Posted: Sunday, June 16, 2013 12:00 am

Top 10 bedroom design styles

Home Garden Television

Richmond Times-Dispatch

Choosing a specific design style for your bedroom can transform it into your favorite space in the house. Learn about the most popular design styles to help you pick the one that appeals to you.

Eclectic: Use different colors, patterns and textures to create a cohesive look.

Cottage: A casual, inviting environment makes cottage style a great choice for guest bedrooms. An easy way to add a cottage feel is to repurpose items.

Mediterranean: This style features bold color and texture to create a unique look. A hand-painted bed and whimsical chandelier would represent the region’s culture.

Romantic: Soft hues and delicate fabrics characterize this style. An ornate headboard, silhouette bed pillows and white draperies would bring a feminine touch.

Contemporary: Think sleek furniture, solid colors and chic furnishings.

Asian: Elements might include a warm color palette, nature-inspired furniture and Japanese shoji screens. All work to create a calm, serene feel.

Coastal: Muted colors and light fabrics are staples. Consider a striped ceiling treatment and bamboo ceiling fan to complete an ocean-inspired look.

Modern: Minimal design is the epitome of this style. Minimal furnishings and a neutral color palette enhance the look.

Old World: This style has a luxurious, regal look. Wooden ceiling beams, intricate wall sconces and textured walls are key design elements of the style.

Traditional: A spacious bedroom with traditional furniture creates a timeless look. Include dramatic bedding.

© 2013 Richmond Times Dispatch. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

• 
  Discuss
  
• Print
  
  
  

Posted in
Home-garden

on

Sunday, June 16, 2013 12:00 am.

Thomas Heatherwick’s design would be the first new crossing since the Millennium Bridge opened to the public in 2002 and would create a new route from Covent Garden to the South Bank.

It is being developed after Mr Heatherwick won a Transport for London tender for ideas to improve pedestrian access across the river.

MORE STUNNING PICTURES OF THE BRIDGE DESIGN HERE

But his imaginative approach also chimed with Mayor Boris Johnson’s ambition to create “an iconic piece of green infrastructure” on the model of the High Line, an aerial park planted on a former railway track in New York.

Mr Heatherwick said: “The idea is simple – to connect north and south London with a garden.”

And he paid tribute to the inspiration of campaigner Joanna Lumley who had been championing the idea of a Garden Bridge complete with grasses, trees, wild flowers and plants, for years.

She said she thought it would be “sensational every way – a place with no noise or traffic where the only sounds will be birdsong and bees buzzing and the wind in the trees and, below, the steady rush of water”.

Ms Lumley added: “It will be the slowest way to cross the river, as people will dawdle and lean on parapets and stare at the great cityscapes all around, but it will also be a safe and swift way for the weary commuter. I believe it will bring to Londoners and visitors alike peace and beauty and magic.”

Mr Heatherwick is now working with engineering giants Arup to develop the plans with an aim of submitting them for planning permission in spring next year. It would make 2016 the earliest possible opening date.

Mayoral advisers believe it would bring to life the comparatively quiet stretches of waterfront around Temple and immediately east of the Southbank Centre.

By encouraging pedestrians onto the new walkway, it would also make possible better cycle routes on Waterloo and Blackfriars bridges.

But the go-ahead is dependent on Mr Heatherwick raising the cash from private sponsors because the Greater London Authority will not invest public money.

Isabel Dedring, the deputy mayor for transport, said it fulfilled the Mayor’s aim of having more river crossings and creating a landmark attraction.

“The mayor has been keen to find an iconic piece of green infrastructure that can symbolise London as a high quality of life place to live,” she said.

“It is a great example of a project where in our view there doesn’t need to be a major public contribution. But if private sector funding isn’t forthcoming then the project isn’t going to be able to go ahead.”

Michele Dix, of Transport for London which is helping steer the plans through planning, said: “The bridge will help support economic activity whilst providing commuters arriving at Waterloo with alternative options to cross the river.”

The High Line was also the model of an innovative “greenway”  that this week won a competition to reduce flooding and link forgotten parks and railway arches on the Albert Embankment.

A few weeks ago, I ventured down to the 2013 San Francisco Decorator Showcase. This year’s featured house was an 8,000 square-foot Georgian mansion known as Herbst Manor. Built in 1899 atop a hill in Pacific Heights, this majestic lady challenged West Coast designers to transform its 24 rooms and three exterior areas.

One of the most impressive of these transformations occurred in the courtyard at the hands of garden designer, Davis Dalbok, of San Francisco’s Living Green Design, Inc., and his partner, Brandon Pruett. Stepping into the small space was like being transported into another dimension — an otherworldly, exotic and tropical one at that. In an instant, I had exited the urban world and entered a paradisaical oasis.

