Gardenista

Did you just sneeze? You did? Bless you. Late summer and fall allergies kick in when wind-pollinated plants shed their fine powder. While ragweed is well known as a main cause of seasonal allergies in North America, some identification issues persist. Especially this one: What is yellow and showy, often in bloom against a backdrop of early fall grasses and reddening foliage? That would be goldenrod. Because it blazes so brightly it still tends to be blamed for the seized-up sinuses caused by inc

Can you feel it? With the equinox on September 22, the expansiveness of summer tilts into hunkering season. In California and on the Cape, in the Bronx and in Maine, R/G editors are prepping our own houses (and apartments) for cooler, slower days. You too? We asked a longtime favorite, Paris-based Tensira, if they’d offer an exclusive discount to R/G readers for all your bedding-down, make-the-couch-comfier, autumn-hosting needs. We also tapped Galanter & Jones for a special offer on their styli

On deck this weekend? An LA exhibit, a great new spot to lay your head on the Cape, and much more in between. Read on: Above: Fall has us craving fresh-looking interiors. Case in point: this week’s The Architect at Home: Saba Ghorbanlinejad’s Compact Paris Apartment. Photography by Mary Gaudin for Saba Ghorbanalinejad. Kostas Anagnopoulos and Jesse James’ newest venture is a restaurant and it looks just dreamy. “The interiors, the food, the flowers, all of it,” says Fan. Gardenista friend Lind

Currently dreaming of adding a sweet Bonni outbuilding to my garden (even though there are two insurmountable obstacles in my way: I don’t have the space, and the company is based across the Atlantic in Oxfordshire, UK). Bonni’s prefab outbuildings are both good-looking and planet-friendly. Mainly manufactured off-site, the structures are made from materials sourced within a 10-mile radius of company headquarters. The wood is FSC-certified, brought in from the owner’s nearby family timber busine

Though he’s a landscape designer known for designing gardens to complement large houses, Australia-based William Dangar often gets to work with only a little land. Time and again, he says, “the structure takes up all the space and the landscaping becomes mere icing around the edges.” When Dangar and his family built their own home near Sydney’s Bondi Beach, he got the chance to rectify the situation. They bought an unsalvageable California-style bungalow on a lot “shaped like a pizza slice,” tor

Once someone gets the gardening bug, they often become pickier about where they shop for plants (those big box stores just won’t do!). Soon, the gardener has a wish list of harder-to-find plants they’d like to source for their garden, and eventually, they’re making special trips to visit nurseries. It’s a familiar tale because the truth is that plants make a garden. Many specialty and independent nurseries thrive on word of mouth. So, we asked some of our favorite garden professionals where they

Of course, the descriptor “best” is very subjective, but after countless years of trying/failing—and trying/failing some more—I think I’ve earned the right to come up with a list of “best” seeds to sow in the fall. Why fall? The short answer is that many seeds need a period of cold and moisture to properly germinate. Your seeds will lie dormant through winter and germinate in the spring. Not to mention, autumn’s blissfully cooler temperatures and increase in rainfall can reduce stress on seedlin

As late summer steps into the shorter days of fall, a native annual whose generous yellow flowers festoon its upright and feathered stems begins to show off. Touch those fine-cut, pinnately compound leaves and they fold up, sensitively. This is partridge pea, sensitive plant, sleeping plant—a legume that resembles a delicate shrub but whose lifespan is a growing season. Its seeds will ensure that it stays around the following year, and the next. That self-seeding habit makes partridge pea a help

By the end of my second trip to Hudson, NY, I had already bought a property, planted my dream garden, opened a small neighborhood bar, and settled into a simpler life upstate—in my head, that is.  My first visit to Hudson was last November, two days after a massive windstorm had swept through the Hudson Valley and taken nearly every fall leaf with it. I loved the town anyway, but I knew I needed a redo. This summer, my husband and I finally made our return, trading bare trees and frigid walks fo

Museums that offer free workshops, libraries that lend more than books, characterful homes with light footprints, and 11 other things we’re smiling about this week. Above: A tech- and clutter-free work space for a clear head. Photograph by Paul Massey, from For Your Inspiration: 19 Home Offices We Love, Remote Work Edition. How awesome is this? The Brooklyn Public Library has just launched a craft library! Patrons can check out crafting supplies like knitting needles, screenprinting equipment,

