Spark

So you’ve been following the series, dreaming of your highest and best design, getting a clear picture of the style that suits you best, and gathering up your inspirational images. Now it’s time for action!

Get out and get your hands on the finest Austin has to offer…

Visit Natural Gardener for pots, plants, water features and rain barrels and composters.

Head to the Great Outdoors, for inspiration, plant materials and for yummy coffee to sip while you are purusing your selections. Great resource for succulents too.

Barton Springs Nursery has flats of wonderful annuals and perennials, great selection of pots and are so helpful with their information-rich labelling of plants throughout their nursery!

For furniture, I like peeking around at Austin Furniture Depot for off-the-wall finds on a budget…

I love stopping in at uncommon Objects on South Congress for vintage and mid-century modern lovelies (don’t forget to look up while you’re shopping!)…

and to Threshold for complete fabulousness!

Spring is upon us any day now, no matter what the calendar says. If you want to share a wonderful Austin resource I’ve neglected here, please comment below! And as always, we here at Spark are always ready to help you translate your interior and exterior dreams into reality by hiring expert contractors like recladding Auckland.

It is absolutely frigid today in Austin! Yes, I hear you, New York, Boston and Chicago… what does Austin know about frigid, right? Well, um, okay, there isn’t any snow on the ground and spring is a lot closer for us than it is for you and a good way to enhance your home appeal [...]

So Christmas is over for 2010 and New Year’s Eve is beckoning. Before all the parties kick in, make a resolution to chip in. If you had a fresh tree this year, please consider recycling your Christmas tree and turning it into a resource. Bonus! Trees collected in many cities are recycled into mulch, which [...]

I buzzed into The Great Outdoors on South Congress in Austin last week to swoop up some plants for winter pots out back (fav find was artichokes – so gorgeous with their outsized silvery blue leaves) and found myself in the midst of some serious Christmas cheer. Red wigglers are great to use in no-till [...]

We here at Spark are always discussing fresh ideas for design, color ways, and opportunities to support our clients in making meaningful shifts in their surroundings. At our delicious lunch yesterday (thank you, Blue Star Cafeteria), we talked about the joyful impact of spring flowering bulbs. We love the way they look scattered in drifts [...]

Perhaps the previous ideas posted in this series (synthetic grass; edible estates) just don’t solve your ish. You still need to cover the bare ground in your yard with something simple, beautiful and sustainable. Below are some quick fixes with some pros and cons. Allow me a quick word to the wise: some clients bandy [...]

Children in white linen frolicking with croquet mallets. Rolling meadows of close cropped fescues and sedges. Bucolic pastures dotted with sheep. I think these images are the inspiration for our approach to our yards – long stretches of green to give us the feeling we are To the Manor Born. Well, snap out of it! [...]

See Sue. See Sue make art. See Sue plan gardens. Look what Sue can do! Spark is pleased to welcome artist and landscape designer Sue Lambe to our creative team. We’d like to give you a chance to see what Sue can do by sharing a few photos of Sue’s painting, sketching, landscape design and [...]