Inspiration Board - Brown Wicker

With color choices like cocoa, mocha, espresso and coffee outdoor wicker in brown sounds tasty enough to eat.  From traditional to contemporary to out of the ordinary there are plenty of design styles to choose from.  All this week, the many design styles of brown wicker.

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Trends - We Dream of Artificial Succulents

Eckersley Garden Architecture

Succulents basically take care of themselves so it isn't as if you really need to have them in artificial form but for those of us who live in areas that suffer winter kill in our gardens wintering over succulents can be tricky.

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Dream - Outdoor Living Pas de Deux, 3

Rick Eckersley Garden Architecture

Dream - Outdoor Spaces for Sun Worship, 3

Rick Eckersley Garden Architecture

Designer Profile - Eckersley Garden Architecture

Eckersley Garden Architecture

Rick Eckersley of Australian based Eckersley Garden Architecture is one of my favorite landscape architects.  Rick isn't a pool designer but quite a few of his designs incorporate a pool and he is a master of blending an existing landscape with a pool surround. This is likely true because of Rick's design principle about pools and landscape design: "Swimming pools are a pivotal and expensive part of any landscape but surprisingly few are designed in a way that best suits the site or offers the client greatest amenity. Often pools are designed and sited by pool builders with the landscape seen as ancillary. A swimming pool should be considered objectively as one component of a garden design and should blend aesthetically into the style of the garden and the surrounding architecture."

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Design 101 - Big Backyard Ideas

Tom Stuart-Smith

Looking for creative ways to transform a barren backyard into a low maintenance multifunctional space? Landscape architect Steve Verner shared with us some of his tricks of the trade for doing just that.

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Inspiration Board - Living Outdoors in Harmony with Your Landscape

When we talk about outdoor living we should bear in mind that we are actually guests of our outdoor environment or landscape.  We can either be the obnoxious guest who takes over and dominates our host's space or we can be the guest that falls into step with our host and will ultimately be asked back time and again.  This week we are going to be talking about falling into step with the outdoor environment and landscape when designing our outdoor spaces.  Here are some inspiring looks that have integrated almost seamlessly with the outdoors.

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Design 101 - Designing for Outdoor Privacy with Eric King

Rick EckersleyWhen it came time to finding answers to the “How to” questions of creating privacy for your outdoor living space we turned to landscape architect Eric King who has been designing award-winning gardens for homes in Atlanta for decades.

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Inspiration Board - Color

[kuhl-er]
–noun
The quality of an object or substance with respect to light reflected by the object, usually determined visually by measurement of hue, saturation, and brightness of the reflected light; saturation or chroma; hue.

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Exceptional Spaces - Transition

Exceptional Spaces is the feature where we bring to you the unusually excellent and superior examples of luxury outdoor living that we discover in our business.

This month our topic of discussion is transition.  As the season shifts from summer to fall our interaction with our outdoor spaces transitions too.  From color, lighting and warmth to entertaining and decor our focus shifts to respond to different needs and desires.

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