The inspiration for Dalbok’s design came from his own original Japanese screen paintings that, in essence, conveyed a mythical habitat of wild birds of prey. To help bring his fantastical concept to life, he enlisted the talents of artist, Jane Richardson Mack, and vertical garden innovator, Chris Bribach, owner of Plants on Walls.

Mack, a diverse Bay Area artist whose clientele include guitar great Carlos Santana, devised a careful plan in using Dalbok’s gallery-quality Japanese paintings. With her specialized skill as a verre eglomise artist, she embedded the images in real silver leaf applied to panels of glass. The technique — pronounced “vehr-ray egg-glow-mee-zay” — is a pre-Roman technique of painting and gilding the backside of glass. She then burnished the silver away to reveal the images within an ethereal and mysterious silvery cloud-like aura.

The panels were next hermetically sealed into bronze powder-coated frames and hung as a focal point on one of the courtyard’s neglected, 12-foot high brick walls.

Dalbok further enhanced the space with painterly strokes of greenery including potted Japanese maple trees, a rare Baobab-type miniature tree, dwarf conifers, grasses, and a cohesive woodland understory — all of which came from his San Francisco Living Green showroom.

Dalbok’s poetic imagination carried over to the adjacent brick wall. Since the courtyard was a challengingly small 400 square feet, he employed a tradition used by the French in their own small gardens. Espallier is a technique that trains plants to vertically grow on walls. To actualize this idea, he turned to the genius behind vertical garden planters and self-watering systems, CEO and founder of Plants on Walls, Chris Bribach.

Bribach converted this bleak, brick eyesore into a lush and mesmerizing showstopper using his 2010 patented creation, Vertical Garden Panel, Florafelt Vertical Garden Planters and Wire Systems, and Recirc self-watering systems.

The hand-made planters are designed to use micro fibers in P.E.T. (polyethylene terephthalate) felt so that all plants are watered equally. The felt is made from non-toxic and durable fibers from recycled plastic bottles. The material has been proven to be so safe, pH-neutral and non-reactive that one can freely plant an organic fruit and vegetable garden. More than 1,500 felt root-wrapped plants were used to fill the planter pockets with species reflecting the habitat of birds of prey — such as an assortment of ferns.

In addition to the brick walls, Dalbok treated the courtyard’s once drab concrete ground. With a multiple-layered application of a reactive stain, the concrete turned into an old Roman stone floor with a mélange of warm sunset hues.

To make the space people-friendly and functional, he added a dining table with an inlaid semi-precious stone mosaic top, iconic Michael Taylor garden chairs, and a Verona marble console table. He then accessorized with potted succulents, a partially hidden and sinister ceramic serpent, and a copper bird of prey from Burma.

This year’s Showcase visitors could not help but be swept away by this beguiling, fairytale design. As I stepped back into reality, I was comforted to know that such magical spaces could be created anywhere. You can enlist the help of Dalbok and Pruett, use your own designer, or take this on as a do-it-yourself project.

Whatever your strategy, start by enjoying Living Green Inc.’s magnificent garden portfolio. And, no matter your theme, inspiration, or garden design goal, incorporating a living wall is easier than you may think. Bribach’s Plants on Walls website has detailed, simple, step-by-step instructions and pictures that say a thousand words.

Treat yourself to a visit to these inspirational websites livinggreen.com plantsonwalls.com janerichardsonmack.com and a video of this project at http://goo.gl/QmDO5.

Patti L Cowger is the Napa-based owner of PLC Interiors. For more information about her interior design services, visit her website at PLCinteriordesign.com call (707) 224-5651; or email plcinteriors@sbcglobal.net. Design appears every other Saturday.

A few weeks ago, I ventured down to the 2013 San Francisco Decorator Showcase. This year’s featured house was an 8,000 square-foot Georgian mansion known as Herbst Manor. Built in 1899 atop a hill in Pacific Heights, this majestic lady challenged West Coast designers to transform its 24 rooms and three exterior areas.

One of the most impressive of these transformations occurred in the courtyard at the hands of garden designer, Davis Dalbok, of San Francisco’s Living Green Design, Inc., and his partner, Brandon Pruett. Stepping into the small space was like being transported into another dimension — an otherworldly, exotic and tropical one at that. In an instant, I had exited the urban world and entered a paradisaical oasis.

The inspiration for Dalbok’s design came from his own original Japanese screen paintings that, in essence, conveyed a mythical habitat of wild birds of prey. To help bring his fantastical concept to life, he enlisted the talents of artist, Jane Richardson Mack, and vertical garden innovator, Chris Bribach, owner of Plants on Walls.

