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In The Library With The Candlestick

Why Libraries Are Back in Style

It's Not Because of Books;
They're 'Memory Rooms'
Or TV-Free Private Spaces

By JUNE FLETCHER
September 12, 2008; WSJ Page W8

In the library of her 5,800-square-foot house in Glen Cove, N.Y., Linda Teitelbaum keeps trophies from dog shows, needlepoint pillows of bulldogs and gold-framed photos of family. Though the plaid-papered room has a scattering of books, she often retreats to it not just to read but to remember the dogs she used to breed, to nap, or to get away from the TV. "It's my veg-out room," Ms. Teitelbaum says.

Reading rates are down and Americans say they love casual living. And yet, one of the most popular rooms in big new houses is a library. Rather than being about books, their appeal is often about creating a certain ambiance. "Libraries connote elegance and quality," says New York architect and interior designer Campion Platt, adding that most of his wealthy clients want one, even if they do most of their reading online.

Donna Alberico

Libraries have become so fashionable that this month, talk-show host Oprah Winfrey featured the one in her Santa Barbara, Calif., home on the cover of her magazine; it contains first editions collected for her by a rare-book dealer.

In the latest annual National Association of Home Builders consumer survey, 63% of home buyers said they wanted a library or considered one essential, a percentage that has been edging up for the past few years. Many mass-market home builders are including libraries in their house plans, sometimes with retro touches like rolling ladders and circular stairs.

A RETURN TO THE CLASSIC

Jeani Ziering, an interior designer in Manhasset, N.Y., says the newfound popularity of libraries is part of a general movement toward traditional design and décor. "When the economy turns bad, people turn to the classics," she says. Libraries are especially appealing during anxious times because they project coziness and comfort, she adds.

PODCAST

 

The Journal's June Fletcher discusses the resurgence of libraries.

What can make libraries more soothing than other formal rooms isn't so much books but the framed family photographs, awards and mementos that share the shelves and define a family's interests and identity, says McLean, Va., architect Chris Lessard. "They're memory rooms," he says. Because libraries are public rooms, oftentimes the books are purely decorative and don't say as much about the family who lives there. The books that people really read, like paperback novels and how-to guides, often are kept out of sight elsewhere in the home.

Even in a downturn, U.S. adult hardcover and paperback book sales reached $16.6 billion last year, a slight increase from the year before, according to the Book Industry Study Group, a New York trade group. But crammed schedules and the Web have slashed the amount of time people spend reading books. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, 5% of Americans said they read literature in 2002, the latest survey data available, down from 14% in 1992.

HIS AND HERS LIBRARIES

Still, some homeowners are book lovers. Michael Burkitt and his wife, Roberta, own an estimated 9,000 books, all hardbound, which they keep in two formal libraries in their new, 5,800-square-foot home in Reno, Nev., and their 3,800-square-foot vacation house in Newport Coast, Calif. Mr. Burkitt, 65, the recently retired co-owner of a structural-plastics firm, says he's been too busy working most of his life to read even a fraction of them. But he enjoys relaxing among them in what he considers his "sanctuaries" -- one paneled in dark wood, the other in white -- free from distractions like computers. "They're the wombs of my homes," he says.

Tucson, Ariz., interior designer Terri Taylor says she spends a lot of time scouring flea markets and bookstores for books with fancy bindings for her clients' bookshelves. She selects books to match color schemes rather than for their content. She once was ecstatic to find a stash of beautiful, leather-bound books at the bargain price of $20 apiece -- never mind that they were written in German, a language her clients didn't read. "I bought cases of them," she says.

For home builders who are scaling back the size of houses to make them more affordable and cheaper to construct, libraries are a more functional way to create an upscale look than the "old, crazy massive foyers and 'Gone With the Wind' staircases," that characterized houses a few years ago, says Memphis, Tenn., architect Carson Looney.

In some mass-market builders' plans, libraries are replacing dens, which have become redundant in the age of huge family rooms. A home plan called the Monterey Mediterranean offered by Toll Brothers, of Horsham, Pa., has 5,183 square feet, and includes a family room and a library with double glass doors off the foyer -- but has no den.

