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15 Fall Entry Table Decor Ideas
15 Fall Entry Table Decor Ideas An entry table has one job in every season: give the eye something to land on before it takes in the rest of the space. In fall, that job comes with a second requirement, because the entry table is usually the first place a home signals the season has…
15 Fall Staircase Garland Ideas
15 Fall Staircase Garland Ideas The staircase garland is one of those decorations that looks effortless in photographs and slightly daunting in person. The photographs show it flowing perfectly down a curved banister, every element at the right interval, the warm light catching the dried grasses and copper leaves. Then you stand at the base…
15 Fall Greenhouse and Sunroom Garden Ideas
15 Fall Greenhouse and Sunroom Garden Ideas The greenhouse becomes a different room in September. Not because anything changes about the structure. Because the relationship between what is inside and what is outside reverses. In summer, the greenhouse is a place where tender plants get started and then move outward — seedlings hardening off, cuttings…
13 Thanksgiving Garden Centerpiece Ideas from Your Backyard
13 Thanksgiving Garden Centerpiece Ideas from Your Backyard Walked through the garden the week before Thanksgiving and wrote down everything worth cutting. Miscanthus plumes. The last rose hips. Dried echinacea cones. The seed heads of the alliums. A few stems of pyracantha with orange berries. Dried hydrangea heads still holding their colour. The bronze fennel…
14 Fall Garden Cleanup Tips That Double as Decor Prep
14 Fall Garden Cleanup Tips That Double as Decor Prep The autumn garden cleanup is one of those tasks that gets scheduled and then postponed and then done in a panic before winter. Not because it is particularly difficult. Because it feels purely like removal — taking things away, reducing, ending the season. What if…
14 Beautiful Front Yard Edible Landscaping Ideas for Year-Round Color
14 Beautiful Front Yard Edible Landscaping Ideas for Year-Round Color The front yard is the garden that does not get to be practical. Or so the convention goes. The backyard: the place to grow food. The front yard: the place to look respectable. One flower bed. One lawn. Possibly a shrub or two. The front…
13 Thanksgiving Prep Laundry Room Organization Tips
13 Thanksgiving Prep Laundry Room Organization Tips The laundry room becomes a different room in the week before Thanksgiving. Not because anything in it changes. Because the demands on it quadruple overnight. The tablecloths from last year still folded at the back of the linen shelf — now urgently needed and definitely wrinkled. The guest…
15 Fire Pit Garden Design Ideas for Autumn
15 Fire Pit Garden Design Ideas for Autumn The fire pit changed how I use the garden more than anything else I have ever added to it. Not the pergola. Not the raised beds. Not the string lights or the paving or the outdoor kitchen. The fire pit. Because the fire pit is the only…
13 Fall Garden Path and Walkway Decor Ideas
13 Fall Garden Path and Walkway Decor Ideas The path is the first experience of the garden. Not the borders. Not the seating area. Not the focal point at the far end. The path. The thing walked on to get to everything else. In summer it barely registers — the eye moves past it to…
14 Fall Herb Garden Ideas for Kitchen-to-Garden Living
14 Fall Herb Garden Ideas for Kitchen-to-Garden Living The distance between the kitchen and the herb garden is the distance between cooking with dried seasoning from a jar and cooking with something alive. Not metaphorically alive. Literally still growing when it is picked. The difference in flavour is not subtle. A sprig of rosemary cut…
13 Food Forest Layout Ideas That Maximize Harvest in Small Backyards
13 Food Forest Layout Ideas That Maximize Harvest in Small Backyards Went to a neighbour’s backyard once expecting a vegetable garden and found something else entirely. It looked like a wild corner of a woodland. It also produced more food per square foot than any organized raised bed setup I had ever seen. She called…
14 Mums and Ornamental Grass Garden Combos for Fall
14 Mums and Ornamental Grass Garden Combos for Fall Planted chrysanthemums and grasses side by side three autumns in a row before noticing that some combinations worked and some did not. Same plants, different results. The purple mum beside the stipa: extraordinary — the deep colour against the pale feathery grass, both catching October light…
13 Fall Garden Lighting Ideas for Cozy Nights Outside
13 Fall Garden Lighting Ideas for Cozy Nights Outside The garden went dark at 6pm in October and nobody went outside anymore. Same furniture. Same seating area. Same space that had been used every evening in August. The only thing that changed was the light — or rather, its absence. It took longer than it…
15 Hobbitcore Garden Ideas for a Magical Backyard
15 Hobbitcore Garden Ideas for a Magical Backyard Read The Lord of the Rings for the first time at thirteen and felt, with complete conviction, that the Shire existed somewhere. Not as a place to visit. As a way of living that was possible if you chose it. The round windows. The low ceilings and…
13 Fall Container Garden Ideas for Porches and Patios
13 Fall Container Garden Ideas for Porches and Patios The porch containers that looked excellent in July looked embarrassing by September. Same pots, same positions, same plants that had given up weeks ago. The summer container garden: not designed to become the autumn container garden. It was designed for one season and not replaced when…
