by Fünchkins
Famous Irish garden designer Diarmuid Gavin created a magical garden at last years RHS Chelsea Garden Show, the Westland Magical Garden. The garden features something for everyone, with a 5 storey slide, waterfalls, herbs and flowers on each level as well as a gentleman’s club on the 2nd floor.
The Herb Wheel from B.P. Storn is a tool that was handed down from his grandmother detailing the best herbs to accompany a wide range of meals. The wheel covers not only meats and poultry, but vegetables, sauces, cheeses, salads, fish and soups.
For the eco-concious book enthusiast, comes the Greenbook from Italian design company, Nautinox Living. The integrated planter, trellis and bookcase allows you to bring the outside into your apartment, improving atmosphere and air quality.
* The Greenbook library is part of the company’s Greenline collection and is available from the Nautinox Living website
In Europe, chestnuts are just coming in to season. Delicious chestnuts just in time to be roasted over an open fire. But Bund, a German group that advocates for trees sees chestnuts as musical instruments.
A wonderful idea for your garden would be to grow a living willow structure, one that will grow and that you can watch form the shape you want.
Living Willow Structures of the Hamptons shows you step by step exactly what it takes to get your own living willow structure right in your own garden.
* Living Willow Structures can create outdoor rooms, corridors and even play houses with living walls
On our journey into winter and the less flashy time in our gardens life span, it’s time for maintenance and cleaning, making sure your garden will look its best when Spring and Summer roll around next year.
Jason Fitzpatrick from Lifehacker shows us how to use wine bottles to make sure your borders are kept nice and neat. By using wine bottles you keep them out of the rubbish dump and lessens your impact on an already strained environment.
*So stock up on wine bottles and follow the instructions on Lifehacker, image via Grow Where You’re Planted
I love buildings that can transform without much effort on my part, like the Retractable Roof Pergola from Plow & Hearth. The pergola consists of a frame and a polyurethane-coated polyester shade roof on runners that can open up to let the sun shine in or enclose when the sun is too strong or a shower threatens.
When you are living in the forest and only the best luxury axe in the world will do, you need the Carbon fibre axe from ECAL graduate Kacper Hamilton. The Carbon fibre axe has inter-changeable heads, one that can be used to fell trees and the other to chop wood, both made from high-carbon steel fibre. [Read more...]
With this hack its almost worth going out searching for an old trampoline. I found it on Emily Summer‘s Design and Nonsense and it is an old trampoline that has been converted into a teepee.
It looks so comfortable and perfect for lazing outside after a day at the pool.
*Design & Nonsense has more information on the trampoline teepee
We have been told that bees are slowly dying off as a result of our impact on the world. We have also been told that bees are so important that life as we know it would end permanently if they disappeared completely.
Help the plight of bees by keeping a hive in your garden. The Mason Hive from is made from bamboo and the style will attract the Mason Bees, non-stinging, beneficial insects.
*The Mason bee house can be purchased from Gardeners Supply Company for just $16.95 each