Neither does the 4,289-square-foot Blue Harbor Plan 4 house that John Laing Homes of Irvine, Calif., sells for nearly $1.3 million in San Juan Capistrano, Calif. In addition to a wine room and a family room with fireplace, it puts a library on a landing between the first and second floors, which allows the ceiling height to be extended for more bookshelf space.

Of course, selling built-in bookshelves is a way for builders to pump up their bottom lines, especially if buyers choose custom-made shelving in exotic woods and frills such as secret doors hidden in paneling. About half the clients of London Bay, a Naples, Fla., builder whose prices start at just under $1 million, order such upgrades, at a cost ranging from $30,000 to $300,000. Lately, says Mark Wilson, the builder's chief executive officer and president, there's even been demand for "his and hers" libraries for spouses who like to keep their books, collections and alone-time separate.

JAY MCINERNEY'S PHILOSOPHY

Some builders are also creating mini-libraries scattered throughout the house. Popular spots are under the stairs, in lofts, in alcoves near master bedrooms and along entry hallways. Gary Stefanoni, senior executive vice president of Orleans Homebuilders in Bensalem, Pa., says that for the past few years, he's seen demand for bookcases in children's playrooms, since kids often have more books, trophies and collections than their parents do. "They want to display them in their own space," he says.

Dan Poag, a shopping-center developer, is putting a dedicated library and built-in bookcases in nearly every room of the 10,000-square-foot house he's building in Memphis. He doesn't know how many books he owns -- he estimates several thousand -- but has kept nearly everything he's purchased since college, as well as his three grown sons' college textbooks, a collection of science fiction, and children's books that his five grandchildren read when they visit. Since nearly every wall of his current house is filled with books, his decorator urged him to re-cover them so their multicolored spines wouldn't clash with the décor. He refused. "The books are my priority," he says.

Similarly, author Jay McInerney and his wife, Anne Hearst, happily mix dog-eared paperbacks with first editions of Fitzgerald and Joyce in the overstuffed bookcases of both their Manhattan apartment and their Hamptons house. Mr. McInerney thinks the visual jumble of thousands of mismatched books is appealing. "If you're not reading what's on your bookshelves, you should find something else to decorate with," he says.

Garden Cobbles & More

This is a great article by Clare Martin at Old House Journal on the Arts & Craft garden.  Other gardens can use some of these pieces too as sometimes the eclectic is even more exciting...   The Art of Embellishment: Decor for an Arts & Crafts Garden You've spent hours digging in the soil to get the garden of your Arts & Crafts house to look just right. Now check out our picks for finishing it off in period style. If there's one overarching goal that all gardens of the Arts & Crafts movement sought, it was to blend in. Proponents of Arts & Crafts garden design wanted their landscapes to connect not only with the homes they were attached to, but also with their natural surroundings. The use of native plants and wildflowers, along with uncomplicated layouts, helped achieve this ideal. Ornamentation also had its place in the Arts & Crafts garden, albeit in very subtle form. When looking for products to embellish your own garden, simplicity should be the name of the game. Forget ornate iron benches, elaborate trellises, and fancy ornamental planters. In the Arts & Crafts garden, as in the homes from the era, clean lines and unfussy patterns reign supreme. While there are a few faithful reproductions out there (Henry Hall Designs, for example, makes a teak bench that's an exact replica of one from a garden designed by Gertrude Jekyll), as well as a few inspired homages (Jekyll gets her due again in a simple terracotta planter by potter Guy Wolff), the majority of decor for Arts & Crafts gardens will defy categorization. Photos of period gardens are a helpful resource (a curved bench, for example, calls to mind the distinctive serpentine one that graces the garden at Dumbarton Oaks), as are decorative objects of the era that feature garden motifs (a hexagonal birdhouse mimics one featured on a C.F.A. Voysey wallpaper sample, while a baluster birdbath echoes a fountain depicted on a Grueby tile). Help your ornamentation blend in with the natural environment by selecting items that have an aged appearance, or will easily gain one (such as antique cobblestones or a bronze planter that will develop a worn patina after a few weather cycles). When it comes to larger items like pergolas, gazebos, and gates, look for simple but eye-catching designs, and always choose sizes that are appropriate to the scale of your house. Check out our photo gallery below to get your search started, but remember that the best choices for your Arts & Crafts garden will be ones that forge a connection to your home and its surroundings. After all, blending in is what it's all about. Leagrave Bench from Henry Hall Designs, (800) 767-7738; www.henryhalldesigns.com Gertrude Pot from the Guy Wolff Collection at Seibert & Rice, (973) 467-8266; www.seibert-rice.com Reflection Bench from Gardener's Supply Company, (888) 833-1412; www.gardeners.com Hexagon Birdhouse from Frontgate, (888) 263-9850; www.frontgate.com Arcadian Birdbath from Haddonstone, (856) 931-7011; www.haddonstone.com Old Cincinnati Mosiac Cobblestone from Historical Bricks, 319-354-5251; www.historicalbricks.com Gratia Orb Planter in bronze from Design Within Reach, (800) 944-2233; www.dwr.com Cedar gazebo from Vixen Hill, (800) 423-2766; www.vixenhill.com Bedford Pergola from Trellis Structures, (800) 649-6920; www.trellisstructures.com Basking Ridge Gate from Walpole Woodworkers, (800) 343-6948; www.walpolewoodworkers.com

