Fall is a great time to start planting and making plans for your yard, and the American Society of Landscape Architects site is a great place to find inspiring images. I love to look through all of the awards, whether they are large ecological projects, small residential projects, or student work. Click here to find them. In the meantime, here is an image from a winning project from Rumsey Farber in Southampton:

Oh this picture that flickr member lakbdesigns/fergusandme submitted to our Fresh New Spaces Group makes me feel exhilarated – LOVE the yellow and turquoise together, the POM POMS and the fun mix of vintage furniture, the lanterns, the flowers, the stone patio – Love Love Love!

To learn more about lakbdesign, check out this website.

As I perused The Green Issue of Preservation Magazine the other night, one of my favorite features was about George Reis, the supervisor of sustainable landscaping at NYU. He created a garden on campus that features only species indigenous to New York City. You’d be hard-pressed to find a lot of these native plants in the city today, and Mr. Reis is using them as part of his grander plan to maximize the use of the small green spaces at NYU. To learn more, check out this video on YouTube:

Risking sounding like a broken record, I’ll remind you all that Preservation is a great magazine. When you join The National Trust for Historic Preservation, your $20 fee to join includes a subscription. To join or to make a donation, click here. They will put your donation to good use!

Also, if you want to benefit from all of Mr. Reis’s plant research, there is a list of the plants used and where to buy them here.

Oh my gosh, I laughed so hard today when I saw this post over on the fabulous Modern Kiddo. I don’t even have kids but I read that blog because Alex and Dottie are so clever and hilarious – it always gives me a dash of happy. Those darn safety standards and insurance companies have made so many modern playgrounds SO BORING. For any of you old enough to remember the days when there was no such thing as a bike/ski/skateboarding helmet, reading their post will bring back fond (?) memories of burning your bum on a sun-drenched metal slide.

Ah, The High Line. After years of following this project, from the fight to save it to the competition to the completion of part one, I FINALLY got to set foot on it! I’m so happy. This design is so genius, it might just be my favorite landscape architecture project of all time. In fact, at the moment, I can’t even remember what my old favorite was, isn’t that terrible?

What’s so great about The High Line? Where to begin? I loved looking down on it from the 16th floor of The Standard. I loved seeing it from the street and thinking “I have GOT to get up there pronto!” I loved experiencing the city from that level, at eye-level with billboards, elevated cars, seeing building facades from a different height. I loved that at first glance one might be fooled into thinking the plantings were wild, but then upon seeing them seeing that they were carefully curated and that unseen maintenance was occurring. I loved all the different options for seating – some amphitheater style, some bistro tables, some lovely benches, some in the middle of a small grove.

I loved the mix of materials and the overall railroad industrial aesthetic, and I especially loved the metal tracks that remained and reminded visitors what the history of this place was all about – better yet, I loved where the tracks veered off on little side exits into brick walls, which reminded me of the entire industrial system that used to exist – the rail cargo having a direct entrance into the factory buildings. When we all try to be greener, we should think of this true door-to-door delivery where a product could go from the source to the destination in one trip.

Another thing that’s so interesting is that at one point in urban planning, skywalks were installed everywhere. This move was later blamed for the demise of street life in these areas. Conversely, the elevated public space of The High Line has made the neighborhood even more desirable and drawn even more business down at the street level on up. I’m nuts for this project. If you are too, you should become a friend of The High Line.