With a new year come new trends in home design and decorating. Among them: paler walls contrasted with colorful furniture, and plenty of personal expression, design experts say.

COOLEST COLORS

Whisper-soft, ultra-pale shades of pink —described by designers as “blush tones” — are back. But the ’80s haven’t returned, says designer Brian Patrick Flynn says, at least not entirely.

“What’s different about blush this time around is what it’s paired with. In 1985, you’d find it paired with mauve and black with tons of shiny brass accents. Flash forward to today and blush is likely to be paired with preppy, masculine tones,” says Flynn, founder of Flynnside Out Productions.

His favorite blush paint is Barely Blush from Glidden, which he contrasts with navy blue: “The deep, rich personality of the navy actually washes out the blush, almost causing it to look white, and the overall effect is fresh and gorgeous.”

Speaking of white walls, Los Angeles-based designer Betsy Burnham sees those coming back in a big way.

“I used to think white walls looked unfinished,” she says. “But I’ve completely come around on this one, because white is the ultimate palette cleanser. It gives every space — even the most traditional — a modern edge, and sets the stage wonderfully for layers of color in upholstery, accessories, area rugs and art.”

But while wall colors are getting softer and paler, the opposite seems to be happening with furniture.

“Strong colors on upholstery are becoming more of the norm,” says Kyle Schuneman, founder of Live Well Designs, who spent a chunk of 2013 designing his first line of furniture, in collaboration with retailer Apt2B.

He opted to create sofas in bright blues and shades of orange because “a bright sofa is no longer just for a creative office waiting room,” he says. “People are bringing them into their homes.”

One bold color to approach carefully this year: red-violet. “Red-violet is the Pantone color of the year for 2014,” Flynn says. “As a designer whose specialty is using color, let me tell you something: Red-violet is about as complex as it gets.”

“My trick for using it right is pairing it with black, white and brass,” he says. “It’s not all that overwhelming, since it’s balanced by the neutrality of the black and white, and made a bit more chic and regal with the brass.”

TOP TEXTURES

“For accessories, the trend seems to be getting away from color and going more into rich textures like horn, aged metallics and linens,” Schuneman says. “The absence of color is becoming chic for smaller items.”

One texture Flynn says will have a big moment in 2014: felt.

“Have you looked at Pinterest lately? It’s like every fifth photo you see involves felt! Ever since the handmade movement kicked in back in 2010, felt has been used in unexpected ways and in a modern fashion,” Flynn says. “What makes it such a favorite for designers is how easy it is to work with. It’s amazing for door upholstery due to its stiffness. It makes for awesome craft material, since it’s easy to cut and stitch, and it’s awesome for kids.”

An easy project for even the DIY-challenged: “I modernized the classic kindergarten felt wall in a boy’s room by covering a wall with batting, then literally upholstering it with white and blue felt, then cutting tons of felt into random objects and characters to give the kids something interactive and stylish.”

FRESH INSPIRATIONS

“The idea of personalization is becoming stronger and stronger,” Schuneman says. “People are wanting their homes to reflect a more unique perspective.”

So rather than assuming that everyone will be buying the same popular items, “stores are doing limited runs on items more often, like art in series or a special brand collaboration for just a season,” he says.

Burnham agrees. Homeowners are increasingly looking to “large-scale wall hangings” and other pieces of art to express themselves, she says, rather than doing it with bold wall color.

“Boy, am I sick of accent walls. I really believe that trend is out! I vote for art every time,” Burnham says. “If you’re looking for something to cover big, blank areas, shop on Etsy for macrame pieces. They add such wonderful texture to your walls, and artists like Sally England have brought them back into vogue.”

She also recommends hunting for vintage posters that speak to you. Find them through online dealers and auction houses, and then frame them in a group.

“While the vintage ones are a bit of an investment,” Burnham says, “they can be a lot more reasonably priced than large-scale paintings and photographs.”

Another way Americans are increasingly customizing their space, according to Flynn: Western-inspired décor.

“For years I’ve seen taxidermy make its way into mainstream design, yet reinvented in new ways. Lately, I’ve been looking to Ralph Lauren-like cabins of the Western United States for inspiration in my own home. I think a lot of cabin-inspired colors such as pea greens, hunter greens and camouflage-inspired prints will become super popular.”