Let Us Teach Our Children Well

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An excerpt from:

A Child's Garden

60 Ideas to Make Any Garden Come Alive for Children

A Child's Garden

To thrive children need complex environments. That much we adults have figured out. And in our attempts to help our children achieve success in an ever more complex world, we try to fill their lives with good things — challenging schooling, enriching extracurricular activities, high-powered computers, developmentally appropriate toys. When our children clamor to go outside, we erect swing sets and slides for them, enroll them in team sports, take them to zoos and adventure parks. But how often do we provide opportunities for our children to deeply explore their own home grounds? How important are the old childhood pleasures of collecting seed pods, fishing in ditches, making bowers, picking flowers, and climbing trees? What should yards have that will be of value to children?

My childhood was spent in a variety of suburban tract houses with parceled-out yards enclosed by chain-link fences. It could have been a sterile existence, but my dad, a farm-raised son of the South, made each yard into something much more than just a space for swing sets and jungle gyms. On evenings and weekends my brothers and sister and I would play outside while our father tended his roses, lilies, strawberry patches, blackberry bushes, fruit trees, and rows of corn, okra, tomatoes, peppers, green beans, carrots, and pumpkins. His diligent presence instilled in each of us a love of gardening. But beyond that, the long hours we whiled away outdoors as he carried out his methodical work offered us the opportunity to explore our wilder natures, to test more primal urges, to be truer to ourselves as children than we were allowed to be indoors.

Disappearing Outdoor Afternoons

Long hours of unstructured outdoor exploration are a fast-vanishing aspect of contemporary childhood. Fearing for our children's safety in a more dangerous world than we parents grew up in and frenetically busy with our own lives, many of us today are unwittingly cutting off children from seminal life experiences available only during lazy outdoor afternoons. We promote the idea that the important business of real life happens only in offices and classrooms — not in yards, fields, and forests. And in answer to children's inevitable curiosities about nature we offer them books, television shows, and computer learning programs instead of taking them outside to touch, feel, and smell the real thing.

Not so long ago parents and children knew their own outdoor territories intimately. Parents passed on knowledge about useful plants and poisonous ones, safe places and dangerous ones, interesting geological formations and pulsating waterways. But that has changed. Now we worry about the dangers of our children's climbing habits, the study time lost to outdoor play, and the threats of car traffic and strangers — and we tell our children to come inside.

