These fantastic garden daybeds certainly inspire us to design gardens to put them in and I’m hoping that by showing them here as demonstrated at FreshHome they might inspire you guys to get us to draft you up some fantastic design for your own garden!

These beautiful daybeds are made by Lifeshop Collection, a company that is specialized in indoor and outdoor contract furniture, hotel furniture, contract lighting, contract artwork, casegoods, and resin furniture. The summer is near, and a piece of outdoor furniture like this would be great, to relax outside your house, and breathe fresh air. These pieces would be also awesome for an outdoor party. – Via – Espaciohogar – Via – Freshhome

Cheers

Nicky Patterson, Garden Designer @ GardenImprovements.com

Originally posted 2009-03-26 17:00:04. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Here is an article I wrote for the much celebrated Landscape Juice Network back in February 2009.  I think much of it still holds true currently for the many businesses, established and start-up alike in the landscape and garden design industries.

Landscaping through the recession : Landscape and garden expert.

Originally posted 2009-10-13 13:19:17. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Presented at Milan Furniture Fair 2009, Green Pockets is an innovative idea designed by Maruja Fuentes a designer from Puerto Rico. Green pockets are ceramic tiles which fuse nature with the interior space, improving both air quality and health. They attach to the wall to create the illusion as if they were actually growing from them. The tiles, made from recycled materials, serve as planters and their unique shape allows them to interlock, thereby creating different patterns depending on the vegetation planted. The pockets bring a soul-soothing dose of greenery and nature to an interior space, improving a room’s aesthetic and air quality. Great for flats and urban housing which may not have vast gardens, not to mention great for the enviroment.

Via – Freshome -Via- Thedesignblog

Always looking for great ideas!!

Best Regards

Matthew Thomson, Apprentice Garden Designer @ GardenImprovements.com

Originally posted 2009-06-22 17:00:44. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

A funky and modern twist on the traditional garden parasol design: these can be used when the garden design is such that a traditional umbrella structured parasol might compromise the overall theme of the space.

Coolaroo Shade Sails are bold, brightly colored in square and triangle shapes. It’s remarkable how one lone shade sail can lend an outdoor space a contemporary touch. String up a group of shade sails—like in the photo, below—and you can transform a space into something you’d expect to find at a modern art museum.

What you can’t see from the photos is how durable the Coolaroo material is. This isn’t like hanging out a sheet. The shade sails are made for life outdoors. The sail’s nylon edges will not tear or fray. The color of the material will remain bright even when permanently hung outside and exposed to moisture, intense sun – which is inevitable in Glasgow! – and temperature extremes. The D-rings on the corners of the Coolaroo will stay anchored to the included stainless steel poles. Coolaroo products come with a 10 year warranty. If your shade sail becomes damaged the company will replace it for free.

Best of all, the Coolaroo fabric blocks out 90% of the sun’s harmful UV rays while allowing breezes to pass through. So life under a Coolaroo is cool in more ways than one.  – VIA – SpotCoolStuff

Cheers

Nicky Patterson, garden designer @ GardenImprovements.com

Originally posted 2009-03-25 17:00:58. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Fair-weather play dates come and go, but notNeutral’s outdoor kids furniture will hold steadfast, rain or shine. A collaboration with Loll Designs, the BBO2 collection comprises 100 percent recycled post-consumer high-density polyethylene (HDPE), a plastic resin used to make products and packaging such as milk jugs, detergent bottles, and margarine tubs. Roughly eight recycled milk jugs go into every pound of the furniture’s weight.

The sleek, modern tables and chairs—which come in inviting colors like Leaf, Sky, Black, White, Apple, Chocolate, and Sand—can be recycled at the end of their useful life, down to the high-grade stainless-steel fasteners that hold everything together. But notNeutral has designed the BBO2 collection so that day won’t come any time soon. True-blue friends, after all, stick around for a while.

Originally posted 2009-06-16 12:00:33. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Studio G – Garden Design & Landscape Design inspiration » Brendan Moar’s Dry Spell Gardens.

Originally posted 2009-10-23 14:04:41. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

We are looking forward to installing our first wildflower lawn, and though we had planned to have one installed in our upcoming Glasgow west end design our clients have opted to do this themselves as part of their ongoing gardening activity!  Fair enough!

Our fellow Landscape Juice Network members, Shadows Garden Design have provided this excellent guide to installing your own wildflower meadow, check it out:

Bringing your garden out of the Shadows: How To: Make a wildflower meadow.