Flynn’s cabin in the north Georgia mountains is currently decorated in pea green and accented with heavy, masculine fabrics, Western hats and antlers.

TACKLING AWKWARD SPACES

“Tons of new-construction homes have awkward bonus rooms” that homeowners aren’t sure how to furnish, Flynn says.

One suggestion: “Why not turn that space into an extra sleeping area that can accommodate multiple guests, but in a super-stylish, architectural manner? That’s where the art of built-in bunks comes in,” Flynn says.

“I turned a dated attic into a bunk room and play space for two young brothers by using one wall as floor-to-ceiling, mid-century-style bunks. This isn’t exactly cheap to do, but it’s well worth the investment since it maximizes space and adds an architectural focal point, albeit one that’s functional, to otherwise dead space.”

BRATTLEBORO — On Saturday, Jan. 25, four gardening experts, each with international experience, will present their thoughts, pictures and videos at Garden Inspirations, an all-day workshop at The Latchis Theatre.

Only 100 tickets will be sold, with proceeds going toward the ongoing restoration of the main hall of the Latchis Theatre.

The lecturers include: Julie Moir Messervy, a nationally known garden writer, designer and lecturer from Saxtons River; Dan Snow, dry stone waller from Dummerston, known across America for his skills and artistry; Helen O’Donnell from Putney; and Gordon Hayward, also a nationally known garden designer, writer and lecturer from Westminster West. Hayward is also vice-president of the Latchis Arts Board.

Messervy will begin the day at 9 a.m. with her PowerPoint presentation titled “Landscaping Ideas that Work.” Her images will come largely from her own work across the country. Her goal will be to illustrate design principles in her gardens that audience members can apply to their own gardens. In the afternoon, Messervy will also screen her video, “Inspired by Bach: The Music Garden with Yo Yo Ma and Julie Messervy,” the story of the garden she designed with Yo Yo Ma based on the structure and rhythm of a Bach fugue.

Snow will offer a PowerPoint presentation of his work with stone. Examples will range from the practicality of stone retaining walls to the fantastical. Snow will also screen his video “Stone Rising: The Work of Dan Snow” in the afternoon.

O’Donnell, artist as well as a garden designer and who also maintains gardens professionally, will show slides and talk about her two one-month stints as volunteer gardener at Great Dixter, the garden of the late Christopher Lloyd in southeastern England. She will present her inside view of Great Dixter as she worked under head gardener Fergus Garrett in March 2012 and July 2013.

Hayward will present his PowerPoint presentation “Fine Painting as Inspiration for Garden Design.” Hayward first gave this lecture at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1994 and has been refining the lecture since at museums and garden clubs across the country. This is a lecture about elements of composition — defining depth, itinerary of the eye, color, line and rhythm, etc. — shared by the painter and the garden designer.

The workshop ends at 4:30 p.m. Throughout the day Messervy, Snow and Hayward will sell and sign their books. Lunch is included in the ticket price.

Tickets for a full day of Garden Inspirations are $125, and may be purchased at the Latchis Hotel, 50 Main St.; by calling Gail Nunziata at Latchis Arts at 802-254-1109, ext. 3; or at brattleborotix.com.

Belgium

(Inge Nijs)

“I travelled a lot in England with my father [Jacques Wirtz, also a
landscape designer] when I was young. Back then, before the Channel tunnel,
exploring England still felt like an adventure. I see your tradition in the
perspective of the whole history of European garden design. Some places that
are not so well known in England, but which I am quite fond of, stretch the
perception of what English design is. I found that some of your older great
gardens – like Montacute, Athelhampton, Parham House – and also prehistoric
sites like Avebury, were fantastic, mind-blowing and also very modern to my
eyes.

“Such places take English garden design far away from the herbaceous
borders, the cottage style, and the fascination with planting schemes.

“Then there is the work of Lutyens – we saw Marsh Court, Folly Farm,
Castle Drogo. I also stayed at Little Thakeham when it was still a hotel.
There, he cuts through his perspective with a pergola – a raised pergola.
This is so bold. So modern. I find it almost more modern than the New
Perennials planting wave… As a boy of 14 I fell in love, I was moonstruck by
Sissinghurst. The tall walls covered with purple and blue clematis. For me
this is all about elevating the human being from the banality of everyday
life into the illusion of a higher state of mind. This is what English
gardens did to me.”

