Bring a Bit of the Garden Indoors for Fall
These 8 elements can extend the pleasures of your landscape year-round
Fall can be a tough time for gardeners. There are still plenty of things to do to keep busy in the yard, but there’s a looming sense that everything’s wrapping up and going dormant soon. The best prescription is to keep the garden feeling going indoors. Garden lovers, go ahead and cart a favorite whirligig inside or lay a floor that looks like an outdoor path. Here’s some inspiration to get you started.
2. Potting shed. If an outbuilding is simply too far from the house for you, devote a room in the house to gardening. You’ll have easy access to the dirt all year long.
Sunny arched windows, a blue ceiling, galvanized pipes that serve as hanging plant rods and a sturdy cedar potting bench pull the look together in this functional and beautiful room. An underused mudroom or an enclosed porch like this one is a good candidate for a potting room.
You can use the room not only to pot plants, but also to arrange cut flowers. I highly recommend adding an overstuffed chair so you can enjoy flipping through seed catalogs or pulling favorite garden photos into an ideabook from your garden’s HQ.
Ceiling paint: Candid Blue with Panda White whitewash, Sherwin-Williams
Sunny arched windows, a blue ceiling, galvanized pipes that serve as hanging plant rods and a sturdy cedar potting bench pull the look together in this functional and beautiful room. An underused mudroom or an enclosed porch like this one is a good candidate for a potting room.
You can use the room not only to pot plants, but also to arrange cut flowers. I highly recommend adding an overstuffed chair so you can enjoy flipping through seed catalogs or pulling favorite garden photos into an ideabook from your garden’s HQ.
Ceiling paint: Candid Blue with Panda White whitewash, Sherwin-Williams
3. Weather vanes. These charming follies are usually admired while looking up to a rooftop from the garden below, but weather vanes can spark just as much joy at eye level (if not exactly telling you which way the wind is blowing). These playful silhouettes can bring an eclectic farmhouse touch in kitchens, living rooms, on porches and in every other room in the house. The time they have spent outdoors leaves them with well-weathered patinas, which makes a collection like this one particularly interesting.
4. Urns. Typically seen in the garden or flanking front doors outside, these planters also can add classic garden shapes indoors. Try using one inside a nonworking fireplace, place a small pair of them on either side of the mantel, put one atop a side table or use them inside the front door.
5. Shutters. These architectural elements usually play an important role in the backdrop of a garden. Placing them on the wall creates the illusion that there is a window where there isn’t one. They can also be used to create a charming rustic headboard, as seen here.
6. Garden table. Creative homeowner Shona Carcary repurposed her garden table as a desk with a custom tempered glass top. The wrought iron adds whimsical curlicues and texture to her office.
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See more of this home
7. Leaves and berries. A botanical wallcovering can give a room a year-round garden feeling — particularly when paired with picnic-y red gingham as an accent fabric. This cheery kitchen is a cure for the I-miss-the-garden blues.
8. Tree stump. When I was growing up, we had two old tree stumps that served as side tables at the edge of our patio, next to the garden. Now stump shapes are seen in side tables, nightstands, even dining table bases.
Tell us: Garden lovers, what’s the favorite garden move you’ve made indoors? Please share it with us in the Comments.
More
Simple Pleasures: Grow a Cheery Indoor Garden
Winter Gardening: Ideas for a Dream Potting Room
More
Simple Pleasures: Grow a Cheery Indoor Garden
Winter Gardening: Ideas for a Dream Potting Room
Trim paint: Stone Blue in satin, Farrow & Ball
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