercury goes retrograde again (heaven help us), Bob Hyland, Andrew Beckman and I will give a hands-on class from 11-1 at their Loomis Creek Nursery, near Hudson, NY. We’ll show you what to cut back, and not; review the basics of composting and offseason soil care; prepare to have fresh herbs on hand for the winter; teach you how to stash precious but nonhardy “investment plants” safely for the winter, make room for bulbs and lots more.All for $5, and a phone call to reserve a spot; we have a few remaining. Loomis Creek is at (518) 851-9801. (And p.s., that’s an oakleaf hydrangea up top, H. quercifolia, in the colors that are coming up soon.)Categorieshow-to

The lecturer was Rebecca McMackin, director of horticulture for Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York City, where she leads the team that manages 85 acres of diverse parkland with a central focus on habitat creation of woodlands, wetlands, and meadows to build soils and support birds, butterflies, and other organisms.We talked about the dynamic tactics they use and when and why–a whole different approach to spring cleanup, and why the staff lets the life cycles of animals (from insects on up) dictate what happens when, garden maintenance-wise.

I recently had the great pleasure of spending three hours walking round the garden of the 82 year old hydrangea expert and breeder, Maurice Foster. Despite the fact the temperature had plummeted from 28º the previous day, to 13º – and it was pouring with rain throughout – I loved every moment and came away determined to grow more hydrangeas – especially those of the non-mop-head species. Inspired by him I took a closer look at the hydrangeas in my own garden and at Wisley. I am anti mop-heads, far from

Toby Buckland is opening a plant centre at Powderham Castle in Devon, following the launch of his online nursery last autumn. Like the online nursery, the plant centre will sell perennials, climbers, roses, herbs and vegetables.

Coinciding nicely with my foraging ventures in the garden, the publishers, Green Books, invited me to a fungay foray in deepest Kent to launch their latest book – Edible Mushrooms by Geoff Dann (a licensed forager). We soon adjusted our ideas of setting off home at the end of the day with baskets laden with cepes and chanterelles when Geoff told us he had scouted the foraging area and there was hardly anything to be found – apparently it is a very late year. The foraging took place i