Gardens

When Laura Gaby wants to take a mental health day (or hour), she need only step into her wooded backyard. There, her glass garden house serves as a year-round retreat for reading, napping, and enjoying nature.

Atlantans once looked forward to the extravagant Southeastern Flower Show each February. Now the Atlanta Botanical Garden hopes to start a new winter tradition with its flower show, this year themed to Georgia's film industry.

For Anne Knutson, the highest praise arrived in a snarky blog post loaded with backhanded compliments. Her next-door neighbor, designer Sherry Hart, took mock aim at Knutson in her popular blog, Design Indulgence, after Knutson invited her to stop by and see the results of the prolonged landscaping activity Hart had been hearing through the bushes.

No sun? No rain? No dirt? No problem. Sprouts can do without.

When Chamblee's Ashe-Simpson Gardening Center closes this summer, it's just another sign of the uphill battle facing indie garden centers.

If your Ring camera caught somebody loading your brown paper bags of yard leaves off the sidewalk and into a hatchback, it might have been me, and I’m not sorry.

Any Atlanta garden enthusiast worth their weight in soil knows about Ryan Gainey. Gainey died in a house fire on his farm in Lexington in 2016, not long after filmmakers Steve Bransford and Cooper Sanchez completed shooting a documentary about his life. The film, The Well-Placed Weed: The Bountiful Life of Ryan Gainey, premieres May 17 at the Plaza Theatre.

Greg Kawalek launched the local Fred! Lawn Design Company last year to digitize landscape planning. Kawalek believes Fred! is the first of its kind in the industry. Fred! handles projects from planting beds to hardscaping, firepits, fencing, and water features. A completely custom plan costs $99.

Days after COVID-19 began canceling Atlanta, I dealt with my own anxiety by spending a full Saturday digging in the dirt: planting shrubs, weeding, top-dressing the soil, potting herbs.

To me, lawns are a chore without payoff. I can’t eat grass. Grass is not fixing any carbon to speak of, nor does it attract birds or butterflies, which don’t eat grass either. If you, too, are tired of going in circles, consider replacing some lawn.