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The simple word “hardscape” does not do justice to the refined work that our friends at the aptly named Sculpt Gardens do for their landscape clients. Check out the sensitive, inviting space in the Dogpatch neighborhood they’ve created.

ABOVE: A shimmering curtain of spring-green Phyllostachys bamboo envelops the ipe-wood bench accented with plum and pearl-gray pillows, the bluestone patio, and a stone table with a warming fire element. Bodacious gem-form seats (front left & right) bring the verve.

ABOVE: Get a peek into the design and construction process with before-and-after shots and design sketches.

ABOVE: Screened from the warehouse garage door by an artful fence, the hot tub tucks tightly into the surrounding bamboo.

ABOVE: Rough stone elements harmonize with the geometry of the seats and contribute mineral gravity to a perfectly calibrated urban space.

ABOVE: Come get cozy around the fire. Our designers also collaborate with Sculpt Gardens, especially when perfect hardscapes are called-for: Here’s a beautiful project that our designer Patrick Lannan worked on with Sculpt Gardens.

We weren’t surprised to read in this article on CNN.com that gardening is good for your health, but we were amazed to see how many different ways it helps us!

When you grow your own vegetables and fruits you’re getting the most nutrient-rich, freshest produce possible and increasing the proportion of vegetables in your diet – always a good thing! But we knew that. What we didn’t know was that as we work in the dirt exposure to a harmless soil organism called Mycobacterium vaccae could improve our levels of mood-boosting serotonin and reduce harmful inflammation.

Other mental benefits come in the form of effortless attention, the state of awareness we enter when we are experience nature. Effortless attention is an antidote to the fracturing of our attention spans due to digital disruption. We can enter this healing state even while working in a potted garden on a fire escape.

More physical benefits come in the form of strength and flexibility. Gardening is motivated exercise that involves moderate exertion and varied movements, and rewards with a sense of ongoing accomplishment. So get out into your garden this year!

ABOVE: Yes, even a gorgeous container garden on your deck can bring you health benefits as you care for it.

Our newest love is Keshiki Bonsai, a luscious book that teaches the techniques of making tiny gardens in containers. We have lots of copies here in the store for you to take home, as well as our own interpretations of its lessons – miniature mossy container gardens that we’ve created for you.

We discovered author and bonsai innovator Kenji Kobayashi’s gorgeous Tokyo shop, Sinajina, with the help of our friend Jared Braiterman at Tokyo Green Space. Kobayashi’s gracious space offers an elegant array of exquisite tiny gardens, plants, containers, and tools, and a workshop where he teaches classes on keshiki bonsai. You must visit if you go to Tokyo.

Having studied early in his career with a bonsai master in Oregon, Kobayashi-sensei was invited to teach and lecture in 2011 at the Portland Japanese Garden. Upon meeting him, our friends at Portland’s Timber Press found his modern take on keshiki-style bonsai demanded American publication: We are thrilled to be offering the resulting book in the store and to learn from Kobayashi’s expertise within.

ABOVE: At his Tokyo gallery, Kenji Kobayashi teaches classes to the public on keshiki bonsai technique, making an ancient, traditional garden art form accessible to a broader public. His stylish new book offers these lessons in English.

ABOVE: Flora took inspiration from Keshiki Bonsai to create these miniscule mossy succulent container gardens. Come pick up the book and get inspired to make your own!

There’s so much to celebrate in our friends Josh and Steve’s garden on Dolores Heights that we created a blog post for you to see more. The talented Josh Stenzel has set up GreenHaven Design, and we’re looking forward to seeing the development of his tremendous work. Soak up the beauty below.

There’s power in subtle color harmony. Josh (seen above right) has harnessed it in combining (at left) Aeonium ‘Sunburst’, variegated silene, Dichondra ‘Silver Falls’, and a silver native lupine.

ABOVE: Josh has taken full advantage of the crusty-marine glaze of these these “amphoral” pots to ground his very low-irrigation compositions.

ABOVE: Stenzel’s use of form, too, shows unusual sensitivity.

ABOVE: The graduated scales of rosettes and their tones of semi-precious stones here are spellbinding.

ABOVE: Beyond his container gardening, Josh works inventively with the macro scale of the garden. Here he’s used a stunning cloud-forest cyrtochilum orchid as seasonal focal point in an established Japanese maple. It makes the tree’s green bark glow, and engages the color of the fence while engaging in a duet with the exquisite form of the leaves.

Photographer Saxon Holt took a series of photos in the garden of the late Don Worth for the Garden Conservancy’s 2012 Open Days program. Worth, also a noted photographer, worked for decades to carve a garden of succulents, ferns, and palms out of a woodsy Mill Valley site. His surviving partner, Bob, dutifully maintains the mature garden, and frequently invites garden groups to visit Worth’s horticultural legacy.

ABOVE: The leaf of a Thai giant fishtail palm, Caryota obtusa, screens the view of other, more towering palms. Come see this species for sale in our nursery.

ABOVE: The approach to the house is lined with a mix of succulent bromeliads and drought-tolerant palm species, culminating in towering rainforest king palms (Archontophoenix cunninghamiana) at top left. We regularly stock in the nursery every palm pictured here, from queen palms and Mediterranean fan palms to Guadalupe and king palms – not to mention the puya and fascicularia bromeliads that we adore.

The fronds of an Australian fan palm (Livistona australis) glisten in the understory. At left, the green, ringed trunk of a king palm – also Australian – contributes a plumb line to the composition.

