July Garden Variations and Color Combinations

Midsummer is a glorious time for a garden. Our garden is filled with little vignettes of beautiful colors, textures and shapes. The bees are hard at work collecting nectar from the many insect-friendly flowers. After our rainy June, this month is hot and sunny, just right for sensual flowering — and nectar gathering among the colors.

Looking to nature for inspiration

Study for Lovejoy Fountain by Lawrence Halprin

Halprin is by no means the only architect/landscape architect or designer noted for beautiful, appropriate and celebrated water features. But he is one who influenced me, influenced the way I design and the way I look to nature for guidance, for ideas, for inspiration.

Water Features in the Garden: How to Visually Connect Them

Two or more water features in your garden can be visually connected with a dry stream bed … if you are using a nature-inspired style in your garden, take some design clues from the way water behaves in it’s natural environment before you start construction.

Contemplative Art in the Garden

If we strive to deeply understand and perceive our world as inseparable from ourselves, then we will have empathy for every part of creation. We are an integral part of everything. Every one of the ten thousand things is, in the true sense, part of us. And everything is perfectly arranged!
This — whether we paint, draw, sing, pray, dance, cook,write code or write poetry — this empathy makes every one of us an artist and a spiritual being.
Today, go out into a “Garden,” no matter where it is and see your connection to nature as a work of art and as an act of prayer: in a wildlife refuge, in your back yard, on your balcony, in a city park, in a plant nursery or just in a clay pot on your kitchen windowsill.
Find your connection with nature: watch the unfolding of leaf buds and see not just a “plant” but also freedom, flight, wings, wind, the lightness of a heart.