Parents worry that something is wrong with children, especially boys, when they cannot sit still and focused in a classroom for hours at a time deciphering and manipulating symbols. However, scores of studies show that natural environments heighten mental acuity, diminish stress, and even speed physical healing. Sick people who spend time in nature recover more quickly, require less medication and follow-up treatment, and report more interest in work and new projects than patients who do not. People under extreme stress suddenly become calmer in a natural setting: their blood pressure and heart rate drop dramatically while their ability to focus mentally increases. There is even evidence that nature's ever-changing cycles — full of visual, olfactory, and physical complexity — can increase intelligence. People and animals in complex, constantly changing environments show an increase in the number and complexity of the neural connections in their brains: they become smarter. Conversely, creatures in stagnant environments show a decrease in neural complexity: they become both more listless and more violent.

Human beings simply seem wired to work better mentally, physically, and emotionally with steady infusions of nature. Researchers say that this is because we are genetically predisposed to feel most fully at ease in environments that would have facilitated survival for the earliest human ancestors. Wide-open grassy spaces with scattered trees cause children to laugh and run and sing and play. The African savannah, which has exactly these qualities — wide sight lines to keep watch for predators and scattered trees indicating the presence of life-sustaining water — has been shown to be the favored landscape of people in every culture but especially children younger than twelve. Children are inclined to recoil from dark, enclosed spaces where their instincts tell them that predators could easily lurk. Many other human responses — anxiety when confronted with snakes, spiders, and growling animals, pleasure in the presence of verdant vegetation and bubbling water — have been shown to be so constant in every culture, particularly in young children, that researchers presume them to be genetically based.

Young children can offer adults a passage back into a world where intuition reigns supreme, says Charles Lewis, a horticulturist who has spent his career studying human responses to nature. Lewis complains that the last century of scientific advances has led to a society "so dependent on the organizing side of our brain that we've forgotten how legitimate it is to be open to our mind's intuitive responses to the world." But there is a critical timeline for "tuning in" to one's intuition. By the age of twelve, children will have experienced the vast majority of the "biologically prepared learning," in which innate responses to environmental stimuli provoke unforgettable cognitive imprints, says Lewis. So what are the implications when children, generation after generation, receive more "intuition input" during these critical years from the cleanly choreographed, ever-captivating, physically nonthreatening worlds of television, computers, and books than from physical experiences in the world of nature itself?

My mother tells me that I first learned to talk at the age of eighteen months during a visit to my uncle's farm in Kentucky. The environment there, which I would visit time and again throughout my growing-up years, was so complex — full of smells, varied land forms, and mesmerizing creatures. I remember a scooped-out pond surrounded by mud in which pigs, ducks, and geese joyously wallowed. The strange pungency of the air, the frighteningly gigantic hogs, the mysterious, billowy grasses, the ancient wells and water pumps, barns and outbuildings, and varied fences in different states of repair still fill my senses. Obviously there was much to talk about!

Children's Gardens Past

What is the best outdoor environment for children? Is it one in which they climb on exercise equipment or cavort in gardens, play with prefabricated toys or hunt for natural treasures, spend all afternoon swinging or care for animals? Is it one in which they have freedom to explore or are guided by adults? Such questions arose in nineteenth-century Europe as industrialization swept families away from the countryside and into crowded cities.

German educators and social reformers of the time were among the first to create children's playgrounds. They did so in the belief that city children suffered physically, intellectually, and morally when deprived of the riches of outdoor life so accessible to children in the country. (Remember the story of Heidi?) Friedrich Froebel, the German educator who invented the first kindergarten — literally "garden of children" — in 1837, promoted the idea that young children's play yards should distill the most edifying aspects of country life. Froebel's kindergarten yards were filled with plants, animals, building materials, simple props, and well-trained teachers who guided children through experiential lessons in the physical world. On Froebel's heels in the 1880s, German social reformers created the first public children's "sand gardens" by placing heaps of sand in public parks in Berlin. Such models— in which urban children had opportunities to garden, care for animals, explore nature, build their own creations, and play in sand — began sprouting copies in cities throughout the world.

