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Steal This Look: Water Troughs as Raised Garden Beds
The typical rectangular raised bed is a space hog that tends to dominate a garden. The other day I ran across a stylish alternative—painted livestock water troughs. Here's how to get the same look:...
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The Poet and His Garden: Ian Hamilton Finlay in Scotland
Spread out in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh, the garden at Little Sparta was created by artist and poet Ian Hamilton Finlay over decades, with his wife Sue. Simply put, It is one of the greatest...
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DIY Floral Arrangement: A Bouquet for a Newborn
Just over a month ago, my older sister and her husband welcomed the tiniest, sweetest little boy into the world. He joined us a month earlier than expected, so after I got the phone call saying all...
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The World's Most Adorable House Plant
Much like animals, plants have character: some are prickly or spare, while others are jovial and grand. And then there's Mikado. Though small in stature, this wee plant has so much personality, it's...
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The Fig and I: Tips for Caring for a Fiddle Leaf Fig Tree
Nature has wired us to feel protective of babies, with their oversized, floppy heads. The big, round leaves of a fiddle leaf fig tree make it the houseplant equivalent of a newborn. So it was probably...
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The Magicians: An English Professor and a Novelist Conjure a Garden in Brooklyn
It is probably impossible, if you are an English professor, to look at a garden without thinking of John Keats' "fast-fading violets covered up in leaves" or "the coming musk-rose full of dewy wine"—or...
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Steal This Look: A Potting Shed Made of Scraps
Drive west across San Francisco as far as possible, to the ocean; you can see the water from the end of the block. In the foggy Outer Sunset surfer district, restaurant owners Dave Muller and Lana...
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Closet Cleanout: The Only 10 Pieces of Clothing You Need
I have only good memories of walk-in closets, except for the time I was rummaging around in the back of one—and suddenly came across a high-top sneaker with two kittens sitting in it. It was a charming...
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An Insider's Favorite: The Bliss of Visiting Rousham in the Cotswolds
The sound of peacocks crowing in the English countryside is a sign that a parallel world exists nearby. Those who keep peacocks have no regard for the sleep quality of their neighbors, or better still,...
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Rehab Diaries: Rescuing a 100-Year-Old Garden
Joel and Diane Schatz have photos (circa 1927) of their Mill Valley, California, house that show a garden party in progress under a great canopy of wisteria, with guests in party hats posed against a...
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DIY: How to Stop Killing Your Indoor Succulents
I've killed every succulent I've ever attempted to grow. Things start off well enough, but a few weeks after I bring succulents into my home, they start to look spindly and sad before giving up and...
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DIY: The Magical Powers of White Cherry Blossoms
Every March growing up, I watched my mom wield a large pair of hedge clippers and go at the forsythia that edged our front yard. She'd fill a tall cut glass vase with the naked branches and a little...
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Pillow Talk: 7 Secrets to Making a Perfect Bed
If you count all the hours we allot to plumping pillows, smoothing sheets, straightening shams, and fussing over how the whole thing looks, we spend as much time on our beds as in them. Yet the results...
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Calke Abbey in Aspic
A desire for seclusion was a great preoccupation among the heirs to Calke Abbey in Derbyshire. Solitude from the outside world as well as a passion for taxidermy. From the 1880s until the 1980s when...
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Harris Tweed: A Landscape Translated into Fabric
When you wear Harris Tweed, you are wearing a piece of the Hebrides. Its beaches, sky, rocks, pools, and heather are all ingredients of tweed. As are the sheep, of course. The island weavers put it all...
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DIY: Winter Finery, Foraged in Brooklyn
Making your own wintertime corsage is less about having a particular way with plants and more about your tolerance for braving chilly temperatures to do your foraging. Inspired by Akiko Seki's festive...
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DIY Seed Starting: Newspaper Pots
Late winter is the time of year when gardens in New York look their worst, but when hopes for their future are at an all-time high. It’s the season of seed catalogs and bed planning, and when we get to...
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A Great Gatsby Garden: The Lavish Long Island Estate That Inspired a Movie's...
There was a girl who grew up in the Phipps mansion on Long Island's Gold Coast and she was named Margaret but went by Peggie, and she married young and divorced. Her second marriage lasted longer and...
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DIY: A Glamorous New Year's Eve Ceiling
When we spotted these balls dropping from Cecilia Fox's ceiling, the symbolism didn't escape us. Hang a few overhead at a New Year's Eve party and no one will notice when you don't turn on the TV to...
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My Dirty Secret, or How I Learned to Live with a Marble Backsplash
Always, it was about the marble. My platonic ideal—the house I would lie awake and fantasize about—involved carrara: countertops, mantels, thresholds, and backsplashes. Pretty much every surface except...
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