Inspiring Garden Design: 12 Tropical Details to Borrow

Every trip, every new destination offers a welcome opportunity to look at design from another perspective…one of the many reasons to justify travel. Oftentimes, a reminder is enough to freshen…

Bahamian Moments

The Lyford Cay Design weekend was an elegant, inspiring and festive few days in an iconic setting. Part of the pleasure of the weekend were the many “pinch me” moments,…

Inspiring Garden Design: The Talented Mr. Brown

This annual “Inspiring Garden Design” series is going to have an international flavor in 2020, starting with the Cotswolds. There are many reasons that I traveled to England in December,…

Inspiring Garden Design: Revealed in Stages

Photo Credit: David Schilling Photography We’ve all experienced that wonderful sensation of having seen a picture that lingers in our consciousness — and sometimes even our subconscious. Such was the…

Inspiring Garden Design: 7 Key Points for Creating Winter Interest

One of my most anticipated seasonal occurrences in Newport (and another reason not to flee to Florida in the winter) is a hoarfrost, which deposits a dusting of soft ice…

2019’s Top 22 Photographs

After what seemed like the longest of lead-ins to the New Year (having holidays mid-week just throws me off completely), we’re finally here. The first month of the third decade…

London’s Singular Architecture

Given the comments and emails I’ve been receiving, even in the very middle of this holiday season, it’s clear that last week’s London post was a hit. Fortunately, I also…

A Taste of London at Christmas

Of course I know Newport at Christmas, and New York, for sure, but I’m not as familiar with London — so off I went, right after Thanksgiving had been celebrated,…

Christmas at Marble House

One of the reasons I chose to go to England in early December was to visit Blenheim Palace, home at the turn of the twentieth century to Consuelo Vanderbilt of…

Blenheim Palace: Dressed for the Holidays

It has been almost thirty years since I last visited Blenheim Palace, and it brought back a wonderful whirl of happy memories. Fourteen of us were ostensibly in Woodstock for…