Every home or business can use a little color. Adding pops of annual flower color in containers allows you to change it every season, try different things and have fun with color. It's our favorite way to add big statements to a project. Once the plants fill in over a few weeks, the planters become overflowing with color.

Every home or business can use a little color. Adding pops of annual flower color in containers allows you to change it every season, try different things and have fun with color. It's our favorite way to add big statements to a project. Once the plants fill in over a few weeks, the planters become overflowing with color.

Intimate city spaces, such as this NYC landscape design, can be the perfect place to create a mood, such as the romantic charm of this small courtyard patio garden in the middle of Manhattan. Read more about our projects on my blog, www.amberfreda.com.

Photo: Tiny Little Pads

This intimate, interconnected landscape gives these homeowners three spaces that make being outside a joy. Low stucco walls create a courtyard near the front door that has as unique sense of privacy, making it a great place to pause and view the pond below. Under the deck the stucco walls wrap around a patio, creating a perfect place for a cool refuge from hot summer days. A custom-made fountain is integrated into the wall, a bed of lush flowers is woven into the bluestone, and a view to the surrounding landscape is framed by the posts of the deck above. The rear patio is made of large bluestone pieces. Grassy seams between the stone soften the hard surface. Towering evergreens create privacy, drifts of colorful perennials surround the seat walls, and clumps of Aspen trees define the entrance to this enchanting outdoor room.

Stephani Buchman

This project is located off of Crescent Ave in Greenville, SC. From inception, this project was a complete renovation with a ‘no-limit’ approach to the design. The clients wanted to create family-friendly gardens to enjoy with their grand-children and also larger spaces for hosting charitable events. A new driveway leads into the property where various materials are married in interesting ways to create new terraces and pavilions, gates and arbors, fountains and fireplaces. Of course, the gardens wouldn’t be complete without the wide variety of elegant plantings and accessories. This truly is a garden full of wonderful detail.

Laurey W. Glenn (courtesy Southern Living)

Photo courtesy of Royal Oaks Design and can be found on houseplansandmore.com

©2011Francis Dzikowski/Esto

Mary Prince Photography © 2012 Houzz