Gardenista

Design classics aren’t just for interiors. In fact, a crop of notable mid-century designers made dining and lounge chairs for the outdoors (and/or their designs were later reworked for outdoor use). Here are our 11 favorite classic outdoor chair designs from the likes of Jens Risom, Willy Guhl, the Eameses and other design icons. N.B.: Featured photograph, above, by Kendra Wilson and Jim Powell, from Garden Visit: Piet Oudolf in Quiet Menorca. Above: Designed for the Festival of Britain in 1951

About 40 years ago, the gate was closed on a garden in Suffolk that had been a magnet for a certain kind of person: if you were an artist, poet, flaneur, composer, or freewheeling gardener or cook, you may have found yourself sitting around the dining room table at a rather unusual art school called Benton End. It was run by two urbane men, former stars of the art world in London and Paris, Arthur Lett-Haines (“Lett”) and Cedric Morris. In a crumbling Elizabethan mini manor, Lett did the cooking

Even though Memorial Day is behind us, we’re still technically in the midst of spring (summer solstice falls on June 20 this year). This means you still have time to direct-sow seeds in your garden to fill in the gaps and guarantee color come autumn. Note that different varieties of flowers may have different days to maturity, so please check the back of the seed packet to make sure it has a short maturity date. And as always, don’t forget to meet your plants’ needs with full sun, good soil, and

In the early summer garden of Tinder Hearth, the bakery and restaurant set amid green fields outside Brooksville, Maine, I waited recently with my husband for two very good pizzas to arrive (when they did there was lovage from the garden on one, and tender kelp stipes from the coast on the other). There was plenty to occupy us while we waited. Neat Victorian edging around a pruned circle of elderberry shrubs. An old apple tree in blossom, its heavy limbs supported by kind crutches. A vegetable g

Welcome to Psst, where each month the Remodelista and Gardenista editors share an inside look at what we’ve been reading, watching, coveting, pinning, visiting, and otherwise loving lately. Without further ado, a glimpse of what we’ve been up to in May: Photographs by editors, except where noted. Above: “Discovered at Futures Fair during New York Design Week: the work of Angela Burson, a Savannah-based artist whose room scenes are reminiscent of 19th century folk paintings. She aptly describes

Ahead this weekend: a St. Tropez exhibit, meandering paths through spring’s greenery, and a smart hack for a wheel-away TV. Read on: Above: Weekend plans, courtesy of A Historic House in Béziers by Doux Août and Architect Maria Masgård. Photography by Doux Août of La Maison B. Annie’s in the market for an outdoor table and came across this wildly discounted option. A companion to Margot’s fun post on exquisitely miniature objects. Spotted: ramp butter at the Milkweed Inn, a funky little asse

If you’re as uninspired as we are by the pre-planted container gardens for sale at many nurseries and big-box garden centers, you may want to get your hands on a copy of Terrain: The Container Garden Book, the newest volume from the popular purveyor of bo-ro (bohemian-romantic) goods for the home and garden. (Did we just coin a new term?) Every season, their team dreams up beautiful potted combinations of plants to display at the entrances to their stores, and what sets their creations apart is

Welcome to The Editors’ Cut, our monthly column dedicated to beautiful and useful finds for all over the house. In this installment: In summer, we’re big proponents of keeping a beach chair in the trunk and a swimsuit in our tote bags, just in case the moment presents itself. In that spirit, here are 9 flexible, portable finds—from great-looking fold-up chairs to a souped-up bike basket—for making the most of the longer days wherever you are. — The R/G Editors Seaside Bicycle Basket Above: Ther

This is part of a series with Perfect Earth Project, a nonprofit dedicated to ecological gardening, on how you can be more sustainable in your landscapes at home.  There are so many benefits to ecological gardening—for the birds, bees, bunnies, butterflies—and, yes, even for us gardeners. The joy we feel when we watch the first Bobolink of the season swoop to catch an insect in a grassy meadow or or when we spot a spring azure butterfly fluttering from bloom to bloom tunes us into the rhythms of

British garden designer Harry Holding first caught our eye in 2023 when he debuted his School Food Matters Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show, which won the People’s Choice award. This year, Holding is back at Chelsea with another stunning edible garden he’s calling Bring Me Sunshine, created in collaboration with the Eden Project.  It’s been a busy year for Holding, who also has a new book Eat Your Garden: Edimentals as a Beautiful, Low-Effort Way to Grow Food out this month with Chelsea Green.

