Your Home Outdoors – FoodWatcher

6 Ways to Add a Touch of Wildness to Your Garden

Even if you’re not an avid gardener, you may have noticed a shift in garden design in recent years. Gone are the perfectly manicured designs of the past—now, wilder, more naturalistic gardens like the High Line in New York City or the Lurie Garden in Chicago are en vogue, and if you love the look of these wild gardens, you should definitely check out WILD: The Naturalistic Garden, a new book by Noel Kingsbury.

The new title gives home gardeners a comprehensive overview of this relatively new approach to planting, featuring more than 40 stunning gardens. (It’s honestly worth buying for the photographs alone!) A lot of the featured gardens are from England—Kingsbury’s home country—and northern Europe, but there are also designs from around the world, including a drought-resistant Australian garden and a northern California coastal garden. The gardeners featured in his book have created landscapes that not only look more natural, but are more biodiverse and filled with native plants that benefit wildlife and environment, too.

13 Best Airbnb Tree Houses for a One-of-a-Kind Vacation

If you’ve ever had the urge to hide out in the woods for a weekend to get away from it all, you’ve come to the right place. Airbnb is a go-to when you’re looking for a place to stay on vacation and a business trip, but it’s also home to an impressive collection of more eclectic rentals that let you live out your childhood dreams. Of course, we’re talking about tree houses, and you might be surprised at just how many the site has to offer!

Whether you’re hoping to hang out in an off-the-grid rental for a few days or pamper yourself at a luxury home in the sky, Airbnb has a tree house you’re sure to love. Here are 13 of our favorite picks to bookmark—for the next time you’re in the mood for a whimsical, magical, one-of-a-kind vacation.

7 Pro Tips to Create Magical Outdoor Lighting

If you’ve been spending these lovely early fall evenings outdoors, you already know that there are a few essentials for making night hangs a success: a cozy blanket, perhaps a small fire, and definitely some good lighting. The blanket speaks for itself…

Great outdoor lighting has to be many things at once: it should illuminate the space, but not be so bright that you feel like you’re in a fluorescent-lit parking lot; it should add ambience, but not be so precious or fussy that you, as the host, are distracted by its maintenance; it should work with the space you have, so that you’re not required to rewire your backyard in order to spend an evening on the porch. Above all, it should make your space feel really special, so that every time you step outside you feel a twinge of delight, whether you’re entertaining or enjoying one final drink before bed.

An Outdoor Shower Is More Doable (& Enjoyable) Than You Think

The dog days of summer are quickly approaching; bringing with them the hot, sticky heat and humidity that makes us want to strip down and dive head first into every sprinkler or body of water we see. Don’t get us wrong, we love summer (and we love a good heat wave to really put an exclamation point on the season), but sometimes we find ourselves praying for a good downpour to break the soaring temperatures. A much more reliable (and practical) solution to this need for an immediate soaking? An outdoor shower.

We know what you’re thinking—easier said than done. But think again. Outdoor showers can be as simple (read: inexpensive and refreshingly cold) or as lavish and elaborate as you and your budget want them to be. There are a few different options that make all the difference, says Asher Lipman, founder of NYC Renovation Coach. Your outdoor shower can be free-standing, with hot water and an enclosed structure around it, attached to the side of your home, or connected to the same plumbing as your garden hose for quick and cool bits of relief from the heat.

10 Chicken Coop Ideas for Your Feathered Friends

For the past few years, I’ve been telling anyone who would listen that, when I bought a house, the first thing I’d do would be to get chickens. True to my word, I closed on my house in February of this year, and come March, I was the proud owner of 12 …

For the past few years, I've been telling anyone who would listen that, when I bought a house, the first thing I'd do would be to get chickens. True to my word, I closed on my house in February of this year, and come March, I was the proud owner of 12 adorable baby chicks. However, buying chickens is the easy part—building them a coop proved to be much more of a challenge, taking way more time (and money) than I ever anticipated.

On one hand, building a home for your chickens really isn’t that hard—they don’t need a ton of space, and there are lots of DIY tutorials on how you can build one from scratch or upcycle a shed and other existing structure into a coop. That said, there are a lot of little things to think about as you go, including where your coop will be placed, how big it needs to be, how you’ll keep predators out, and so on. I learned a lot of this on the fly, so I’m passing on my top tips in hope that you’ll be a little more informed as you jump into chicken ownership.