LUCIANO GIUBBILEI

Italy

(MARTIN POPE)

“From a global perspective, British garden design still stands at the
very top of the industry. When I’m speaking at events in Europe or the US, I
know that simply being based in London and making gardens in the UK is
something that draws people.

“I think the British will always be obsessed with the roses and a
romantic idea for their gardens; it comes with their love and connection to
their landscape. The openness and accessibility to the country with the
rights of way and rambling are entrenched in your national psyche – which is
something I have no reference to in Italy, because you’d get shot if you
wandered around like that!

“For centuries the British have been a nation at the vanguard of garden
design and planting. But it now feels like there is a chasm here that hasn’t
yet been bridged between herbaceous borders and roses and romantic gardens,
and how grasses and perennials are used in new ways. Not only in the scale
of the space, but also because the marine climate of Britain does not
provide the roasting summers or crisp winters that gardens of the Low
Countries or the East Coast of the US exploit to such effect.

“I feel that many garden designers are influenced too greatly by the New
Perennials movement and attempt to overlay it as some kind of template onto
spaces for which this approach is not necessarily the best. It becomes
fashionable; everything starts to look more and more the same. Perhaps
having 24/7 access to images from across the world has an effect of limiting
creativity; we no longer have the time and patience to engage with or become
immersed in landscapes, paintings and other things.”

LODEWIJK BALJON

The Netherlands

(Maayke de Ridde)

“I made a short trip to England in early November, so my observation is
influenced by that. At Houghton, Castle Howard and Chatsworth, the greatness
and splendour of British gardens was obvious again. But the walled garden at
Scampston, with its glorious plantings by Piet Oudolf, posed an interesting
question: can historic places be part of the present debate about the future
of gardens and parks? Since gardens and parks (and landscapes for that
matter) work with material that grows and decays, keeping them in good shape
is a design issue. Therefore, historic gardens should be included in the
current debate.

“The quality of Piet’s design is not only fantastic because of his
abundant planting schemes, but also for its new interpretation of the walled
garden.

“If we compare this with infill of the walled gardens at some of the
other grand houses, we see the difference in attitude. There also we have
well-kept gardens, but in a layout and with plantings that suggest that it
is all historic, when in fact the work is mostly relatively recent.

“The new naturalistic aesthetic, of which Piet is a great promoter, will
stay with us for some time, I think. Quite rightly – because it is
colourful, has visual interest and ecological merits.”

ANTONIO PERAZZI

Italy

“I am a great fan of English planting and I do believe that English
gardening represents an art form comparable to poetry, music, painting and
sculpture. On the other hand, I think it is difficult for young English
garden designers to create something that is truly modern.

“The romantic British garden still has its influence: there are several
young Chinese landscape architects who are now making real money designing
so-called modern gardens that look like a pale imitation of some
20th-century masterpiece of English garden design. But the line between
masterpiece and bad taste is very, very thin. Somehow William Robinson’s
natural gardens have had a devastating impact in Britain, destroying the
creativity of generations of garden designers. (It’s similar to what
happened to architects after Le Corbusier.) Of course, this does not mean
that England is without talented garden designers who are under 40 years
old.

“Six years ago, my wife, Benedetta, and I drove by motorcycle from Milano
to Dungeness, just to see Derek Jarman’s garden at Prospect Cottage.
Amazing. For me, that small garden without any framing is an exquisite form
of modernity. The force of that garden is twofold. First, Jarman’s aesthetic
sense of a self-healing landscape, in which rust becomes a positive and all
the found objects do not simply become older but ripen with age. Second, the
way the extraordinary power of violent nature is understood as a blessing,
not a problem.”

FERNANDO CARUNCHO

Spain

“Obviously I know and admire the work of Dan Pearson, Beth Chatto and Tom
Stuart-Smith – their marvellous knowledge of the textures, mixes and
refinements of plants, the way they fine-tune the leaves, forms, colours and
flowers of plants, all the thousands of possible combinations, making the
gardener a magnificent connoisseur of botany.

