your lawn is a rug
I love backyards that feel like rooms, so that makes the "rug" the lawn.
Every year, mine gets patchy. We don't have an irrigation system (that's the next move); we travel a lot in the summer, so every fall I usually regrow some grass in the patchy spots.
When you scatter seed straight onto bare dirt, even if you water it regularly, my experience is that maybe half of it actually takes.
But I learned a little trick over the years that I am proud to share. I'm not great at a lot of things, but I have gotten pretty good at regrowing grass.
The secret: I pre-germinate the grass seed.
I mix grass seed and clover seed (have given up trying to keep it all grass) into peat moss in a wheelbarrow. And then you add a ton of water. And I really do mean a ton.
Peat moss is crazy absorbent.
The reason your grass doesn't always take is usually that it's not in contact with something that's consistently moist. But peat moss holds water like nothing else - when mixed with water, it kind of cakes around the seed and provides the perfect environment for grass seed to thrive.
So I let this peat moss/grass + clover seed/water mixture sit in a wheelbarrow for a few days. It doesn't take very long - this is what it looked like on day 5. It's ready to go.
Next, I mix 1:1 topsoil and peat moss/seed mixture in a 5 gallon bucket.
I prep the patchy area I am about to seed with a metal garden rake, roughing up the soil, then I put down a few shovels of my peat moss/topsoil mixture and gently rake it into the soil.
It gets watered every day, and in about a week we have some very green results.
My "room" will look a whole lot better with a nice thick rug. Incoming.
And every good room thrives on some contrast.
I love our sauna - I truly do. I use it almost every day.
Visually, it orients the backyard and gives it a focal point. And the cedar shake adds so much wonderful texture. But we had some pretty neutral chairs that provided absolutely no pop against the browns and tans of the sauna wood and gravel. The backyard still felt kind of flat because of the mid-tone-heavy color scheme.
I realized that we needed some serious contrast in the backyard, a distinctive pop against the earth tones, and these black and white chairs from Business & Pleasure really did the job.
They're an exercise in contrast and didn't fail to deliver. Surprisingly comfy too; my wife is obsessed.
things i saw this week that i liked
The educational campaign we did with CB2 is live; check it out.
I love the way it turned out - very grateful to Ashlyn McCarty, Natalie Ritisch, Julie Capalby, and Katie Long for all the help in getting this across the finish line. Trinity Shay— not just for the styling, but for helping us all survive four intense shoot days.
And last but not least, Bryson Hatfield for immaculate cinematography. You'll see what I mean if you watch it.
Hope to do a lot more like this.
A custom banquette from designer Tiffany Howell aka Night Palm
Remi Bracquemond - a French ceramic artist who makes these incredible relief tiles + objects. I need to find the right project for something like this.