But by the early twentieth century the outdoor play movement had turned a different corner. Exercise equipment from industrial-sized swings to slides and jungle gyms became the primary focus. Hundreds of iron-and-steel playgrounds were erected in U.S. cities between 1905 and 1909. Manufactured equipment soon began to dominate all landscapes for children, not just in cities but even, as the century progressed, in the most rural schoolyards, parks, and eventually backyards. The earlier goal of creating naturalistic play yards for urban children had been turned on its head. Now even rural children — those closest to nature — were led to believe that the best places for play were made of metal and concrete.

At the same time that mass-produced equipment was becoming ubiquitous, wealthy Americans were taking a more traditional European approach to their own children's outdoor play. On early-twentieth-century estates the centerpiece of the children's garden was often a multiroom outdoor playhouse in English country, American rustic, Gothic Revival, or mock Tudor style. These fantasy playhouses with tiny, custom-made furniture inside were surrounded by manicured gardens, wildflower meadows, and cleared woods and quite possibly were influenced by the examples laid out in 1908 by the renowned English landscape designer Gertrude Jekyll in her classic book Children and Gardens.

Jekyll recommended that parents offer children a full-scale outdoor playhouse with a kitchen, parlor, pantry, screened porch, fireplace, and working cookstove in which they could practice all aspects of the domestic arts. Jekyll prescribed surrounding gardens with a wide variety of vegetables and flowers that adults should plant and children should learn to tend, harvest, and prepare in the playhouse kitchen for afternoon teas. Many of Jekyll's suggestions are both charming and useful, such as her advice on which tools children should keep and how to use and store them — a "spade, rake, hoe, a little wooden trug-basket, and a blunt weeding knife; a good cutting knife, a trowel, a hand-fork, and a little barrow," to be used equally with both hands for "general dexterity and convenience" and never put away dirty. But if her ideal of the playhouse as a fully functional replica of an adult house seems somewhat excessive today, it must have seemed even more so in her day, when only the wealthiest families could have chosen such an option for their children. Yet such fantastically unattainable landscapes are the ones history has preserved as examples of "children's gardens." No wonder many parents are skeptical of their ability to replicate one in the backyard.

In the late nineteenth century the Green Animals Topiary Garden in Portsmouth, Rhode Island — three acres of California privet, English boxwood, and yew shrubs clipped to resemble camels, birds, teddy bears, overstuffed chairs, spirals, and other whimsical forms — was created by Joseph Carreiro, the Portuguese gardener for the industrialist Thomas Brayton. Green Animals was never intended as a children's garden, although since it was opened to the public in the 1970s children have flocked to it, inflicting great damage on its hundred-year-old shrubs by attempting to interact with what they see as giant green toys. The topiaries of Green Animals have inspired children's garden displays in public gardens for decades. But such "look-but-don'ttouch" gardens are better suited for adults than children, who will always want to touch what appeals to them.

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Children's Garden, established in 1914 as the first public teaching garden in the United States, has always offered children the opportunity to touch as well as to learn the skills and discipline of the agricultural arts. It was designed with rows on rows of five-by-sevenfoot garden beds to be planted, tended, and harvested by teams of school-age "garden partners" working on afternoons and weekends, and it has been enormously popular. The teaching garden continues to draw nature-starved children from New York City to its verdant plots and has inspired the establishment of other such gardens nationwide.

Victory gardens in American backyards during World War II firmly established the idea in many people's minds that the best garden for children was a utilitarian one, where lessons about industry, thrift, and nurture could be learned through the tilling of practical plots. But as the war years gave way to the prosperous 1950s, a new backyard philosophy began to emerge. Landscape designers such as Thomas Church in California created a new aesthetic for outdoor living that stressed low-maintenance plantings chosen to withstand the neglect of busy families and large paved and decked areas for outdoor relaxing, entertaining, and children's play. For Church and his disciples, the garden became "an informal outdoor living room filled with deck chairs, tables, and swings, more social than horticultural in its intention." One legacy of this low-maintenance philosophy, visionary as it was at its inception, has been the proliferation of American yards devoid of complexity. Most families now follow a fairly standard formula: shrubs and flowers around the house's foundation, a grassy yard speckled with a few trees, a deck or patio for outdoor meals, and a swing or climbing set for the children. Yet so much more than this is possible.

