glass block
Showing posts with label Home and Garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Home and Garden. Show all posts
Jan 27, 2011
Jan 5, 2011
Oct 3, 2010
Vertical Farming
The Edible Garden wall created by Urban Farming for the Weingart Center on skid row in downtown Los Angeles. The vertical garden contains broccoli, cauliflower, strawberries, collared greens, beans, peppers and more and is tended by the organization Urban Farming and homeless volunteers form the Weingart Center. Los Angeles, California, USA
Sep 12, 2010
Sep 5, 2010
Aug 6, 2010
The 'Wow' Garden
Earth Designs Garden Design and Build were asked to created a landscape and propose garden design in Mill Lane, London*. Here are the details of the project
Brief: The brief from this client was to create a low maintenance, accessible and above all stylish garden, suitable for dining and entertaining. The client was looking for a real 'wow' factor and wanted the exterior of their property to mirror the high finish and individuality of their interior space. The existing space suffered from many drawbacks - it had an uninspiring, drab layout and was excessively overlooked from flats above and to the right and left. Its North facing aspect means that it does not benefit from a great deal of sunlight.
Solution: This design created create a stylish and contemporary space with a plethora of visual stimuli that offers extensive opportunity for enjoyment throughout the year.
The existing fencing along the rear and right hand boundaries was clad with opaque purple Perspex sheeting to create a uniform, modern backdrop to the space. Two distinct seating areas, each designed with a different use in mind, were created to allow the client maximum scope for entertaining and relaxation.
The first, in the top right corner of the space, forms the main focal point to the garden and comprises a slightly sunken conversation pit enclosed within a four-poster bed style structure. Constructed from sturdy railway sleepers, this area offers ample space for lounging and serves as a visually imposing talking-point. One side of the structure includes numerous open shelves, allowing the client to display a variety of sculpture and ephemera, while a second side houses a bespoke stainless steel water feature. The water feature itself is comprised of a large stainless steel tank fed from above by two stainless steel water blades. For comfort, large custom-made weatherproof cushions cover the conversation pit floor. These cushions can be removed and stored during inclement weather.
The second seating area, centre left of the space, comprises an L-shaped railway-sleeper fixed bench backed by a railway-sleeper raised bed. Serving as an informal alfresco dining area, this section of the space benefits from a low coffee-style table with a second table at kitchen-counter height, beside which the client has placed a BBQ for alfresco food preparation.
Flooring throughout is in attractive cream travertine, laid in a formal grid pattern and inlaid in the centre with a single rectangular strip of plum slate tiles, providing an elegant contrast to the dark stained railway sleeper structure and seating.
The left hand boundary was clad with stainless steel sheeting to create a stunning backdrop to the dining area. This panelling continues along the boundary beyond the seating area to mask a bespoke storage area in an alcove to the left of the space. The stainless steel theme is echoed with the addition of six stainless steel planters placed at intervals around the edge of the paving.
Planting in the space follows a strong architectural theme, consisting of sculpted box balls and tall, elegant allium in the raised bed, framed by the primeval fronds of dicksonia antartica (tree fern) clustered in the flush bed beyond. The box ball theme is echoed in the stainless steel planters spaced around the paving and a variety of climbers have been placed so that they will gradually adorn the Perspex fencing over time.
A comprehensive lighting scheme was installed with mood and accent in mind. Down-lighters installed within the alcoves of the railway sleeper shelving unit create a centre piece of the sleeper structure, while stainless steel bollard lights frame either end of the bench in the dining area. The paving is edged with in-ground up-lighters placed in front of each stainless steel planter to give balance to the space, while a submersible light installed within the water feature tank casts a gently undulating light across the back of the space. Low voltage spots cast a gentle glow across the back of the space and weatherproof wall-mounted infra-red heaters, one in the conversation pit and one on the boundary wall beside the bench seating, allow continued enjoyment of the garden on chilly nights.
Testimonial: "Many thanks, we are so thrilled with the entire garden. It is imaginative and bold but also practical and truly reflects our personalities! You have transformed an ordinary space into something quite magical."
If you dig this and would like to find out more about this or any of other of our designs, please stop by our web-site and have a look at our work.
Earth Designs is a bespoke London Garden Design and build company specialising in classic, funky and urban contemporary garden design.
Our Landscape and Garden build teams cover London, Essex and parts of South East England, while garden designs are available nationwide.
Please visit www.earthdesigns.co.uk to see our full portfolio. If you would like a garden designer in London or have an idea of what you want and are looking for a landscaper London to come and visit your garden, please get in touch.
Follow our Bespoke Garden Design and Build and Blog to see what we get up to week by week, our free design clinic as well as tips and products we recommend for your garden projects www.earthdesigns.co.uk/blog/.
Earth Designs is located in East London, but has built gardens in Essex , gardens in Hertfordshire Hertfordshire and all over the South East. Earth Designs was formed by Katrina Wells in Spring 2003 and has since gone from strength to strength to develop a considerable portfolio of garden projects. Katrina, who is our Senior Garden Designer, has travelled all over the UK designing gardens. However we can design worldwide either through our postal garden design service or by consultation with our senior garden designer. Recent worldwide projects have included garden designs in Romania. Katrina’s husband. Matt, heads up the build side of the company, creating a unique service for all our clients.
