Paradise Found......

Every year at this time I look out to our unruly, very urban, but spacious backyard, and fantasize about how wonderful it would be to have a seriously soulful garden. As it stands, the garden needs work (lots of) and when we do get around to fixing it up it will have to be appropriate to our modest postwar bungalow style.

My fantasy garden however, would be oh so slightly disheveled, but filled with oodles of charm. It would be sophisticated and elegant. It would have a past, told through the elements that occupy it. In fact, it wouldn't be a garden in the proper sense at all, but rather a refuge from big city life.

I do love formal gardens, particularly the Italian and French styles, and I also adore English cottage gardens. However, I would relish a space that revealed its' own story... slowly... seductively... quietly.

Rebecca Cole, an urban gardener and florist living in New York City, published a book about nine years ago that captured that image perfectly for me.

Paradise Found...Gardening in Unlikely Places is a book about creating your own little Eden in the midst of urban chaos.

I wanted to share some of those images with you.....

I'm loving the vintage 1940's garden chairs, Parisian style table and the potted plants.

Check out the old fashioned swing found in Paris. And isn't the chandelier exquisite ?

How romantic... dappled sunlight seeping through a back lane somewhere in the West Village NYC

Care to join me for a glass of chablis ?

Happy gardening .........