A luxuriant, fast-growing, cold-tolerant species, the Australian fan palm thrives in sun as well as shade but requires regular moisture for best performance.

As a young tree its crown grows upright, but as it matures it spreads out overhead, providing dappled canopy shadows. The spiraling pattern of leaf stubs on the trunk is fascinating and beautiful.

We’re so pleased to share photos by Caitlin Atkinson of a garden by our friends at Reynolds-Sebastiani. Long-time customers will remember Christopher Reynolds from our Guerrero Street Gardens days. He and Alysia Sebastiani have meticulously crafted this Castro District garden on a slope with established trees and southerly views. We love the dry-stack stonework and exotic plant palette, as well as the magical gathering spots.

ABOVE: One of many seating areas in this paradise for parties, the deck affords a view over Eureka Valley. The rustic wooden chairs are by Old and Board and the live-edge bench is by Kevin Smith at SmithBuilt.

Garden designer David Feix has incorporated feathery bamboo palms into this Berkeley garden. Bamboo palms resemble true bamboo (also visible in the photo above), but don’t produce the constant leaf litter or have the aggressive spreading habit of some bamboos.

Design and photo by David Feix

ABOVE: Chamaedorea costaricana (right) and Chamaedorea tepejilote (far left). Other useful bamboo palms include Chamaedorea plumosa, the baby queen palm, and the hardiest of the group, the radicalis palm, Chamaedorea radicalis.

Design and photo by David Feix

ABOVE: Brahea armata, the cold-hardy Mexican blue palm, comes from desert canyons in Baja California and is found as close as 10 miles from the California border in habitat. The Mexican blue palm is a stiff, sculptural variety that grows slowly and isn’t thirsty, making it perfect as a foliage element in a container or in the ground. It’s seen here in one of David’s designs with other drought-loving plants like dasylirions and kniphofias.

Design and photo by David Feix

Two hardy, easy-care fan palms, one silvery-blue and husky, the other green and slender, take on complementary roles in David’s design of this Berkeley garden.

The low, silvery palm is Brahea armata var. clara, the “clara” palm (also known as the Sonoran blue palm). The upright, thin species is Trachycarpus fortunei, the Chinese windmill palm.

Both species are hardy to cold and not very thirsty, but they play different roles in the landscape: the charismatic clara shimmers, moves and rustles in the wind, eventually developing a thick trunk and substantial crown of curvaceous fronds with seasonal plumes of tiny cream-colored flowers that rivet your attention. The windmill palm’s thin ringed stem and flat green leaves play a subtler roles of framing the scene and sheltering this courtyard space.

Tom Henthorne and Rob Wiley live among lichen-encrusted trees on a San Rafael hilltop overlooking San Francisco Bay, in a garden that Tom designed. The centerpiece in their picture of California living, the garden glows with dense plantings of exotics.

Photo by Jay Graham

ABOVE: A path descends from the house to the seating area. Tom had the furniture made in Bali to his design. At right, a monumental Brazilian bromeliad, Alcantarea imperialis, produces a towering flower stalk.  Tom’s garden bears the imprint of his and Rob’s travels to tropical destinations from Bali to West Africa.

Photos by Jay Graham

ABOVE: Brilliant bromeliad color at left evokes the saturated atmosphere of tropical Brazil. Thriving in cool Bay Area climates, nikau palms (right) impart a luscious tropical feeling.

Photo by Jay Graham

ABOVE: A balmy spirit pervades a gathering of simple wood furniture of Tom’s own design and sculptures gathered during his travels with Rob. Exotic, tight-knit, colorful perennials and arching palms furnish the garden with its tropical soul.

There are many reasons why I love this ‘DIY Succulent Table’  feature in this month’s Sunset Magazine. Firstly, the table was conceived and designed by Flora Grubb Gardens employee Matti Salomaki and his partner Megan Speckmann – there’s truly no end to the creativity of our talented staff! It’s also no secret that I adore succulents and using them in table arrangements – this adds a whole new dimension. Then, count all the ways that this concept is kind to the environment… it recycles, requires minimal watering, and creates a table bouquet that could last forever!

Matti and Megan are co-authors of the award-winning blog Far Out Flora.

I’m very pleased to have Billy Goodnick speaking at the store this month. We’ve been trying to share more of the work of our favorite designers in our newsletters and events. We love Billy’s work – take for example this photo that could so easily be a San Francisco shady garden. Billy will be presenting his ‘Design Like a Pro’ workshop here at the store on July 16th.

Design and photo by Billy Goodnick.

ABOVE: We’re especially excited to see a design that uses so many of the plants that we grow ourselves and others that we always have on hand in our shade house.  The plants you see include Asparagus ‘Myers’, Philodendron selloum, Aeonium canariense, Impatiens oliveri, and Farfugium japonicum ‘Aureo-maculata’. Maybe you didn’t realize that the section of our nursery under the canopy features plants that thrive in shade (and wind!). Billy’s design features plants that can cope not only with shade but also with occasional dryness – a perennial problem of many a Bay Area garden. No flowers were needed to achieve this beautiful and serene space. Despite the lushness of the scene – these are durable plants – the design doesn’t call for coddling or lots of precious water.

Santa Barbara-based Billy Goodnick is an award-winning landscape architect, columnist and blogger at Fine Gardening Magazine, college instructor, and co-host of Garden Wise Guys, a comedic sustainable landscaping TV show in Southern California. The often hilarious Goodnick is also know for his crusade to eliminate “Crimes Against Horticulture.”