A coastal cottage garden, edited with a city girl’s eye
Gardening, design, and seasonal living learned in real time, mistakes and all
I grew up in coastal New England and spent years in the fashion closets of New York working in visual storytelling, learning how proportion, restraint, and seasonal rhythm shape everything we love.
Parsley & Petal is where that sensibility meets the garden.
Not sure where to start right now?Start with The Seasonal Edit
a garden checklist
The Seasonal Edit is a recurring garden checklist of what’s emerging, what can wait, and what deserves attention now.
Practical tasks. Clear structure.
Timed to the season as it unfolds.
Plant Spotlight
Popular in the Garden
From the Garden
From the Journal
A Note from the Garden
Parsley & Petal follows the evolution of a coastal New England garden — sharing what works, what doesn’t, and what quietly takes root.
Early Spring, Inside and Out
A quiet shift into early spring, with hellebore containers outdoors and kokedama arrangements inside, two ways of welcoming the season.
Pinks (Dianthus)
Dianthus sit low at the front of my beds, softening the edges before the rest of the garden begins to fill in.
A Spring Visit to The Farmer’s Daughter Nursery in Rhode Island
The whole place had a fairytale feeling—artful, a little whimsical, and just loose enough not to feel overdone.
When to Apply Pre-Emergent in Northeast Lawns (Timing Guide)
Pre-emergent works by preventing weed seeds, like crabgrass, from germinating. Timing is what matters.
How I Prune Hydrangeas in My Rhode Island Garden (Mophead & Panicle Guide)
In the next week or so, I’ll start pruning my hydrangeas, something that used to confuse me until I finally understood how to prune them properly.
Early Spring Hellebores at Clark Farms
The farm was quiet, but inside was a magical surprise: tables filled with elegant flowers in bloom, in a wash of colors from pale green to whisper pink tipped in rose, to deep, saturated merlot.
Early March in the Garden
Today is noticeably warmer, and early daffodils are beginning to emerge in the beds, the first real sign of spring.
Hellebores (Helleborus orientalis)
One of the earliest and most reliable flowers in a Northeast garden.
Deer and Rabbit Resistant Plants for Northeast Gardens (What Actually Survives)
These are the plants that have actually survived deer, and how I manage stubborn wildlife in my garden.
The Seasonal Edit: March/April — Early Spring Garden Checklist
Early spring is the time to address garden cleanup and minor lawn repair, before growth accelerates.
The Spring Reset: Lawn and Garden
Mid-March in the Northeast. While the stylist in me wants to edge the beds immediately, the gardener in me says, “Wait. It’s still too wet.”
The Seasonal Edit: A Blizzard Garden Checklist
Heavy snow and blizzard conditions can cause snow damage to shrubs, boxwoods, arborvitae, and other evergreens, but knowing when to intervene can prevent long-term harm.
A Home Run with Color: Designing a Cohesive Garden Palette
I used to be drawn to everything at the nurseries. Whatever caught my eye came home with me. But a garden begins to feel cohesive when you choose a few colors and let them repeat.
The Seasonal Edit: February—Late Winter Garden Checklist
This is not a month for dramatic changes. It’s a month for structure, maintenance, and preparation. What you do now determines how smooth spring will feel.
My Essential Garden Tool Kit: The Tools I Actually Use
A good garden, like a good wardrobe, is built around a few pieces that do their job beautifully.
What I’m Learning by Not Overplanting: A Lesson in Garden Structure
When we first moved into our house, every bare patch of soil looked like a problem to solve. I was a city girl who knew nothing about growing grass, much less a garden.