A visit to Rhode Island's only lavender farm became a lesson in observation, landscape design, and the ways gardens continue to teach us.

A visit to Rhode Island's only lavender farm became a lesson in observation, landscape design, and the ways gardens continue to teach us.

A borrowed view is one of the simplest ways to make a garden feel larger without adding a single plant. Discover how framing distant trees, neighboring gardens, and natural scenery can transform the way you experience your own landscape.

I went to the Museum of Fine Arts to see an exhibit about gardens. Instead, I found myself returning to a painting I'd loved since childhood and reflecting on why certain places continue to shape us long after we've left them.

What began as a way to protect roses from deer slowly evolved into one of our favorite garden spaces. A story about English roses, dogs, neighbors, and the garden room I never planned to create.

I remember someone visiting shortly after we purchased the property and remarking, rather dismissively, “This yard isn't that great.” Perhaps they were right.

I thought my mom wanted me to babysit a plant. It turned out to be a story.

My love affair with peonies isn't over. It's just on hold while I get this growing devotion to roses under control.

I know that color. I had been once before, years ago, with my younger sister, long before I ever thought of myself as a gardener.

Some gardens begin with a planting plan. This one began with my mother.

A quiet shift into early spring, with hellebore containers outdoors and kokedama arrangements inside, two ways of welcoming the season.

The whole place had a fairytale feeling—artful, a little whimsical, and just loose enough not to feel overdone.

Spring hadn't arrived outside yet. Inside, it already had.

The first daffodil isn't a flower. It's a signal.

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.”

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.

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.