COLOR ME BRIGHT

Paoer lanterns wilL liven up your pool area with bright squares of color. Hang these fire-retard ant lights around a patio or arrange them along your table for an evening party.

TAKE TWO

EGO Paris, the French outdoor-design company, has come up with soother creation that emphasizes flexibility — not to mention good looks. With reclining mesh backs
available in 16 different colors, including purple and orange, and a deck made of oiled teak or white corian, the Tandem Sunlouiger wears a few hats: The loungers can
stand head to head, head to toe, or on their own.

THE PARASOL EFFECT

Step aside, clunky umbrellas. The summer belongs to Ocean Master, one of TUUCI's classic Pagoda parasols. Elegant and feminine with an Old World Asian flair, the
Ocean Master is tech savvy too, with a self-tens ion ing canopy system powered by gas pistons. tuuci.com

CHIC SLING

Lazing back on fabric slung between two trees and idly swinging in time with the breeze is a warm-weather idyll. But while the hammock is a universal symbol of back-to-basics tranquility, its reality can be more taxing than relaxing. The contraptions usually require handyman skills to install and gymnastic skills to use. Then, arter being strung out through a few months of harsh elements, a hammock tends to look, well, strung out. Along rocks t i e easy-does-it EZ lounger from Belgian outdoor furniture maker Royal Botania. Designed by Zaki Molgaard and Bo Larssen, inspired by the sleek 1930s Italian style and yet ripe as a tangerine slice, the autonomous hammock has a sling of fade-resistant Batyline, a hardy woven polyester fiber that is also ЕZ-available in cappuccino, black and turquoise (shown in orange, headrest is included). The base is electro-polished stainless steel and folds for neat storage.

PAINTERLY REPOSE

Bring the French countryside to your garden without planting a thing, A line of seven patterns and 37 colorways has been reproduced from the archives of fabric designer Madame Paule Mar rot (1902-1987) and exclusively licensed to Del Greco Textiles, a new spinoff of the venerable outdoor-furniture company. Madame Marrot was the quintessential French textile artist and a leading contributor to midcentury modern design, producing more than 320 designs for fabrics and linens during a span of 40 years. Says Laurie Korobkin, president and owner of DelGreco Textiles, "Many of her designs were inspired by the gardens that she frequented throughout her life." Korobkin styled Marrot's original designs in a weather-resistant 100 percent acrylic to meet today's requirements for casual outdoor/indoor living. See the entire collection online.

LIVING JEWEL BOX

The beauty of her Living Necklaces, says landscape designer and sculptor Paula Hayes, "is that the wearer shows she can extend herself to nurture something that's alive, and live together with nature." Handmade from glittering stainless steel and silk threads, Hayes' Living Necklaces consist of small crocheted baskets that hold tiny epiphytes, or air plants, TiUandsM ionantha, which can fnrive without soil. The necklace materials are soft but durable and can safely be dunked, plants and all, for a litrle watering. The Manhattan-based designer keeps a nursery of the tiny bromeliads at her studio and swaps them in and out of her necklaces depending on her mood, T keep them in a basket out in the sunlight. It's so much nicer than having a jewelry box." Available with one to three baskets; prices start at $1,000. A new version with looser crocheted baskets has just debuted, priced f r om $ioo-$20o.

BRINGING THE OUTDOORS IN

Working as a maitre d' at Thomas Keller's French Laundry in Yountville, California, Clover Chadwick's interest in floral design took root. Inspired by Keller's intense focus in procuring the best herbs and ingredients, along w i f i periodic vineyard visits to witness viticulture — the cultivation of grapevines — her enthusiasm flourished. A few years later, living in Los Angeles, she realized many local eateries neglected to consider floral design as a form of interior design, so she set out to help them and began creating flower arrangements for their tables. Today at Dandelion Ranch — her studio based in a barn in Los Angeles — Chadwick designs for weddings, events and L.A. hot spots including Cafe Pinot, BLD, Sona and Lucques. Her process begins by selecting a container. "It's like the shoes in the outfit — it totally changes the look of the arrangement," says Chadwick. Returning flora back to a naturelike state is her mantta. She consults the natural growth direction of each piece before building a "nest" for the flowers. "If they have a natural line, those are the ones coming out and spilling. I want the arrangements to be like nature — they reach up for the sun, and they spill down when they get old and heavy." Here, dahlias, ranunculus, eucalyptus seedpods, blue thistle and chrysanthemums are incorporated into this summer arrangement. The outside is brought indoors, just the way it should be. dandelionranch.com

SUSTAINABLE BEAUTY

Garden shows across the country are striving to elevate an ecoconscious approach to design that never compromises on style. At Seattle's Northwest Flower & Garden Show last February, New York designer Rebecca Cole's showcase rooftop garden, Sky's the Limit, embodied that theme. Says Cole: "My mission was to take the green movement and all those products and innovative, cool things happening in building, and put them in the context of beauty and design. I tried to push the envelope but be completely realistic." Cole's green grids — a varied pattern of cement pavers and cleverly planted sedum floor squares — joined living walls and artwork made of grasses, sedums and mosses. The combinations were creative and design-centered, bringing "wow" forward while making sustainability appear to be secondary. In Cole's creation, gorgeous bowls made from recycled hubcaps, cement furniture and rusted pots showed a variety of applications for repurposed and ecoconscious materials. Cole placed solar panels and a planted green roof atop a penthouse structure, which worked in harmony with the birch trees, bamboo and the living spaces of the main roof garden.

Stylized green is catching on. At the Southeastern Horticultural Society's Southeastern Flower Show in Atlanta last winter, designers showcased how to create water-conscious designs and edible gardens in EcoB right, an area of the expo dedicated purely to green design. Exhibitors at the Philadelphia Flower Show this past Match also caught the wise-watering/conservation wave by designing showcase gardens using natives and creating a replica of a wellknown downtown building and its new green roof showing how the roof was constructed and how green initiatives can improve the urban environment. A n d this fall's Late Show Gardens in Sonoma, California, w i l l teach "fabulous design for this century" that is both sustainable and water smart.

OFF THE RACK

Looking for art to add to client projects, Los Angeles-based artist Jennifer As her found a yawning gap between the Henry Moore bronzes in the Getty Canter's sculpture garden and those gnomes in your neigh- bor's backyard. So this UCLA-trained landscape designer teamed up wi:h etal-ben ding partner Mario Lopez to create a series of limited-edition modern sculptures scaled and priced the average garden. "The colorful ones are meant to be enjoyed from a distance, to pop the way you might use a flower with a distinct color, says Asher, "but the weathered-steel" pieces are actually my favorites. They continually change colors as they oxigrinning dize; it gives them a suedelike quality people want to touch," Asher says her pieces are the ultimate in sustainrr. ability because "they require nothing but admiration." Prices range from $1,900 to $2,900 and can be customfor ordered to size, terrasculpture.com

ORCHID VESSELS

You know someone is excited about her product when she runs up to you as you're waiting in a parked rental car and hands you her "big new idea" through a lowered car-door window. Thaf s how I first saw the Eclipse and Solis orchid pots: While in Los Angeles scouting gardens with Kimberlee Keswick and Paul Robbins, Keswick showed me the new line she designed for their firm, eswickRobbins. Made of walnut and zebrano woods respectively, the Vessels, as they're called, have substantial weight and lustrous wood grain. "We were inspired by a request for a custom piece from one of our landscape clients who felt there was othing out there that was at once classic and contemporary. So, the design process began," says Keswick.

keswickrobbins.com — SARAH KINBAR