City Garden City Life 2012 (4) : Rustic English Mini Garden - with animals!!!

English gardens are well known for their rustic natural look, no trimmed or neat looking plants (3B) here. This yellow wall (3A) becomes the focal point. To add a more wild look, add some animals (3E) on ground, columns and walls, and put them in poses to make them look more realistic.

As a base for the seating area, the designer used red bricks, with cushions in rustic brown pattern just thrown on top of it. Add also a plain natural colored coffee table and voila! A seating place was done. Just don’t forget to add the roof on top since this seating arrangement definitely won’t last in open air.

One very good tip from this garden is that using realistic and monotone color animals can enhance the theme and doesn’t make your garden look like a zoo…just look at the cute squirrel that looks realistic can blend in with the gold colored metal cranes. If the cranes also look realistic it will look too crowded and overdone in the mini garden, but done this way, it looks good.

A closer look on the gold colored metal animal statue, this metal chicken (3D) with mirror accents looks quite elegant I must say, since I never consider chicken as an option for garden statues, before I saw this one.

Also cute idea to put the rabbits (3E) in between the shrubs. Pick shrub types that won’t grow quickly, otherwise you will have to trim them often or else the rabbits will ‘dissapear’ J

Well, this styrofoam birds (3F) might not be applicable in real outdoor, but who knows? When you put the real trees in, the real birds might come and visit your garden……..

Hopefully we haven’t made you exhausted or confused with our many ideas, since we still have one more mini garden idea to share, this time it will be the white minimalist theme, so check on us soon!!!!

City Life City Garden 2012 (3) : Mini Vintage Garden Looks

Vintage vintage vintage!!! Yep, this is no vintage look by photoshop, this garden did use some vintage items, such as plastic crates (2A) and wood crates (2B) as plant containers, no paint used, just put them as it is, and put the potted plants inside.

Still hang your plants the normal way? Try to hang them (2C) perpendicular to the wall, of course not every plants can suit this style, but these bromeliads sure look good. Their varied size and color make the walls less monotonous. Also notice how the lamps put inside the bird cages, cute!!!

And this is my favorite!!!! This rocking horse (2E) is so cute, usually rocking horse is painted with vivid colors but this one had soft tones, so no childish feel in this garden. Absolutely loved this one!!! Also the toy truck (2D) used as plant container, if your kids had one of these kinds and don’t use them anymore, you might want to use them like this before you throw them away, reuse and save the environment!!!!

Hope this vintage theme mini garden can be an inspiration to you guys, but don’t haste in making your decision, since there are still 2 more gardens inspiration for you!!! In our next post, we’ll present you the rustic English garden theme. See you soon!!

City Life City Garden 2012 (2) : Shabby chic garden theme

As I mentioned in previous post, in this exhibition there’re also some garden exhibition by the local university students. Unfortunately I don’t know from which university they're, but my roommate said they might be from the landscape major…since this is just an installation, some of them might not be applicable in real outdoor garden, however, most of them are simple brilliant ideas that can be your garden inspiration!!! Of course we cannot post all of those exhibitions, only few that we think are simple and unique can be seen in this post and the series ahead…….

Ahem… the first garden installation was titled ‘Vivid of vintage’ by the creators, however … I don’t see any vintage look in this garden, since everything looks new… personally, I think this garden theme tends toward the shabby chic theme… you can see the patchwork pillows (1A) are the accent… with the surrounding consists of arranged boxes in natural and white color…

My favorite item in this garden is this hanging board (1B). It’s just simple board with cabinet knobs as the hangers, but the drawings and the additional items to be hanged made them more cute…. also notice how some of the boxes filled with gravels… looks very neat and completely different with the usual arrangements of just pour the gravel between the tiles.. for small gardens, this technique can be applied.

As the lighting fixtures, I think it’s brilliant to use rattan garden rake painted white ( 1C) and attached them to the wooden sticks. The ribbons might not be applicable outdoor but rattan can withstand the weather so you might want to try this at home.

Aside from being the plants container, some of the boxes can also be used as display for dried coconut shells, 'bintaro' seed, pinecones and branches, don’t forget to attach some chicken wire to prevent the falling. A good idea for those who don’t want the hassle of watering the plants everyday…

Overall, this mini garden can be an inspiration for your small gardens…both minimalist and modern style houses can enjoy this theme since it is simple and can fit into many designs…but…before you decide, you might want to look at our next post first, which will encompass the vintage theme, so keep on checking our blog!!!

City Life City Garden 2012 (1): The Garden inside…

Hi again everyone…It’s Little Flo here, long time no see u guys since I’m just arrived from my 5 months stay in Bangkok, Thailand… hee… hee…

It’s been a very fun experience there and since Thailand is well known for their agriculture products such as fruits and of course flowers and plants, I’m very lucky to had a chance to see some of them. Not just for me, but also for you since I’ll be sharing some of the flowers and gardens with all of you starting today!!!!!

Okay… this is the first flower exhibition I attended, it is held in a mall called Central Plaza Rama III, there are lots of central plaza in Bangkok, this one is on the Rama III road. I just want a little bit of sightseeing when suddenly whoa!! There’s this flower installation in front of the mall, hum… turns out there’s this exhibition called City Life City Garden going on inside… there’s a mini park inside the mall with some exotic plants, lots of garden installation by the local university students and don’t forget the business : flower and garden market in the basement, so let’s take a look, shall we?

So, this small garden actually located at one of the walkway bridge inside the mall. The grass is obviously just a green carpet, but the hanging and potted plants are real…not a bad idea to put some refreshment inside the mall…

Forget the boring gnome for your garden statues…. this gorilla figurine is far more exciting! And not to mention very tropical… you can see in the background the flower and garden market below… enticing the crowd to come downstairs… 

And now for the plants… some of them are just the usual suspects at the garden, but looking closely, some of them are obviously not in your ordinary garden. Just checked some of these rare ‘kantong semar’ varieties… never seen them before!!!

Want to check the rest of the expo, I went downstairs where a stage for some performance had been installed…. check out the giant butterfly… made us feel like dwarfs in a giant’s garden.

Looking closely at the details, the stage comprised of a large frame filled with a vertical garden, and a mini garden inside…. different way in Indonesia where they just put the plants side by side, here in Bangkok they arranged different types of plants with different heights to make the garden look more real, love them!!!

On my next stop, I checked out some cool and unique garden installation by the local university students, these can be your garden inspiration people! Be patient for our next post in this series : shabby chic garden theme !!