Today, more than one hundred fifty years after the outdoor ideals of "kindergarten" were first articulated, children's gardens for play are finally beginning to sprout anew in public gardens, museums, schoolyards, hospitals, and parks across the United States. In these places a new generation of children is discovering the joys of outdoor play in miniature forests, dinosaur gardens, and bat caves. Some of the children's gardens to which parents can look for examples to emulate on their own soil include the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York, home to the venerable children's garden that has opened an innovative discovery section; the Michigan 4-H Children's Garden at Michigan State University in East Lansing, whose sixty theme gardens make it among the most creative American children's playscapes; Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, with one of the first interactive children's landscapes in the United States; George Washington's River Farm in Alexandria, Virginia, administered by the American Horticultural Society, a rich complex with ten children's demonstration gardens; the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a new interactive garden with water features, a maze, and a gigantic tree-stump lookout; and the expansive New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, which provides teaching plots that local children cultivate throughout the year as well as a Family Garden adventure area. The Botanical Garden's new Everett Children's Adventure Garden is the largest and most comprehensive children's landscape in the United States — eight acres for learning and play.

At the close of a century dominated by manufacturing and technology, people have become hungry for ways to reembrace nature. And the garden is again emerging as one of the most compelling outdoor play spaces that adults can create for children.

Child's Play

How do children really play outside when adults let them do what they want to do? What outdoor elements are inherently captivating to children? Like children's literature and films, the best children's gardens are those that appeal as much to parents as to their offspring because they touch some universal chord born in childhood. In other words, the best children's gardens will always be places that parents can fully enjoy too.

That said, a child's garden should definitely not be designed around adult preferences. Adults love fragrant plots and viewing gardens, planned to delight the olfactory and visual nerves but not intended to be climbed into, picked with abandon, and rolled around in. A child's garden should be a place where children are allowed to run, play, climb, and freely experience natural materials and bodily sensations. Flowers and berries for picking can be planted in exuberant swaths, with paths made perhaps of yellow bricks winding through their beds. Climbing trees and hiding bushes should camouflage every corner. Miniature forests and meadows can be planted, miniature hills mounded, places for digging and constructing set aside. Rabbit hutches and doghouses should be designed with whimsical flair instead of utilitarian drudge. And water is essential — it is children's (not to mention adults') favorite outdoor feature.

Elemental Considerations

The following nine elements and activities outline how children really play and thrive in the out-of-doors. They also form the groups of examples that make up the heart of the book. There, in part two, are five dozen simple ideas for implementing these basic themes in any garden.

WATER. The eloquent Washington, D.C., garden writer Henry Mitchell once said that probably "the greatest physical joy available to a mortal (over the years and all things considered) is to slop about with water and to stay within sight of it at all times." Even the smallest city garden can accommodate a fountain or a small pool to feed children's primal need to see, hear, and feel water's clear, cool essence.

CREATURES. Children are captivated by living faces. They love to touch animals far more than any inanimate object (plants included, alas). Petting zoos figured this out a long time ago. Environmentally sensitive backyard gardens will attract wild visitors. And artfully designed pet houses can enhance a garden's appeal to both adults and children.

REFUGES. One of the most universal activities of childhood is to create caves, houses, dens, and fortresses from found materials. All people, children in particular, seek out nestlike places that provide complete camouflage but that offer some "window" to keep watch for predators. Playhouses, willow nests, vegetable bowers, and miniature forests can all serve as safe, mysterious children's havens.

DIRT. Dirt, sand, sticks, and stones are articles that many parents are loathe to let their children experiment with outside. But according to playground theorists, these "loose parts" of nature are among children's favorite things. They are the raw materials through which children can create outdoor worlds from their own imaginations — instead of relying on slick, adult-conceived prefabricated playthings.

HEIGHTS. Children love to survey a terrain from the highest point they can find. Climbing to the top of a mountain, traversing the winding stairs of a castle, shooting up the bullet elevator of a skyscraper — ascending to the top of something tall is a thrill. Children's gardens should have climbing trees, tree houses, or rooftop perches to satisfy this need to be on the top of their world.

