Create an ideabook for your next remodeling project!
Browse more than 1,500,000 photos from top designers and save your favorites
Gardening
Top Ideabooks
- Enjoy the Peak of Spring Gardening — Here's What to Do in May
- 11 Perfect Plants for a Moonlit Garden — in Pots
- 6 Beautiful Plants for a Shady, Wet Site
- 6 Captivating Roses for an Alluringly Fragrant Garden
- 5 Essential Considerations for a Landscape Design Project
- Get on a Composting Kick (Hello, Free Fertilizer!)
Small Gardens
Top Ideabooks
- Step Up Your Garden Game With Terraced Plantings
- Discover an Intimate Garden Nestled on a Manhattan Rooftop
- 5 Container Gardens for the Holidays and Beyond
- 9 Fresh Herbs for Crowd-Pleasing Thanksgiving Dishes
- Weirdly Wonderful Planters Give Stuffy Style the Boot
- 8 Knockout Flowers for a Fall Container Garden
Plant a Pocket Garden
This Spring, Add a Touch of Green to Garden Paths, Patios, Steps and Walls
I spent many years at Sunset Magazine writing about the fabulous gardens and innovative designers throughout the West. Now, my passion is environmental sustainability—both in gardens and buildings.
I spent many years at Sunset Magazine writing about the fabulous gardens... More »
Pillows, throws, and comfy-looking couches are often used to dress up a stark interior and make it more inviting. Outdoors, the same effect can be achieved by inserting clusters of colorful foliage and flowers in large expanses of paving, which often look austere. These pocket gardens can be almost any shape and size, as long as they accomplish the desired effect of softening the hardscape and adding pleasing texture and color to the design. My favorite examples use striking combinations of textures and colors — or add a touch of green to unusual places, such as a stone wall.
| This unique garden planted on a sloping lot incorporates a series of pocket gardens to soften the descending stone steps. Boxwoods provide the perfect shape and form. |
| At the bottom of the slope, red leaf cannas and green euphorbia create a striking focal point. |
| Plants can be tucked almost anywhere, as long as there’s soil and water available. Here, puffy heather, heath, and thyme plants grow between the boulders and stone steps. |
What a fun surprise to find plants growing out of a stone wall. Succulents are perfectly suited for the job.
| Like it? Save it to your Ideabook »
|
| Concrete steps can seem unwelcoming, but not the ones shown here. Fescue, thyme, and other low-growing plants soften their lines, and add appealing color and texture. |
| Symmetrical plantings of multi-trunk olive trees and Mexican feather grass add drama to a contemporary entry. |
Here’s another way to create a pocket garden using succulents: this time, the plants are clustered around a large stone “water tower” that looks like the perfect drinking fountain for birds.
Pockets of grasses, succulents, and colorful New Zealand flax make a charming entry garden.
| Like it? Save it to your Ideabook »
|
| A series of cutouts filled with dramatic rushes soften a stark wall. |
| This triangular bed filled succulents and other plants makes an attractive focal point on a patio. Without the plants, the area might seem harsh.
More inspiration: Browse more beautiful landscapes |
Ideabook updated on Jan. 9, 2011.
What are you working on?
News From Our Partners
Latest Ideabooks
People found the photos in this ideabook after searching for:
View over a million photos:
Thanks to Lauren for putting together such inspirational photos.
If the fuchsia flowers were not in Picture #5 I would have concluded that weed has overtaken the stairs because no one lives there.
It would seem like it still potted plants for me :-( Renting sucks.