"Finishing Touches" By: Elizabeth Kellar

Article Featured in Gulfshore Life February 2009 issue

"Choose garden furnishings that complement your home and personal style to create a cozy outdoor retreat. Sometimes, it may seem that all Southwest Floridians possess a green thumb. Our lush landscaping practically grows itself, thanks to tropical temperatures, year-round sunshine and drenching rains. All we have to do is step outside with a cool beverage or book in hand, prepared to select a gorgeous garden spot to sit and linger.

Ah, but there’s the question: What about those spots to sit and linger? Furnishing a garden to complement your home can be a thorny task, as it presents not only design considerations but also special issues of versatility and durability.

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Yet it’s also an opportunity to allow your individuality to bloom and sow the seeds for a
space that’s memorable, mystical and relaxing. Worried that it’s a jungle out there? Here’s what landscape and design professionals say you’ll need to know to come up smelling like roses.

Consider Continuity Gracious garden décor has become an increasingly important extension of any well-appointed home, explains Rufino Hernandez, co-owner of the Garden District in Naples. The first step in creating it, he says, is to take steps to avoid the sharp disconnect that occurs between indoor and outdoor environments if a garden isn’t given its due design time.

"One of the ways we do that is by selecting furniture that’s made for the outside but that
coordinates with the inside," Hernandez says.

The challenge is not to reproduce your home’s interior, but to reflect it, finding garden furnishings that are stylistically in synch and sensitive to a home’s color palette. For example, if a home has a contemporary design ethic, the garden may be complemented by tightly structured furnishings; if red plays a prominent part in the interior, vibrant variations of that hue may be used on outdoor accessories such as throw pillows and garden pots."...

Hats in the Garden gives colorful boost to Naples Botanical Garden’s expansion

By Suzy Dorr from NaplesNews.com

The annual Hats in the Garden fund raiser drew more than 400 attendees to what seemed a milliner’s dreamscape at the botanical gardens Wednesday. Supporters of the Naples Botanical Garden, entering on a green carpet, enjoyed wine while mingling in the Tropical Mosaic Garden and exclaiming over a dizzying variety of headwear.

Hand-fashioned, purchased at art shows, a few designer-created and some specially ordered from favored hatmakers: each chapeau had an entertaining story as well as an attitude.

Shelia Davis had commissioned New Yorker Leah C to put a little bit of everything on her wide-brimmed, tulle-enhanced custom creation. Chris Rideoutte was chic in a red bowler, her signature red spectacles and faux blossoms. Pat Blankenship picked up her Diane Harty, horsehair-based number at a Chicago art show, while Marie Christine St. Pierre was in a hat she had created.

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