33 Ideabooks by Frank Organ

Water in the garden is magical; even more so when it's adjacent to the house, requiring us to cross it to reach the front door. Maybe the magic comes from childhood stories of castles and moats, but moats certainly don't exist only in castles. Traditionally...

From the medieval knot garden to Victorian displays of carpet bedding, delineation between landscape features has always been important in garden design; defining lawn edges, pathways or paving from neatly planted beds continues to be valuable in our...

Having trouble with animals straying into your garden? The 18th-century English gentry had the perfect answer to protecting their manicured lawns from marauding sheep or cattle — the sunken ditch, or ha-ha. The ha-ha — named for the surprise a person...

Garden design was not taught at the influential Bauhaus design school founded by Walter Gropius in 1919, but the popular Bauhaus concept of bringing art, craft and technology into one complete work, the Gesamtkunstwerk, later found its way into...

People may have different ideas about what makes a hedge, but I see it as a linear planting kept regularly trimmed, compact and impenetrable, or consisting of naturally compact shrubs that require little or no clipping to maintain a continuous barrier....

We may think that garden rooms are a relatively new feature in garden design, but they actually go back a long way in garden history to the hortus conclusus — the enclosed garden. The Hortus conclusus started in the ancient gardens of...

There are many points to consider when planting terraced beds: the materials used for the retaining walls, the right plants for the conditions created and the balance of the plantings in relation to the hardscaping. By getting the plantings right, not...

When I think of the influence English garden design has had on gardens throughout the Western world, cottage gardens and Arts...

Pattern has long been used as a decorative addition to the structure of a garden; just look at Renaissance knot gardens and intricate Victorian carpet bedding for examples. Today the whole garden can become one big pattern. Designers of contemporary,...

Of all the traditional Christmas carols, "The Holly and the Ivy" is perhaps one of the most obscure. While the song dates back to 17th-century England, holly and ivy have been significant since pagan times, when the two plants had spiritual meanings....

Whatever we call them, pots, tubs and containers have been a feature of gardens since people started gardening. Their versatility is perhaps their greatest asset, especially as gardens become smaller and there's more pressure about how to use the limited...

One of the interesting style developments at the 2012 Chelsea Flower Show was the "new English" style of planting that we saw in show gardens such as...

Of all the geometric shapes, the square is the most useful in the garden — especially in formal and contemporary settings, where it gives a design classic simplicity. It may be that the square is such a satisfying shape in outdoor spaces because we...

Inside our homes we arrange our furniture to make us feel comfortable within our space. If the furniture is too close together it makes the room seem crowded; if it is spaced too far apart the room can feel featureless. This balance between the bulky...

Pinks, lavenders, pale blues and other pastel colors have, in recent times, been the preferred choice of garden designers and gardeners when determining the color schemes for their flower beds. Even wow-factor plants of recent years, such as ornamental...