“Much has changed in English gardening since Edwardian times and Gertrude
Jekyll. There are some similarities and some differences resulting from this
evolution over time. Both traditional and the newer English gardens remind
me of the millefleur tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn [at the
Cluny Museum, in Paris] and The Hunt of the Unicorn [in New York’s
Cloisters Museum]. In my opinion, this floral language represents a search
for the origins, the splendour and the primal variety of the world.

“Two British gardeners who undoubtedly changed the vision of gardeners
for ever are William Kent and Capability Brown. At Rousham, Kent showed his
admiration for the living landscapes he experienced during the 10 years he
spent on the Grand Tour, inventing landscape design in the process. As for
Brown, he was a genius and his work was immense in every way.

“These two both belong to the iconography of the soul of our
civilisation, and they continue to be a core inspiration in contemporary
British gardens.”

ULF NORDFJELL

Sweden

(Martin Pope)

“My main point is that even if naturalistic planting is a trend, you
should be very happy having the tradition of horticulture that you do,
because I think it’s easier to add ecological principles if you already know
the material well. Most landscapers in other countries do not understand
plants as well as you do in Britain. I thought the Olympic Park was a
brilliant project. It was quite modern but also reflected the historical
British interest of introducing plants from the whole world to British
gardens.

“Are the British obsessed with romantic gardens? Stop worrying! I think
what is really interesting in the UK is the wide range of plants you can
work with. As long as you can encourage young gardeners, new directions will
occur, because some of those gardeners are in the queue to become the
designers of the future. I don’t see anything like the range of interests
among designers in the rest of Europe.

“Of course your heritage can be a burden, but I would not be worried
because there are so many different groups of professionals in the UK –
plants people, university people, lighting architects, water specialists –
who are really interested in gardens. That isn’t the case in many other
countries, I would say.

“I don’t think any other country exports their designers in the way the
UK does.”

READ: British designers on Dutch gardening masters

PICTURE GALLERY: Top 20 British Garden makers

If you live in an apartment in a big city, and you’ve managed to find a little room on your tiny balcony for a modest garden, you probably don’t have much space left for the tools needed to toil over your cramped crops. So inventor Marc R. came up with this rather clever soft-sided watering can called the Squish that’s thin and easy to store when it’s empty.

Marc is working with Quirky to make the Squish a reality, but in the meantime we can marvel at its design. Featuring a canvas bladder like ones many canteens are made from, the Squish expands from just one-inch thick when empty and stored to eight-inches across when full of water. It can hold up to four litres of water, and it features a folding spout that helps minimise the Squish’s footprint even further. Now that the design is nearly finalised, hopefully Quirky will get this into production and in stores before winter. [Quirky via InventorSpot]

What to plant?

Avoid putting in potentially large, fast-growing or invasive plants, or any that generate lots of mess or prunings. Also avoid a dense planting scheme that will obscure your windows, making your front rooms dark and dingy.

Hedges take a lot of upkeep and can look too chunky in a small space, so opt for a long, narrow bed instead. Choose tallish, airy plants to create a semi-see-through screen – the idea is to give yourself some privacy while still being able to see out.

For year-round interest, try mixtures of Thalictum “Hewitt’s Double”, Salvia uliginosa, Verbena bonariensis and tall evergreen grasses.

Pots and tubs

Small tubs are an easy target for thieves, besides needing frequent watering and re-planting. Instead, use large tubs planted with year-round plants and let them root through into the ground so they can’t be moved.

For year-round looks, grow architectural shrubs such as bamboo, Fatsia japonica, phormium, box topiary or a standard-trained bay tree. Keep them well watered to encourage roots to reach down deep, and once established, the plants will rarely need watering.

HUMANS HAVE been planting and tending gardens for at least 10,000 years. So what do trends have to do with it?

Sometimes trend-spotting gives us a fresh vision, or maybe just a laugh. Like how the Garden Writers Association called out compost-making as a 2014 trend. Really? If it’s been happening for millennia, it’s probably not a trend.

Much of the trend talk is, of course, nothing more than marketing. Or gardeners with strong opinions making their voices heard. And because most gardeners have strong opinions, trend-spotting in the age of blogs can get downright clamorous.