Unlike so many homeowners who aim to tame and tamp down the wilderness around them, landscape architect Michelle Crowley’s clients wanted to welcome it in. Originally, their property in Concord, MA, featured large swathes of lawn, with views of a historic meadow beyond. The line between the two was stark and inelegant. Michelle and her team at Crowley Cottrell Landscape Architecture, along with Robert Hanss, whose company oversaw the landscape construction, were charged with moving that line clo

“I heard the news today, oh boy.” Where is John Lennon when we need him? I watched television recently. I don’t own a television. It was a wall-spanning flatscreen mounted in a waiting room, where about a dozen people were held captive near it. The sound was on and ABC7 blasted us. Apart from the noise, which I tried to tune out, I was struck by the haranguing tone of ceaseless urgency. Everything was an emergency, on a loop. And even if we are not exposed to this carefully crafted doomspiel, ev

Yes, there are a slew of Memorial Day sales going on this weekend, with discounts that are tough to beat. Unless, of course, you use these two codes from two R/G favorites, the Quiet Botanist and Evangeline Linens, exclusively available to our subscribers. Treat yourself to a sale on top of a sale: Above: Over at The Quiet Botanist, makers of candles, teas, chocolates, and soaps in “homage to the natural world,” R/G subscribers can take 25 percent off sitewide with code GARDENISTA25, now throug

For your unofficial-start-of-summer perusing pleasure: Here are 19 things we’ve bookmarked lately: Above: We’re calling it: stained glass is making a comeback. For further evidence, see Pale Fire: The Renewed Appeal of Stained Glass. Photograph via Inigo. Can every storefront look like this, please? The Gardener Store in Berkeley just unpacked a bunch of goodies from Morocco. Here’s a peek. Can’t get to Great Dixter? Here’s a wonderful behind-the-scenes video of the storied estate by the Ho

We can hardly believe it, but Memorial Day is here, and with it a slew of unbeatable sales. If you’ve been waiting—as we have—to freshen up the bedroom or treat yourself to a truly serene outdoor space for the summer months, now’s the time: There are steep discounts to be had on linen bedding, tableware, and patio furniture and on once-in-a-blue-moon purchases, too (mattresses, appliances, state-of-the-art kitchen composters). Here are 23 sales our editors have bookmarked: Above: Soil to Studio

At the Chelsea Flower Show a few years ago, the top prize went to an installation called “A Rewilding Britain Landscape.” The word “landscape” was telling: judges were impressed with the meticulous planting but it left visitors wondering where the garden was. A rustic nature blind at one end was a concession to people: hidden there, they could observe nature without getting in the way. Other than that, there was no human element except for a plank bridge over a dammed stream—and a soundscape of

Before beginning work on a steep site above San Francisco’s Glen Park, Anastasia Sonkin and Taylor Palmer of Talc Studio encountered a space that felt closer to a neglected woodland than a city garden. Beneath years of leaf litter and overgrowth were remnants of old San Francisco cobblestones, a surviving tree fern, a buried gingko, and a single redwood casting shifting bands of dry shade across the slope. “There was something forgotten about it when we first got there,” says Palmer. “But it fel

There’s a lot to be distracted by at the Chelsea Flower Show. From driftwood gorillas to the unveiling of this year’s rose from David Austin, it can be difficult to fully digest all the show gardens and the stories that the designer and sponsor are trying to tell. But a creative use of hard materials is always a draw and when we stopped at the Children’s Society Garden on Chelsea’s Main Avenue yesterday morning, it was a clear case of the medium being the message. And an urbane planting palette

Nestled at the foot of a Victorian-Gothic confection designed by Frederick Clarke Withers and enclosed by an ornate wrought iron fence dedicated by Brooke Astor, the Jefferson Market Garden appears to have enjoyed a long and privileged life. The garden is an island of leafy peace on a tranquil triangular block amid the swarming traffic of Greenwich and 6th Avenues in Manhattan, on the border of Greenwich Village and the West Village. At its heart a green pool of lawn is surrounded by fastidiousl

I recently went on a magazine assignment covering a British landowner whose large, private walled garden provided flowers for the local inn, which he also owned. Having heard all about the virtues of this system, I had dinner in the restaurant and remember nothing about the meal except for the tiny vase of half-dead flowers. This made me wonder about why floral arrangements in public places are either dismal or spectacular but are rarely allowed to be just a jolly bunch of flowers. By contrast,