MOVEMENT. Children are joyfully physical beings, far more so than adults. They love to run, twirl, dance, jump, slide, swing, and roll down hills, usually laughing and screaming all the while. Parents need to make room mentally and physically for children to move. Grassy play areas, winding pathways, and places for jumping all fill the bill.

MAKE-BELIEVE. Trying on a variety of roles is the most important work of childhood. Only through play can children visualize themselves as the adventurers, explorers, nurturers, discoverers, and artists they will eventually become. Landscapes where whimsical images greet children at various turns can fuel their creative play even further. Imagine turning a corner to be greeted by a tree growing in the shape of a heart or finding a maze that leads to a secret nest. Adults should pepper outdoor spaces with such surprises.

NURTURE. Children can learn to take care of their own outdoor patch of the world, but usually only with subtle, clear-sighted guidance from an adult. Planting spaces can range from containers on balconies or decks, to rectangular plots in a yard, to free-range seed scattered throughout an entire outdoor space. Pickable flowers, thornless berries, and miniature vegetables are highly child-friendly choices.

LEARNING. Children are constantly learning even when they think they are just having fun. Theme gardens with plants related to something that holds a particular fascination for children can seduce them into hours of self-propelled nature study. A garden of plants that flourished during the age of dinosaurs, a Jack and the Beanstalk garden of quick-vining beans, a planted area based on a town or community's own local history, or an alphabet garden — from A (for aster) to Z (for zinnia) — can teach even the youngest children lessons based on real physical experiences.

Gateways Back to Nature

Young children use the natural environment to become familiar with the mechanics of their own bodies. As they grow, nature serves as a science lab cum theater where they test out principles about the world their bodies inhabit. When large numbers of children cease to experience physical learning outdoors in the informality of their own home territory, what does it mean for society as a whole?

Most children today no longer know the names, uses, and histories of the plants, animals, landmarks, and waterways that surround their homes. And schoolyards, the last truly communal outdoor spaces available to young people, often lack botanical complexity, many having been stripped, asphalted, and furnished with chain-link fences and play equipment that is sterile if not dangerous to their health and welfare.

If it is true that to care deeply about nature as adults, people must have intimate experiences with nature as children, then the world community faces a huge problem. Humankind's next great challenge will be to devise new ways to preserve and reconstruct the earth's natural systems, although the natural experiences that previously informed every aspect of childhood have been allowed to become nearly extinct.

But parents, grandparents, and other adults can change this — if we tap into children's innate enthusiasm about the natural world as a way of rekindling our own. Together with children we can investigate our neighborhood's social and natural history and its botanical and geological mysteries. We can look to knowledgeable sources: books, maps, animal and plant identification guides, and neighborhood elders to learn unknown names and stories. We can visit children's gardens for more ideas. And then, with all this newfound knowledge and reignited awe, we can create Eden anew — in our own backyards.

Be Classy At Home & Not

Global guide to etiquette: When in Rome... don't say it with flowers

If you find yourself in Japan, Brazil or Iran, could you be sure that a gift to your host would be well-received? Or that a thumbs-up wouldn't land you in a world of trouble? After blundering his way from Abu Dhabi to Zanzibar, Mark McCrum has compiled the ultimate no-tears travel guide

Invited for lunch with the King of the Zulus, I drove for hours up dirt roads into the hills, fretting that I might be late. I needn't have worried. Arriving shortly after 1pm, I found not the King and a keenly expectant table of 12 but 5,000 guests, seated patiently on the grass in tribal costume as His Highness and other dignitaries made endless speeches. It wasn't until almost 5pm that the royal party repaired to the palace.

I followed, waving my invitation at the gate, and was shown through to a huge garden where several hundred people waited in queues for freshly slaughtered and barbecued cow. I joined the line and waited patiently, only to be approached by a burly security guard, who motioned me brusquely to one side. Was I about to be thrown out? I was, after all, the only white person present. But no, it seemed that my colour meant I was a VIP. I was ushered into the palace and shown to a splendid buffet where, having filled my plate, I asked for a beer.

