Nature By Design: The Atlanta Botanical Garden

In Atlanta, I've been living close to Piedmont Park, home to the Atlanta Botanical Garden. So on another day off, I took a solo stroll after breakfast and went for a 3-hour adventure through the lush and verdant grounds of this plant mecca.

The outdoor gardens have these giant plant sculptures, which are...well, weird.

Plant of the Apes?

Giant plant dog

Ummmm...okay. Moving on. I was pretty hungry by the time I got to the edible gardens. Here's a vertical herb garden, which was watered by an intricate vertical irrigation system that would drip through all the plants from top to bottom to reduce water waste.

Wait, you mean tea doesn't come from Starbucks?

But by far, my favorite was the Fuqua Orchid Center. It was basically a magical wonderland of weird and gorgeous orchids way beyond your regular ol' Trader Joe's phalaenopsis orchids.

Look at these cupcakes: 

Next to the orchid display greenhouse was the high elevation house, which showcased the diversity of plants in the Cloud Forest of the Andes Mountains in South America. Did I just make that up? No, but I wish I did. 

Check out these rare pitcher plants, which are carnivorous and eat insects and flies. I need ones of these guys in our house. Although I wonder if they have a taste for curious felines...

They also housed cool stuff like this curare plant, which is used for anesthesia and muscle relaxants during surgeries as well as a paralyzing dart poison by some indigenous tribes in the Amazon.

yowch!

But let's get back to design, shall we? Check out these graphic prints that occur organically in nature, and the pops of color. On leaves, petals, flowers... Design inspiration is everywhere!

Love the graphic pop of white stem against the rich dark green....

These above two leaf patterns remind me of the Marimekko print and the general plant-motif we have hanging in our dining nook.

This plant reminds me a little of animal print...

...which, if used in the right way, is a great way to liven up a room and give it a little flair...

Image from scottsdaledesigner.com   

Design & image from Charles Spada

This orchid is pretty, but it was the white against dark green polka dot leaves that caught my eye...

She wore an itsy bity teeny weeny petal polka dot leafy...

 ...a motif that would make for some cool walls on a nursery or kids' room.

via Vinylwallart.com

And look at the balls of this flower, pairing pink/purple with green!

Check out the similar contrast pairing in Chrissis & Company Interiors' usage of pink against the 2013 color of the year, emerald green.

Yup. Mother Nature is a design trailblazer.

These little guys, who provided the soundtrack to the rain forest greenhouse, agree.

To top it all off, I ended my trip with a stroll through the skies in the Storza Woods tree canopy, 40 feet above the ground.

...and ended by communing with a 25-foot-tall Earth Goddess.

Got back to my hotel room just in time to witness a thunderstorm...from indoors.

Thank you, Mother Nature!

Garden of Delights (Part II)

We're having friends over this Saturday for a housewarming/informal engagement/birthday party for Alex of sorts, so I decided to get moving on the garden so that people can sip their cocktails under the afternoon sun amidst ivy-covered walls, followed by a brisk game of doubles tennis on our clay courts and then a dip in our pool and a teatime snack of some cucumber sandwiches...

Fine. So Great Gatsby this is not, but I can at least make the garden as gardeny as possible, no? My dream of Francis Hodgson Burnett's gorgeous secret garden, covered with hanging wisteria and pomegranates and birds, will have to wait, but in the meantime, we got good ol' Target.

It's amazing what you can do with just a few bucks at this wonder store.  I swung by their garden section yesterday and picked up some new cushions ($9.99 each) for the wicker chairs that we inherited from our previous tenant. I don't love these chairs--they're very middle-aged-cat-lady--but until I have money to buy new outdoor furniture, I figured I could, in the meantime, spice up the space with a few modern red touches. Here are a few pics of the garden from before.

This is my garden's "hobo alley." Hoping we can eventually put a BBQ grill or some fruit trees here, if we get enough sun. I'll also have to toss out our resident hobo.*

*There is no resident hobo. But if there were, I'd gladly share our baked beans with him.

The road to perdition. Or amazing barbeque chicken legs.

Welcome to Drearytown.

The cushions on these chairs were all gross and soaked with seasons for rain and encrusted with old berries and leaves. Here are the new cushions:

I then took a trip to my favorite place Anawalt and made friends with a friendly gardener named Carlos, who advised me about what types of flowers to plant for our part sun/part shade space. Our conversation in "Spanish" was a comedy of errors.

I settled on begonias...

...as well as an Easter Mix, some poppies, and a few other cute shade plants. I repotted them and put them in the one corner of the garden that gets decent sun in the afternoon.

Getting my hands in that soil made me feel like a proper Martha Stewart. One with the earth. A descendent of Goddess--ok, nevermind. It just felt dirty and fun, kind of like making mud pies. It's cool to see the roots of plants and get all up in their business.

oooh, i'mma pot the shit outta you.

I decided to plant some of the extra stuff in the ground. The soil is pretty dense and clay-ish, so I added some potting mix.

little secrets.

The thyme from the kitchen windowsill got his own home...

...as did the rosemary. Hope this one lives. 

Get ready, potatoes!

I found myself being watched as I was busily gardening...

If you see something, say something.

And decided to let the fauna meet the flora...

Miniature lions in their natural jungle habitat.

Also added a little lantern. I'd love to hang a string of market lights, but I can't seem to find a working outlet. In the meantime, I'm looking at solar-powered lights. Anyone have any experience with them?

And coming eventually: A bird bath, a humming bird feeding house, a fire pit, and some hanging glass balls or some shit. 

I can't take credit for this awesome flowering cactus thingy. But it's my favorite part about this garden, especially the luscious view it gives us from the bedroom.

I'm determined to transform this into my morning yoga haven. Ohmmmmmm~

Oh, if my New York friends could see me now...