garden design

It seems as if I have always known of the Villa d‘Este, the celebrated Renaissance villa and adjoining gardens northeast of Rome, but until this spring I really didn’t know much about it. I was dimly aware of the complex’s influence on…

THERE WAS was nothing you could call a yard,” recalled landscape designer Janell Denler Hobart of first visiting the San Anselmo, Calif., site where her clients, a young family, had recently bought a residence. The home’s main…

For the recurring series, That’s Debatable, we take on a contentious issue of the day and present two spirited arguments—one in favor and other emphatically opposed. Previous installments from the series are here. YES,…

GARDEN DESIGNER Butter Wakefield’s London backyard, above, has nary a blade of grass out of place. Except, that is, for an untamed patch that contains what many people might deem weedy eyesores: tufted vetch, ragged robin and knapweed.…

LIKE A BOTANICAL King Midas, Alexander Hoyle turns lifeless pavement into cottage gardens worthy of bucolic Britain. You can barely tell that the fairy-tale patch in front of the garden designer’s own London apartment—a profusion that…