While searching out what’s new for 2014, I was surprised by what I didn’t find. Not a single trend-with-an-edge, like the surge of black blooms a few years ago, or new, more modern hardscaping materials. Surely the specter of climate change must influence plant breeding and plant choices? Couldn’t finger a trend there. And how about environmentally friendly pest-control products that don’t poison our pets and biodegradable pots for nursery stock? Gardeners would greet such innovations wholeheartedly.

Instead the Garden Writers Association trumpets “Dress Up Your Yard,” advising decorative planters and candleholders. And “Drink Your Yard,” meaning green smoothies and home brewing. To be fair, “Bee-neficials: more than 85 percent of Earth’s plant species require pollinators to exist,” made the list.

Here in the Northwest, we’re lucky enough to have Crown Bees, where Dave Hunter educates us about the value of mason bees and how to nurture them. Then there’s Seattle Bee Works and Puget Sound Beekeepers Association. We’re starting our own bee-tending trend here in the Northwest; may it spread far and wide.

I just can’t figure out some of the trends on the garden writers’ list for 2014. Does “Geometric gardening that has fractions and dimensions with explosions of colors and textures that isn’t necessarily neat and tidy” make any sense to you? I’m better able to understand the item noting that more gardeners are growing “superfoods” such as kale and blueberries, and another saying we’re appreciating trees for how they reduce noise and increase property values. Still, nothing too edgy there.

White flowers, such as iris, peonies and lovage, stood out as a clear trend at the venerable Chelsea Flower Show in England last spring. Familiar native flowers, including foxglove and cow parsley, showed up in many of the show gardens.

Space-saving vertical gardens aren’t a new idea, but they were everywhere at Chelsea this past year. Many were as simple as trellises, screens or wire framework planted with vines. A star of the show was an innovative garden featuring a “bee hotel.” Log sections were drilled with holes for bee homes and inter-planted with succulents to create a functional, beautiful garden element.

The online design magazine Lonny interviewed Stephanie Schur, owner of Botany Flowers in Los Angeles, about what’s trendy in floristry. Schur says bouquets are becoming more casual and unstructured, picked fresh from the garden and plunked into a vase.

Garden Design magazine, available only online, looked at trends from cutting-edge Australia, calling out productive gardens and dramatic, outdoor night lighting as newly fashionable. In Sydney, people are planting gardens on rooftops to take advantage of views and sunshine.

The Australians put water features and garden bling in the category of “declining trends,” in contrast to the garden writers’ enthusiasm for tarting up the yard. Clean-lined, modern gardens are what’s happening Down Under.

Garden Design recently announced it’ll publish two paper issues in 2014. Now here’s a trend to celebrate — our favorite gardening magazines coming back into print.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer. Check out her blog at www.valeaston.com.

The Signal Hill City Council has approved a new “streamlined” conceptual design (pictured in the rendering above) for the proposed community garden on 21st Street that will include features that provide access to persons with disabilities.

Sean Belk
Staff Writer

Rising from what was once ashes and rubble, a community garden will sprout up in Signal Hill this year on an empty lot that became vacant after a house sustained severe fire damage.
Now covered in weeds, the empty space is wedged in between homes at 1917 E. 21st St., separated from Signal Hill Park by a brick wall. Remnants of the dwelling were demolished after the City acquired the property in late 2011.
Both nearby homeowners and city officials agreed that the best “interim use” for the space would be a community garden because of its close proximity to homes though the long-term goal for the area is to expand the park as part of the City’s Parks Master Plan.
The conceptual design of the garden has gone through a few changes after the Parks and Recreation Commission conducted a workshop with gardeners earlier this year and city staff reviewed community gardens in the local area.­­
Staff had first proposed adding a gathering space, a trellis, extra trees and landscaping for an additional $13,000, but that plan was nixed this month when the Signal Hill City Council voted unanimously at its Dec. 17 meeting to go with a “streamlined” version of the design. The Council authorized staff to start soliciting construction bids for the project that is now budgeted at $160,600.
The new design will enable green thumbs and beginning gardeners to grow plants, fruits and vegetables in the garden that will include a total of 26 plots, but city officials agreed that the “optional features,” such as the community gathering space, were unnecessary.
Steve Myrter, the City’s director of public works, told the Council that a community-gathering place would cost $10,000 alone and would encroach on a portion of the park, something that Signal Hill Mayor Michael Noll appeared to be strongly against.
“I have a problem when you’re encroaching on our park,” Noll said. “Like, 30 feet deep and 50 feet wide is a lot of park, especially during Concerts in the Park. There are several picnic tables around that area. If you think you need more, you can always put another picnic table around there so somebody can sit and talk and do whatever.”
The Council agreed, however, to make the entire garden Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)-compliant, which will cost an additional $35,000. Two of the plots will have raised beds to provide access for disabled persons, and a handicapped parking space will be added adjacent to the curb on 21st Street. The Council is required to approve a budget adjustment for Fiscal Year 2013-14 to cover the project modifications, including a 10-percent contingency.

