The New Homestead & Organic Gardening Magazine

By Jennifer Silver, JMMDS

Have you seen the Feb/Mar 2013 issue of Organic Gardening Magazine? It features the first article in Julie’s “New Homestead” column.

The article, entitled “Marrying Elegant Design & Sustainability,” describes Julie’s vision of the New Homestead, a definition much broader than the traditional farm compound often associated with the word. The New Homestead, she writes, “could be as small as an urban rooftop filled with vegetables and herbs growing in pots” or “a suburban property with a deck constructed of sustainably harvested wood, native plants around its perimeter, and a vegetable garden in the front yard.”

Everywhere, people are re-learning old-fashioned skills such as growing food and bee-keeping, while also employing the latest technology in energy efficiency and resource conservation. In the New Homestead column, Julie shares how to incorporate these systems and products into your landscape in beautiful and imaginative ways.

Boston-area courtyard landscape design by JMMDS. Green wall designed by JMMDS project designer Anna Johansen, fabricated and installed by g_space, is planted with primarily native shade-loving plants such as Christmas and wood ferns, small Solomon’s seal, woodland strawberry, bunchberry, fringed bleeding heart, and wintergreen. Photographed by Susan Teare for Organic Gardening Magazine.

The first article highlights a JMMDS design project in the Boston area: a courtyard that functions as an entryway, parking space, driveway turnaround, and outdoor room. New York bluestone and limestone planks set into a sea of pea gravel can bear the weight of vehicles while allowing rainwater to permeate the ground, reducing run-off. Curving 5’6″-high green walls of shade-loving native plants create privacy, textural interest, and beauty.