If you a not a UK resident, but would like an Earth Designs garden, Earth Designs has a worldwide design service through our Garden Design Postal Design Vouchers. If you are looking for an unique birthday present or original anniversary present and would like to buy one of our Garden Design Gift Vouchers for yourself or as a present please our sister site www.gardenpresents.co.uk. We do also design outside of the UK, please contact us for details.
Jul 8, 2010
Jun 23, 2010
Garden Mirror
Photo from Summer 2006
I have mirror along much of my garden fence. The silver ball is a spray painted lamp globe, still on the lamp stand. At the top of the fence you might notice the disco ball which happened to fit perfectly into a wallmounted plant stand I found in the garbage. There's a few other garden junk nick nacks here and there if you look closely...
my garden blog:
Feb 20, 2010
Dec 9, 2009
English country garden
Front garden of one of the coastguard cottages, Pett Levels, backing onto Winchelsea beach
Nov 19, 2009
Lafayette Park, Detroit
Lafayette Park, Detroit, originally uploaded by southofbloor.
Lafayette Park might be one of Mies van der Rohe's most successful projects but still it remains relatively unknown, likely because it is located in downtown Detroit. And while it contains the most Mies buildings in a single location in North America, its success stems from the union between the architecture, the planning by Ludwig Hilberseimer and the landscape architecture of Alfred Caldwell. Together they designed an excellent overlay of modern townhouse villas, towers, gardens, pedestrian traffic, parking and roads in a way that has resulted in a layered tranquil setting, and remains relevant.
The area is safe, partly because it operates as a coop. Neighbours know each other and function as a community. Even during the darkest points in Detroit’s recent history, this area has remained stable.
What makes the area spectacular though are the layered gardens and landscape. Parking is set a few feet below ground level, hiding cars and asphalt from long views. Hawthorn hedges and lilacs led through the site and punctuated locations. A next layer of flowering plums was then further sheltered by a very sculptural upper storey of locust trees. This garden composition was very important for the interior architecture of buildings that are mostly glass. Forty five years later, the trees have matured and the site feels like a series of villas in a park. Its incredibly peaceful.
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The site is not completely unproblematic. Lafayette Park occupies the bulk of what had been Black Bottom (named after the blackness of the soil), a site centred around Hastings Street that had prior to WWI been the centre of Jewish culture in Detroit, shifting after the war to become the city’s epicenter of African American owned businesses. By the 1950’s this neighbourhood and the adjacent Paradise Valley were internationally renowned for jazz and blues, and an important political centre for Black culture in Detroit.
But the neighbourhood had been doomed since the city planned a highway to run through it in 1946. Delayed for more than a decade, the neighbourhood sunk into disrepair as absentee landlords resisted upkeep on the buildings. Racist housing policies in the city meant that African Americans were stuck here, banned from living in most neighbourhoods through use of redlining and restrictive covenants, or simply through aggressive intimidation tactics. The density of areas like Black Bottom and Paradise Valley therefore mushroomed, while the off-site landlords of these buildings did little to keep them up.
By 1958 the Chrysler Freeway was laid in the location of Hastings Street, which had once been the main commercial hub of the district. By the 1960’s, the City of Detroit labeled the remaining area as a slum, and the area was slated for urban renewal. The entire site was bulldozed to build Lafayette Park and the Chrysler Freeway, with multiple 10’s of thousands of inhabitants unable to afford the residences in Lafayette, and largely moved to the Brewster Projects and Jeffries Homes. Business owners were not provided with assistance to relocate, and an intricate and rich social network that had been established in this area was blasted to pieces.
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Detroit's African American business district for a while had shifted to 12th Street, which again went through the pressures that had been experienced in Black Bottom. In July of 1967, the 12th Street Riots exploded, with a reach that affected the entire city. 12th Street is now unrecognizable as a commercial strip, the burned out storefronts cleared in the 90's in an effort to stabilize the city.
Forty years later, Lafayette Park however is a well kept and highly functional part of Detroit, inhabited by a racially diverse and politically active group of people. Because it is a coop, it is stable, a well kept microcosm of Detroit, whose people know and look out for each other.
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Sep 10, 2009
ZEN GARDEN
Modern Asian inspired landscaping Hauser Gärten AG
Modern Asian inspired landscaping as seen on plastolux
Aug 27, 2009
Butchart Gardens Fairytale
Taken at the Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. These were some of the most beautiful gardens I have ever seen!
I am not sure if photos can quite capture the breathtaking feeling of being there, but I hoped to share a fraction of the beauty of this fairytale place:)
---WisDoc---
Aug 24, 2009
The zen garden at Ginkakuji, Kyoto, Japan
The zen garden at Ginkakuji, Kyoto, Japan
One of the classic Japanese zen gardens, also called Ginshaden or the Sea of Silver Sand.
Aug 22, 2009
English Garden
Middle Garden Spring
English garden for all seasons. Winner Daily Mail National Garden Competition 2007. Winner Walsall in Bloom 2006. www.fourseasonsgarden.co.uk
Aug 20, 2009
Aug 18, 2009
Jul 15, 2009
Jun 21, 2009
Normal Room's curving deck wall via Apartment Therapy
The wood deck for your home. It's a good use of the space in the garden. It's suitable for one who don't have much time to maintain the garden so build the deck.
Mar 19, 2009
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