Garden Design

We visit the original High Line—Paris's Promenade plantée—and report on how the first garden-built-on-an-abandoned-railway compares to New York's elevated garden. 

Has London one-upped Paris when it comes to vertical gardens on museum walls? The National Gallery in London unveiled a vertical garden that is a living reproduction of Van Gogh's "A Wheatfield, with Cypresses," using 8,000 living plants of more than 26 varieties.

Up in Cape Cod, the rhododendrons are in full bloom at the annual Heritage Museums & Gardens Rhododendrons Festival. Home to two noted hybridizers—Charles Owen Dexter and Jack Cowles—the garden is a great place to see the many new varieties in bloom. A new and dramatic water element—the Flume Fountain—and a new children's garden are also worth visiting for their unusual landcaping.

“We don’t call them ‘controlled burns,’” says Steve Glass at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum, “because you can’t really control a fire, only contain it.” Fire can be a boon for meadows and prairies, improving soil quality and growing conditions for native grasses and forbs. We take a look at Longwood Gardens and a prairie managed by the U.S. Army at Fort Lewis in Washington State and why they welcome fire on their lands.