Sean Belk/Signal Tribune

Signal Hill city staff were given the go-ahead this month to start soliciting construction bids for a project to build a 26-plot community garden on this lot at 1917 E. 21st St., which was acquired by the City in 2011 after a home sustained significant fire damage.

According to the city staff report, Pilar Alcivar-McCoy, the City’s director of community services, said making the garden ADA-compliant was recommended primarily because of the property’s down-sloping surface.
“This is a very sloped lot, so, in order to meet the grading requirements for someone with limited mobility, you’d have to really ramp it,” she said.
Alcivar-McCoy said the gardeners would be given parking passes to allow them to park on the street to haul heavy materials on specific days, of which nearby residents would be notified in advance. For the most part, however, gardeners would be parking in the parking lot near Spud Field, she said.
“The residents on 21st are very concerned about poor parking, and so we’re trying to minimize the amount of parking,” Alcivar-McCoy said. “But we’d have scheduled days where [residents] would know in advance and we would have a certain amount of time in the morning, let’s say Saturday, where gardeners can all bring their heavier materials and then come in through 21st Street for that time period.”Alcivar-McCoy also assured that there would be security gates with key codes on both sides of the garden that would only be accessible to staff and plot renters.
In addition, she said the City hopes to use the nearby Community Center and the park to organize gardening-themed workshops and educational programs. Alcivar-McCoy also noted that a portion of annual fees would go toward paying for a part-time staff person on site.
“We have a lot of options that we are aware of that we can talk about,” she said. “As it develops and as it goes along, we’ll find out more.”

SALISBURY — Mailboxes are already flowing with those colorful magazines known as seed catalogs. With their vibrant colors and exciting details, it makes every gardener ready for the growing season.

If you haven’t created your garden design, now is the time to do so. If you order sooner, rather than later, some of the seed companies offer free shipping.

I know most people want to start diving into the pages, but you really need to have a plan or garden design. Designing your garden can be fun for the entire family. You can even create a garden topic and only plant items that fit within your idea (such as pizza gardens, spaghetti gardens, soup gardens, etc.).

If you have planted in your garden in prior years, make sure for this year’s growing season you practice crop rotation. If you can make sure that no area has had the same plant family for at least three years, this will reduce your pest and disease problems.

Make decisions

If you are a first-time gardener, you may get overwhelmed with how much to buy and what to buy. First, you should think about what type of garden you would like. Do you want to have cool season crops or warm season or maybe both? Once that is decided, you need to have a spot picked out that receives at least six hours of full sunlight.

It is also important to take a soil sample before you plant, since it can tell you how much lime and fertilizer the soil needs. If space is limited, make sure you select plants that produces a high quantity to get a decent harvest. For example, if you have raised beds, sweet corn will not produce as well as squash.

Determining how much you should plant can be tricky, but it should be based on how many people are in your household, if you are planning to can or preserve any of the harvest, and if you are sharing with other families.

Additional help

This Cooperative Extension publication helps with determining how many plants you should have per person: http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/ag-06.html

First-time gardeners may have some confusion with seed catalogs’ terminology. Most catalogs have legends, but sometimes the words can still be confusing. Heirloom or open pollinated are two interchangeable words. This type of seed has become huge in demand since they are deemed to be “heritage” seed passed down from generation to generation, hence the word heirloom.

Same every year

Open pollinated also means true to type and you can harvest the seed to grow next year’s crop and receive the same plant it was harvested from.

Hybrid seeds are plants bred for certain characteristics, they have two different parents and you cannot save the seed from them and expect the same plant.

