lawn - Fine Gardening

  • Reimagining Curb Appeal Garden Tour
    Design

    Tour a Beautiful, Eco-Friendly Front-Yard Garden

    Lou and Dell Salza’s front yard in Shaker Heights, Ohio, is living proof that a garden can be both beautiful and ecologically functional. Making the most of a modestly sized…

  • eco-friendly front garden
    Design

    Replace a Front Lawn With a Beautiful, Eco-Friendly Garden

    Shaker Heights is a historic Ohio community known for stately homes, majestic trees, and expansive lawns. But along a side street, you will find a sight quite rare in most…

  • lawn full of Dog Tuff grass
    Article

    Lawn Alternatives for the Mountain West

    If you’ve looked at current drought maps for the Mountain West, you’ve seen a sea of red, orange, and yellow indicating abnormally dry to severe drought conditions across the region.…

  • Design

    How to Create a Gravel Garden

    When you conjure up an image of a gravel garden, it probably isn’t very fun or colorful. Many people picture a sea of hot, dry gravel, some harsh, craggy rocks,…

  • Design

    A Gentle Approach to Planting on a Slope

    When creating a new garden design, I first analyze existing elements to decide what works, what doesn’t, and why. Architectural and hardscaping elements are a good place to begin. When…

  • Mounding plants tumbling over a retaining wall’s edge combine with bright spikes of perennial flowers and architectural grasses to wrap a patio in color and texture.
    Design

    How to Turn Your Patio Into a Garden Oasis

    The kitchen may be the heart of a home, but for most of us, the patio is the center of the backyard. Whether we use it as a place for…

  • Purple and chartreuse form the backbone of the color scheme.
    Design

    A Garden That Has It All

    My husband and I moved into our house in November nine years ago. I recall the weather vividly because, instead of starting my new journey indoors with painting walls and…

  • mixed evergreens anchor a hillside planting
    Design

    Pull a Design Together With Ground Covers

    The staff at your local garden center works hard to assemble eye-catching displays of colorful perennials, artfully arranged succulents, and architectural grasses. But the ground-cover section is likely an unremarkable,…

  • Design

    A Woodland Garden Design

    In 1989, after 13 years of marriage, my husband, Bud, and I ventured back to my hometown with our family of four. A beautiful piece of property awaited us: a…

  • How-To

    Patch a Lawn With No Weeds

    Anyone with a lawn knows that at some point, it will need maintenance, including patching or reseeding. Generally, wheat straw is used on the patch to offer some protection to…