On our fall to-do list: add a simple and stylish bird feeder to our garden to help our little winged friends get through the winter. Here are 10 modern designs we have our eye on. Above: All Living Things Wild Black and Wood Feeder has a mid-century modern look and measures 10 inches across and 15 inches high; $29.99 at Petsmart. Above: Germany-based designer Sabine Meyer’s Side by Side Bird Roof Just For Birds comes with a starter “dumpling” of bird seed and is €19.50 at Connox. Above: From

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.  In our last story we shared Landscaper Language, our guide to help you speak with your land care team to get the help you need to be PRFCT. Now what? Once you’ve made the PRFCT promises, communicated your plan with your landscaper, and are about to start converting your practices from conventional methods to nature-based ones, what ca

In a British city like Oxford, there are many formal spaces—and they seem to intimidate even the gardeners. Quads of emerald green are meticulously striped in various ways while the planting around the edges shrinks against ancient walls. One of the few exceptions is Worcester College, where the head gardener Simon Bagnall revels in the opportunities offered by 26 enclosed acres in the middle of town. Among the first things he did when he arrived 23 years ago was to widen the Long Border. Agains

The artist’s garden has been a hot topic of late, pulled back into focus with Sarah Price’s interpretation of Cedric Morris’s garden at Benton End for the Chelsea Flower Show A garden as a space to paint or as a source for cut flowers for still-life compositions is a different thing entirely from a garden choreographed and designed to view as one. For the artist Vanessa Bell, who moved to Charleston Farmhouse with her husband Clive Bell, her lover Duncan Grant (the Bloomsbury Set dynamics were n

Soothing, silvery, and elegant, one of the most beautiful and useful colors in the garden is gray. It is complex and variable, and often works skillfully in the background to make other plants look a lot better than they would on their own. Here are 10 top picks for gray gardens in sun and shade, to expand your landscape’s horticultural palette: Photography by Marie Viljoen, except where noted. Artemisia Above: Artemisia absinthium likes full sun, and favors poor soil with excellent drainage. I

For anyone who’s seen the Emmy-award winning reboot of Queer Eye, Tan France needs no introduction. As the show’s fashion expert, his talent is for seeing a person’s individuality and coaxing out their own personal style and confidence. (And he’s revolutionized the art of looking effortless with the French tuck. Try it; it’s a game changer.) Tan is a New York Times-bestselling author, a producer of plays and documentaries focused on amplifying diverse voices, and an arbiter of style in the fashi

Happy long weekend; happy September! Ahead, a great-looking alarm clock for school mornings, artful painter’s drop cloths, a new Copenhagen collection, and more: Above: We got a sneak peak of Audo’s fall collection in Copenhagen and now they’re available online. Our favorites? This great table, shown (originally designed for Restaurant Bobe) and this sweet dining chair. Just when you think all the flowers have wilted, here come the dahlias. A great way to start fall: Lace up your shoes for NYB

What if your driveway were beautiful? If you have a typical American stretch of asphalt for a driveway, this question might come off as an absurd provocation, but Andrea Hurd, the founder of Mariposa Gardening & Design, has proven over and over that a beautiful place to park your car is possible. Her Bay Area firm uses their expertise in stonework and horticulture to create driveways that are an attractive addition to the landscape. Hurd’s interest in reimagining driveways doesn’t stem solely fr

I have exactly two confessions to make. The first is that I’m a lazy gardener. Not year-round, that is, but I can’t pretend that the zeal I bring to spring tasks doesn’t fade by early August, diminished by sun and heat and a desire to be down at the river instead of out in the yard. The second is that because of this, and somewhat embarrassingly, my garden relies heavily on that late-season stalwart formerly known as Perovskia, now called Salvia yangii. I say embarrassingly because although I st

While spring may seem like a long way away—summer doesn’t even technically end until September 22—there are things you can do over the next month or so to prepare your garden for a successful spring. Featured photograph above by Joy Yagid. 1. Amend your soil. Above: Photograph by Joi Ito via Flickr, from Gardening 101: When to Use Compost, Fertilizer, and Mulch. Fall is a great time to amend the soil and put down compost (better, some argue, than spring). This is particularly helpful if your so