Mack, a diverse Bay Area artist whose clientele include guitar great Carlos Santana, devised a careful plan in using Dalbok’s gallery-quality Japanese paintings. With her specialized skill as a verre eglomise artist, she embedded the images in real silver leaf applied to panels of glass. The technique — pronounced “vehr-ray egg-glow-mee-zay” — is a pre-Roman technique of painting and gilding the backside of glass. She then burnished the silver away to reveal the images within an ethereal and mysterious silvery cloud-like aura.

The panels were next hermetically sealed into bronze powder-coated frames and hung as a focal point on one of the courtyard’s neglected, 12-foot high brick walls.

Dalbok further enhanced the space with painterly strokes of greenery including potted Japanese maple trees, a rare Baobab-type miniature tree, dwarf conifers, grasses, and a cohesive woodland understory — all of which came from his San Francisco Living Green showroom.

Dalbok’s poetic imagination carried over to the adjacent brick wall. Since the courtyard was a challengingly small 400 square feet, he employed a tradition used by the French in their own small gardens. Espallier is a technique that trains plants to vertically grow on walls. To actualize this idea, he turned to the genius behind vertical garden planters and self-watering systems, CEO and founder of Plants on Walls, Chris Bribach.

Bribach converted this bleak, brick eyesore into a lush and mesmerizing showstopper using his 2010 patented creation, Vertical Garden Panel, Florafelt Vertical Garden Planters and Wire Systems, and Recirc self-watering systems.

The hand-made planters are designed to use micro fibers in P.E.T. (polyethylene terephthalate) felt so that all plants are watered equally. The felt is made from non-toxic and durable fibers from recycled plastic bottles. The material has been proven to be so safe, pH-neutral and non-reactive that one can freely plant an organic fruit and vegetable garden. More than 1,500 felt root-wrapped plants were used to fill the planter pockets with species reflecting the habitat of birds of prey — such as an assortment of ferns.

In addition to the brick walls, Dalbok treated the courtyard’s once drab concrete ground. With a multiple-layered application of a reactive stain, the concrete turned into an old Roman stone floor with a mélange of warm sunset hues.

To make the space people-friendly and functional, he added a dining table with an inlaid semi-precious stone mosaic top, iconic Michael Taylor garden chairs, and a Verona marble console table. He then accessorized with potted succulents, a partially hidden and sinister ceramic serpent, and a copper bird of prey from Burma.

This year’s Showcase visitors could not help but be swept away by this beguiling, fairytale design. As I stepped back into reality, I was comforted to know that such magical spaces could be created anywhere. You can enlist the help of Dalbok and Pruett, use your own designer, or take this on as a do-it-yourself project.

Whatever your strategy, start by enjoying Living Green Inc.’s magnificent garden portfolio. And, no matter your theme, inspiration, or garden design goal, incorporating a living wall is easier than you may think. Bribach’s Plants on Walls website has detailed, simple, step-by-step instructions and pictures that say a thousand words.

Treat yourself to a visit to these inspirational websites livinggreen.com plantsonwalls.com janerichardsonmack.com and a video of this project at http://goo.gl/QmDO5.

Patti L Cowger is the Napa-based owner of PLC Interiors. For more information about her interior design services, visit her website at PLCinteriordesign.com call (707) 224-5651; or email plcinteriors@sbcglobal.net. Design appears every other Saturday.

Take the garden for a test drive before heading to the local garden center with this free online tool

TOKYO, JAPAN, June 13, 2013 /EINPresswire.com/ — Beautiful gardens abound on home shows and in gardening magazines—and that Eden of beauty can seem unattainable for the average home gardener. Just how do these experts make landscapes look so beautiful?

“Creating a home garden brimming with beautiful blooming color starts with a design plan. It’s okay to ask for help. What looks sweet in the garden center might not be the best color scheme in the garden,” says James Farmer, a professional landscape designer and author of The Wall Street Journal award-winning book A Time to Plant.

Now professional landscape design help is just a click away with the new Virtual Garden Designer from The Suntory Collection. Best yet, the free online tool lets gardeners “test drive” color and plant choices before making the purchase.

“When entering a garden center, shoppers are surrounded by explosions of color, and that can really be overwhelming,” says Farmer. “Like a kid in a candy store, a gardener can go overboard, using the ‘some of these, some of those’ approach and mixing without much concern for matching.”

The free Virtual Garden Designer is a simple drag and drop online tool that allows users to compare flower color combinations planted as a group in a particular area as well as across the entire yard.

“The Virtual Garden Designer Tool keeps gardeners from making costly mistakes,” says Farmer.