Originally posted 2009-10-27 11:42:04. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

by Matthew Thomson

When Nicky informed me that i would be sending off my own design and presentation I was a tad nervous about the outcome to say the least!  It didn’t help that the garden I would be designing for was a very strange shape and quite large.  When doing practise designs I found it alot easier to come up with ideas for smaller gardens, so this was the first stumbling block!  I tried to fit in everything that the client had wanted, but ended up with a mish-mash of a design with no real flow throughout the garden, so it was back to the drawing board!

I needed some inspiration, so took to the web to see if i could find it there.  I wanted to have my own style in the design so found it quite difficult to look at other designers’ designs and ideas without thinking that I was cheating, so it was to the reference books next! This proved a bit more successful as they not only have designs and techniques in them but tips and ideas on how to create gardens of all shapes and sizes which was exactly the kind of help i needed.  I came to realise that the design concept is the same, whether for a small town garden or in my case a large oddly shaped country garden, just different scales.  So once i had got my head round the size and shape it was onto the design itself, which proved just as difficult.

The clients themselves live in a modern farm conversion in the country with cracking city views of glasgow, so my problem was trying to fit in the rural rustic surroundings, the clients modern style whilst framing the city landscape in the distance.  Not much then!  Taking into consideration the clients needs for certain things in the garden; utility area, patio, water feature, i decided to try and mirror the view from the house in the garden.  I tried to achieve this using different heights in the centre of the garden with hedges and walls, and fibre optic lights embedded in the patio, to reflect the city view, and with different size lawn mounds either side of the central ‘city’ area to replicate the surrounding country hills and farmland.  Considering the materials was also important so it was back to the books to find the perfect gear.  I would say that this stage of the process was probably the easiest due to the fact that the house was very modern so to tie in that to the garden was just a case of trying to use nice clean modern materials, like black slate for the patio and crisp white gravel for the pathways.

So i was happy with my design, next stage- the dreaded presentation!  Now I’m not the most confident of people so this was terrifying for me to say the least!  It was a case of sucking it up and getting on with it really, no books to help me there, and in the end it wasn’t so bad!

It’s out the road now anyway, first one under the belt as they say.  I came across a few problems and it took me longer than i would have liked but its all part of the learning process i suppose.  I’m looking forward to the feedback but not as much as i’m looking forward to the next set of  problems….. I mean designs!

Best regards

Matthew Thomson, Apprentice Garden Designer @ GardenImprovements.com

Originally posted 2009-06-24 17:00:58. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Do you remember those retro beanbags from the 1960’s?  Well, Fatboy, a company started in 1998 by Jukka Setälä in Finland, designs beanbags for the 21st century.  Depending on your mood, Fatboy has 11 different styles and colours to satisfy your garden lounging needs.  There’s even stylish options for your furry friends.

Depending on what product you choose, Fatboy is made from either a Nylon or Polyester fabricand and has a PVC coating to make them water resistant, stain resistant and easy to clean, making them ideal for entertaining, especially with the bbq season well and truly underway!

Originally posted 2009-06-15 10:21:02. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

by Nicky Patterson

So in December, for the majority of garden design and landscaping firms the phones go dead and the emails come to a halt as people concentrate on the holiday season and their attentions are diverted to hosting family dinners and parties and visiting friends and relatives.  The cold enquiry front gets even cooler in the current economic climate when consumer confidence is at an ebb and the banks are defying to lend as to the government’s and consumer’s wishes.

However many will still utilise the mass of positive equity still retained in their property and apply it to improving and developing their current residence, to make lifestyle investments which will massively improve the quality of their useable property space.  Those more canny than others will know that January and February and March are the best times to have any major landscaping projects undertaken, ensuring that all the hard construction is cleared in time for the spring and for when the garden can be enjoyed to its fullest (why waste that precious relaxation time over spring and winter having your garden built?).

As we approach Christmas Day and New Years Day during our festive break from site-work I am working upon 3 different designs for prospective work which will begin pre-Spring.  The projects are all of moderate and conservative budgets, £5-£12K, but i am relishing the prospect of getting back to work and further enhancing our design portfolio.

I am enjoying this break, spending it with my wife’s family in Portsmouth – where the weather is eternally warmer than my native Glasgow, but i am also looking forward to welcoming any new commissions or contract proposals for what i see will be a fruitful 2009 despite the delicate nature of our current economy.

So a Merry Christmas to you all and i look forward to seeing you in 2009!

Nicky Patterson

GardenImprovements.com

PS. Don’t forget our fantastic Winter offer of 20% off drawings and labour for kitchen gardens!!

Originally posted 2008-12-24 10:18:03. Republished by Blog Post Promoter