sustainability

Flowers in February? Absolutely!

by Rebecca Sweet 15 February 2012

While visiting the garden of one of my favorite clients yesterday I was really pleased with how it looked in the middle of February.  When designing, one of my priorities is to create a garden that looks good throughout the year.  Luckily, living in Northern California’s zone 9, this is a very attainable goal.  However, [...]

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Lani’s Fantastic Fence

by Rebecca Sweet 11 January 2012

Lani Freymiller has created one of the most incredible gardens I’ve ever seen (read more about it here).  Her garden is filled with countless design concepts and creative ideas. So many, in fact, that instead of writing the world’s longest post I’ve decided to write several shorter ones and post them throughout the year. This [...]

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Book Review & Giveaway – The Heirloom Life Gardener

by Rebecca Sweet 20 December 2011

A few weeks ago the folks at Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company asked if I’d like to review a copy of their new book The Heirloom Life Gardener, by Jere and Emilee Gettle (227 pages, Hyperion, 2011.  List Price $29.99) I was excited to read this book because even though I’m a passionate gardener and [...]

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Garden Designers Roundtable – What’s lawn doing in Hell?

by Rebecca Sweet 22 August 2011

Let me state up front that I’m not a hater when it comes to lawns.  There, I’ve said it. If you have a lawn and you or your kids actually use it, then it’s okay in my book.  Especially if you don’t have unrealistic expectations that you need to saturate your garden with chemicals to keep [...]

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Recycling in the Garden

by Rebecca Sweet 23 July 2011

  I absolutely love re-purposed items in the garden. Things that may be broken or have lost their usefulness are all too often headed to the dump.  But hold up!  Sometimes all that’s needed is a coat of paint, a little sprucing up and a healthy dose of creativity to use that item in a [...]

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Inspiring Fences…

by Rebecca Sweet 4 June 2011

I try and visit Sonoma’s Cornerstone Gardens as often as I can, as their gardens are constantly changing and I always see something new that I swear I’ve never seen before!   I’ve written about them in the past, but this time I was really captivated by a few of the fences surrounding some of [...]

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Celebrating Regional (and Client) Diversity – Part 2

by Rebecca Sweet 27 October 2010

I don’t know what it is, but I just LOVE designing gardens for people who aren’t from California.  Or the United States, for that matter.  I think it’s because I live in Northern California where the majority of the population are from someplace other than Northern California. Earlier this year, I wrote a post with [...]

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The Green Roof at SF’s Academy of Sciences

by Rebecca Sweet 20 October 2010

No, this isn’t a scene from Teletubbies.   Last night I attended an APLD meeting in San Francisco to listen to Alan Good, the Academy’s Landscape Exhibit Supervisor, give a fascinating presentation about the building’s green-roof infrastructure and its plant life.   While I found the specific construction of the roof interesting, it was the [...]

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Design tips for a low-water ‘Meadow Garden’

by Rebecca Sweet 15 October 2010

Today I’m participating in a massive, worldwide blogging event called Blog Action Day, where the topic we’ll all write about is Water. As any California gardener knows, water is our most precious resource.  In this post, I’m going to show you how to create a lawn-and-chemical-free meadow garden teeming with life, color, scent and natural [...]

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