How It Works
The free Virtual Garden Designer is a simple drag and drop online tool. Users first choose one of several planting areas in a virtual landscape, select up to three different flowers and then drop them into the selected garden spot.

A thumbnail of the garden illustrates those plant combinations. Want to see them? Just click OK to see how they will look fully grown in the landscape. “This is important because sometimes plants grow much bigger or smaller than you think,” warns Farmer.

Clicking the clear button allows users to start over to create the combinations of plant color and forms again and again until just the right look is achieved. Proceeding in this way with each of the planting areas helps users design an entire “virtual landscape” step by step.

Design Tips
When it comes to creating a beautiful garden and yard, Farmer is ready with expertise. He suggests using just one color in large swathes of the garden border or in garden islands. The Surfinia® Trailing Petunias, for example, create waves of spreading color. Choosing one Surfinia petunia color creates a bold and visually stunning garden.

Repeating that bold color in smaller plantings or in combination containers brings a cohesiveness to the landscape, Farmer adds. The Virtual Garden Designer tool offers more than 20 types of plants from The Suntory Collection and many colors within each to create subtle repeating of color.

Lastly, Farmer suggests going for broke by adding at least one large showstopper of a plant, either hanging in a container or growing up a trellis. The Sun Parasol® Mandevillas, which now come in a variety of colors and flower sizes, fills the bill with its somewhat tubular tropical flowers and glossy green leaves. Natural climbers, these mandevillas are stunning trained to a trellis or cascading from a hanging basket.

“The Virtual Garden Designer tool has saved me time in the garden center,” Farmer says. “During the busy growing seasons, the tool helps me decide in advance what I am looking for, and that helps me get in and out of the store quickly. I have better things to do on beautiful sunny weekends in spring and summer!”

To access and use the free Virtual Garden Designer tool online, find it at:
http://suntorycollection.com/popup/garden_design.html.

Stacey Pierson
Garden Media
6104443040
email us here

Greg Rubin wants to “tweak” popular notions with “California Fusion,” the award-winning display garden he created with the San Diego Botanic Garden for the county fair’s Flower Garden Show.

“The message is we’ve only scratched the surface of possibilities with native plants,” the landscape designer says of his Asian-inspired design planted solely with cottonwoods, manzanita and other handsome California flora.

Rubin makes the same point — and more — in his groundbreaking new book, “The California Native Landscape: The Homeowner’s Design Guide to Restoring Its Beauty and Balance” (Timber Press, $34.95) co-authored with North Park garden writer and Editor Lucy Warren. Many titles on this topic are largely plant compendiums, but this one also delves deeply into native plant ecology, culture and garden design. “With this context, gardeners will succeed with these amazing and unique plants,” Warren says.

Throughout the book, the two authors confront many myths that deter gardeners from using natives. “Dead, dry and dormant in summer — that’s the rap,” Rubin says. “They look out at the brown hillsides not realizing they are looking at weeds and exotics introduced hundreds of years ago by ranchers and farmers. For a true native landscape, think Big Sur or Julian, where there is year-round color and interest. That’s possible in the home garden with a heavy backbone of evergreen trees, shrubs and perennials.”

“People also think natives are hard to grow,” adds Master Gardener Warren. “To succeed, you must throw out traditional horticulture principles about watering and fertilizing or you’ll kill natives with kindness.”

Unlike other ornamental plants, natives exist in communities linked by an underground web of fungus known as mycorrhizae that help the plants thrive on limited soil nutrients and moisture. “We need to harness this power, not work against it,” Warren says. “Traditional horticulture disturbs this web and leads to failure. … Even other Mediterranean-climate plants need more water than natives, so I wouldn’t mix the two in a garden.”

The authors devote a chapter to a third myth — “that a native landscape around your house will spontaneously combust and burn it down,” Warren says with a wry smile. “This has led to practices like ‘controlled-burns’ and clear-cutting to bare dirt that are so destructive to homes and the environment.” She points to research that lightly hydrated native plants will suppress and slow wildfires. “Plus many fire-adapted natives, if burned, will grow back in a couple of years, so your landscape isn’t lost.”

A boon for home gardeners, the majority of the book is a design primer with advice on everything from “plants for every purpose” and garden accents to practical matters like mulches, irrigation and maintenance. “Design is an area vastly neglected when it comes to natives,” Warren says. “People don’t realize the breadth and potential available.”

Rubin’s company, California’s Own Landscape Design, based in Escondido, has created scores of native plant gardens around the county, many in the popular informal or naturalistic style. But any style is possible — ranging from formal to modern, southwest and even Asian, says Rubin, who includes a diagram for each in the book.