The best way to pick your varieties is by asking friends and family or picking some varieties you have enjoyed. I always enjoy trying some unusual crops, but I never buy more than a small amount, since some will not perform as well in our climate.

It is important to check with your local Cooperative Extension agent to see what crops do well in our area. Since seed catalogs are shipped across the country, some plants do not do as well here as other areas.

For more information contact your local Cooperative Extension agent at 704-216-8970.

If you’ve had time over the festive season to leaf through those gardening book gifts, or to visit a public garden and walk off those Christmas excesses, you’ll hopefully be awash with ideas on designs to replicate in your own garden in 2014.

If you are redesigning an established garden, you can retain mature features, moving large shrubs and border plants to create an immediate effect. The proportion of plants and features to open space in the garden is all-important and the general rule is one-third planting to two-thirds space. You need that space to properly be able to see your garden and all its features.

Yet the garden can consist of many elements. Even a small garden could incorporate a mixture of different aspects, from lawn and paving to gravel, water and pebbles. If you have a tiny garden, think about incorporating vertical planting, using climbers to bring colour and texture upwards, or make your garden seem larger with the use of mirrors.

Vertical dimension will prevent an otherwise flat area from looking boring. In a large garden, for example, tall trees will take the eye upwards, while in a medium-sized garden pergolas, arches and arbours are useful devices.

Consider using a few bold focal points to draw the eye across the garden at an angle, which can help to overcome the shortcomings of a tiny space. Drawing the eye to focal points elsewhere can also detract attention from an unattractive object or area, rather than attempting to screen it.

If your garden is big enough to incorporate beds and borders, make sure they aren’t too narrow. Too many plants end up cramped between fences and lawn in boring, straight borders which do nothing for the plants or the view. Think about introducing interesting curves to your borders to give them a more fluid feel.

The minimum width for a border should be around 1m (40in) and even with that, you’ll be limited to dwarf shrubs and fairly small perennials. If your design includes three layers of planting in a bed, you’ll need an area of at least 3m squared.

You may think that planting the tallest plants at the back of the border and graduating until you have the smallest plants at the front is the best way to go, but there are certain plants you can use to break with tradition. Height in the foreground, as long as it doesn’t block the line of vision, increases perspective and can make the garden seem longer. For this you can use wispy grasses such as Stipa gigantea, or perennials that produce light flower spikes such as Digitalis lutea, or see-through specimens such as Verbena bonariensis, which don’t block the view of what’s behind them.

Long, narrow gardens can often be improved by dividing the area into smaller sections, using hedges, low walls, raised beds or shrub borders that extend into the garden and prevent the eye being taken in a straight line to the end. Each area might incorporate a different theme, such as scent, water, herbs or flowers.

Before any project can start, consider the type of gardener you are. Do you want a low-maintenance plot, or one you can endlessly potter in? How much time will you realistically be able to spend each week maintaining that space?

Draw up a plan either on a computer or with pencil and (preferably graph or squared) paper, to make an outline of the existing garden and its dimensions. Include existing features you want to keep and potential obstacles such as manhole covers which you’ll need to work around. Mark the direction of the sun, where it falls at particular times of the day and any permanent shadow. Then put tracing paper over the original plan and sketch ideas of your own, experimenting with layout and plantings, bearing in mind what the vista will look like from the house, both downstairs and upstairs.

And don’t make it too complicated. Remember clean lines and simple shapes will always work best – in design, less is often more.

If you live in an apartment or condo in a big city, and have managed to find a little room on your tiny balcony for a modest garden, you probably don’t have much space left for the tools needed to toil over your cramped crops. So inventor Marc R. came up with this rather clever soft-sided watering can called the Squish that’s thin and easy to store when it’s empty.

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Marc is working with Quirky to make the Squish a reality, but in the meantime we can marvel at its design. Featuring a canvas bladder like ones many canteens are made from, the Squish expands from just one-inch thick when empty and stored to eight-inches across when full of water. It can hold up to a full gallon of water, and features a folding spout that helps minimize the Squish’s footprint even further. And now that the design is nearly finalized, hopefully Quirky will get this into production and in stores in time for your Spring planting. [Quirky via InventorSpot]