20 Pictures of Mini Vertical Garden Ideas with Air Plants

Recently, an impressive amount of rain has fallen in South Carolina. With excess rainfall, also comes an increased potential for stormwater runoff. A landscape feature that can help mediate stormwater is a rain garden. Rain gardens are landscaped depressions that receive stormwater runoff and allow the water to infiltrate the soil slowly, eventually reaching the groundwater table. (See Figure 1). A rain garden can add both beauty and functionality to any landscape. Multiple plant species can be used in a rain garden, including shrubs, perennials (both shade and sun-loving), and grasses. Please see the plant lists below for rain garden plant recommendations.

All of it will be grown organically, starting with organically farmed seed, like in her family farm and home garden (below).  “Our seed system is brittle,” says Theresa, who farms in Fullerton, North Dakota, on the cusp of Zone 3b and 4a. Not brittle in the way a perfectly dry seed must be to store well over the winter for next season–but brittle as in ecologically and politically fragile, and potentially broken.We’ve all heard: Years of industry consolidation by a few big corporations has reduced the d

THE FLYER PIQUED MY INTEREST: Dan Benarcik, part of the creative team at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania (a must visit!), would be lecturing nearby about “The Art & Craft of the Garden,” and how to personalize a garden using artistic elements, found artifacts, and ornamental containers. I quickly got a ticket—you can, too, for the June 16 event, including garden tours and a garden market, in Spencertown, New York—but also asked Dan to share some of his ideas and images (including the bromeliad-artemisia- urn-and-melianthus moment at Chanticleer, above) with us, no matter whether we can attend. A Q&A with this enormously talented plantsman and garden artist.

I’m feeling daring, so I specifically called Timothy Tilghman, a former colleague at Martha Stewart Living, who is now horticulturist at the much-heralded Untermyer Park and Gardens in Yonkers, New York, just minutes north of New York City. The property has quickly become a destination for gardeners, a getaway where visitors are wowed by bold, contemporary plantings—including ones in containers—in a dramatic, historic setting.A century ago, in 1915, Samuel Untermyer hired William Welles Bosworth, an Ecole des Beaux Arts-trained architect and landscape designer who designed Kykuit for the Rockefellers, to create the “greatest gardens in the world.” Soon after, they began exe

Regular listeners and readers will recognize my friend Alexandra Stafford of Alexandra Cooks dot com, author of the “Bread Toast Crumbs” cookbook, and a mad collector of cookbooks and therefore possessor of recipe ideas galore–including that mushroom soup up top (photo also by Alexandra).Besides recipes, we talked brining beans; about changing up the texture of a soup to suit your preference, and about that “extra” ingredient that can make all the difference: dill with mushroom, orange rind with black beans, and other such flavor surprises. Plus: We’re each giving away a copy of our favorite

Dr. David Shetlar (below left) is a professor of urban landscape entomology at Ohio State. With Dr. Whitney Cranshaw of Colorado State (below right), author of the original 2004 edition of “Garden Insects,” he created the second volume, and joined me to explain who’s in the updated version and why, and how we can get to know them better.Plus: Enter to win a copy of the new “Garden Insects of North America” by commenting in the box at the very bottom of the page.garden insects, with dr. david shetlarQ. What an undertaking this must have been. How long was this collaboration?A. Well, it was kind of interesting, Whitney and

Now Dan Hinkley has another treat for us all in the form of his new book called “Windcliff,” the story of the garden he has been making since leaving Heronswood, and where he now lives on Puget Sound in Washington. “A Story of People, Plants and Gardens” is the subheading the book, and it is rich with tales of all of the above that have influenced the making of the place.Learn about Dan’s insights into garden design—from avoiding beds of plants that are “as flat as a flounder” to why to start with smaller plants than ones that fill the whole space right away.Dan will be giving various virtual talks to celebrate the new book; more on those below, too. Plus, enter to win a copy in the comments box at the very bottom of the page.Read along as you listen to the September 14, 2020 edition of my

“What holds the garden together in such a moment?” he asked as we chatted, and as he looked out the window at the scene above.Texture, primarily we agreed. And at Ken’s, especially some refreshing splashes of variegation and definitely the freshness of some white flowers. Using all of those effectively is our topic today, along with some favorite plants (like his Hiba arborvitae or Thujopsis dolobrata, below, a conifer with great texture a

Uli Lorimer has made a career of working with native plants, including a diversity of trillium species (like T. cernuum, above, with Phlox stolonifera at Garden in the Woods). He was longtime curator of the Native Flora Garden at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and in 2019, became director of horticulture at Native Plant Trust, the former New England Wild Flower Society, which was founded in 1900.Read along as you listen to the May 3, 2021 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).all about trillium, with uli lorimerMargaret Roach: Welcome back, Uli

Benjamin Vogt has just published a new book that takes us through prescriptive steps to get started in natural garden design. He is the owner of Monarch Gardens LLC, a prairie-based design firm specializing in natural landscapes. His latest book is “Prairie Up: An Introduction to Natural Garden Design.”Plus: Enter to win a copy of “Prairie Up” (affiliate link) by commenting in the box near the bottom of the page.Read along as you listen to the February 20, 2023 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse m

And asking experts for help, including today’s guest, Uli Lorimer, Director of horticulture at Native Plant Trust.Uli, author of “The Northeast Native Plant Primer,” has made native plants his career. In 2019, he became director of horticulture at Native Plant Trust, America’s oldest plant conservation organization. And before that he was longtime curator of the Native Flora Garden at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. (Above, frozen dew on Panicum virgatum; Uli Lorimer photo.)Plus: Comment in the box near

But what if we thought of maintenance as an expression of creativity, instead of merely restraint—as part of the art of garden-making? What if we figured it into our design decisions right from the start? Particularly as our gardens shift in a more ecological direction and become more naturalistic, that adjustment and approach seems especially important.Ongoing creative maintenance is our topic today with Noel Kingsbury and Annie Guilfoyle, hosts of the popular Garden Masterclass series of workshops and webinars.Annie Guilfo