The Best Time to Water Your Plants—& Why It’s Crucial

A perfect amount of rainfall is every gardener’s dream, but the reality is that almost every summer, there are stretches of hot, dry days when we need to water to keep our plants alive. The question of when it’s the best time to water your garden goes hand in hand with the question of how to water. To help you get the most out of that precious H2O, here are some watering basics:

Why Water Is Necessary

You’ll recall from biology class that water is necessary for plants to perform photosynthesis—the process of transforming water into sugar and oxygen when the leaves are exposed to light. But water does more than that, it also transports nutrients inside the plant, so even in the richest of garden soils, plants will be undernourished if the water supply is insufficient.

Why the Next Big Gardening Trend Is Taking a Cue from Local Biodiversity

Planting a tree and seeing it grow and thrive is one of the most long-lasting and fulfilling gardening experiences. I feel that way about the gingko in our front yard, but when it comes to wildlife value, a gingko is almost like having a plastic tree in your yard—it has zero value to the little critters that make nature work. A gingko attracts no caterpillars at all (which are essential for birds to raise their young), but a native oak, on the other hand, supports more than 550 species of caterpillars. According to Doug Tallamy, a professor of entomology and wildlife ecology at the University of Delaware and a leading voice in the movement to plant more natives, a single pair of chickadees needs 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars to feed one clutch of young.

Unfortunately, most of the plants sold by nurseries today are not wildlife-friendly natives but introduced from Asia and Europe, often decades and centuries ago. The good news is, that over the past two decades the movement for planting natives has been gaining traction. More nurseries are offering native plants and some nurseries specialize only in natives. Home gardeners and landscape architects have become more aware that say, the Bradford pear, a very popular ornamental pear tree, might not be the best choice.

The Essential Gardening Step You’re Probably Skipping

When I started my first vegetable garden, I drew everything out on graph paper, much to the amusement of my husband. As it turns out, I had the right idea. A few years later, when I became a Master Gardener, I learned that record-keeping is an indispensable first step. Because, while we think we remember, the reality is that we forget things (did I fertilize that tomato plant two weeks ago?) in the course of a gardening season, let alone from one gardening year to the next.

How you keep track of what you grow—with a garden app, notebook, monthly planner, index cards, or on spreadsheets—doesn’t matter, as long as it works for you and you record things while they’re still fresh in your memory. As with anything else, record-keeping takes the guesswork out of gardening so you can focus your efforts on making your plants thrive.

How to Cope With the Garden Gnome Shortage

Ketchup packets. Tapioca pearls. Garden gnomes. What do all three of these have in common? They are just the latest products experiencing shortages due to pandemic-related supply chain disruptions. You probably heard about the container vessel that got stuck in the Suez Canal last month, right? While we were all laughing at memes and wondering how, in the year 2021, a big boat could get stuck and there was absolutely nothing modern technology could do about it, the global supply chain was getting absolutely wrecked. And the ramifications of the Suez Canal blockage have landed where we least expected them: our gardens.

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Love them or hate them, garden gnomes are a staple of quirky (creepy?) yards everywhere, as ubiquitous as the hot pink plastic flamingo. Since the coronavirus pandemic started, gardening centers have experienced record sales, and recent reports show they’re not slowing down anytime soon. Between the Suez Canal blockage and unprecedented demands, garden centers in the U.K. have a severe shortage of, yes, garden gnomes. My theory? Cottagecore, the growing aesthetic trend in design and on social media, is to blame. Cottagecore gestures at English countryside houses and charming gardens, and what’s more quaint than a collection of stately garden gnomes?

8 Outdoor Essentials to Make Your Backyard Feel Like a Living Room

Now, we spend a lot of time deliberating how to best reflect ourselves in our homes, but what about our outdoor spaces? While you could certainly create a functional outdoor setup with some cobbled-together items, we prefer looking at it through the lens of designing a living room. And just like a living room, any truly cohesive outdoor “room” should contain a specific group of items that make it feel cozy and lived-in. Would you design a living room without a couch? Or lighting? Or a rug? We think not, so we sought out some help determining the core pieces needed for a backyard oasis.

Justina Blakeney, founder of the brand and blog Jungalow is more boho than modern, more maximal than minimal, and more abundant than restrained, so it's no surprise that she’s crafted some amazing outdoor living spaces that are full of life. “I believe that good design increases quality of life,” she’s written. “I believe in vintage, organic and handmade. I believe in the healing power of plants, good light and fresh air.” Well, so do we.