This last misjudgement of the day proved to be my worst. The King, I now discovered, is notoriously teetotal and nobody drinks in his presence. I was lucky to get just a frown and a polite warning with my Fanta.

If you travel, particularly to places off the tourist trail, a sense of cultural disorientation will often overtake you. You'll find yourself in situations where the rules are totally different and making a string of faux pas is all too easy. At a barbecue in rural Australia, I remember thinking I was doing fine, standing at one end of the garden bantering with the women. It was only when the shouts of, "Hey, are you trying to chat up my missus?!" were repeated several times that I began to understand that Down Under, in the sticks at least, you talk to the fellers.

In the West of Ireland one Boxing Day, I expressed a rather shocked surprise at the enthusiasm with which the old guys at the bar were awaiting the arrival of the "rent boys". It was only when a bunch of young men dressed up as birds turned up that I found out about the fine old Irish tradition of the Wren Boys.

I won't go into the cringemaking details of how I got the African handshake totally wrong in the townships of Cape Town (let's just say that it's a carefully structured, three-part affair); mightily offended my host at a business lunch in Santiago by unwittingly ordering wine for the whole table (and all I asked for was a simple glass of bianco); or got mugged in Rio after making the cardinal error of walking on the beach in the rain (something no self-respecting local would ever do). But the point is clear: what at home could be dismissed as the tedious demands of outmoded etiquette can abroad be – literally – a lifesaver.

Stick your thumb up in a traffic jam in Iran and you may well become a road-rage statistic. In that country, the gesture is known as the bilakh, and means "Sit on this!" Hold hands with your partner in Saudi Arabia and you could get arrested; there, you only hold hands with someone of the same sex, and strictly as a sign of friendship.

Even when you get to know people and go for a drink, pitfalls await. Cin cin is absolutely the right toast in Spain or Italy. But say it in Tokyo, and you might get a strange response – there, cin-cin is a word that a mother might use to her little boy in the bath to describe a certain key part of his anatomy.

Sit down for a meal and things don't get any easier. In parts of the Middle East, India and Africa, eating with your hands is normal – just make sure it's the right one; the left is "unclean", being reserved for a related function a few hours later.

In China or Japan, your host will be far too polite to tell you that it's rude to stick your chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice – an action that mimics the placing of incense sticks at traditional funeral rites.

With money and jobs at stake, you might have thought that big business would have made sure it didn't commit the kinds of gaffes made by travelling individuals. After all, HSBC has based a whole advertising campaign on its supposed intercultural savvy. But other multinationals have blundered disastrously – and expensively. When Pepsi-Cola launched in China with the slogan "Come Alive With Pepsi", they failed to realise that this would translate locally as ,"Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead", while the Dublin-based makers of the after-dinner liqueur Irish Mist failed to forecast the poor launch for their product in Germany, where "mist" means manure.

Politicians haven't done much better. George Bush Snr got it badly wrong on a state visit to China, when he presented Premier Li Peng with a pair of Texan cowboy boots, with one sole showing the Chinese flag and the other the Stars and Stripes. What he and his advisers hadn't taken into account was that, in the East, the sole of the foot is regarded as the lowliest and most unclean part of the body.

His gaffe-prone son has faced a different problem. With television news beamed around the world 24 hours a day, seven days a week, leaders these days have to be especially careful. At George W's second inauguration ceremony in 2005, he proudly made the "hook 'em horns" gesture (with first and little fingers upright) for the cameras. In Texas it means victory. In Italy, it's known as the cornuto, and can be used to imply that a man is a cuckold. In Norway, it's the sign of the devil, giving the newspapers there plenty of ammunition in the days that followed.

As we all travel more, so the chances of such intercultural gaffes rise. But the same process is also changing forever the cultural oddities of the world. As tourists blow through, they bring their language, gestures and habits with them. Satellite television has marched up into the remote hills of Arunachal Pradesh and down into the thickest jungles of Peru. New generations ape the glamorous habits of the incomers and the international. All too soon, the world will be the equivalent of the contemporary British high street – tediously uniform.

So, as we do our best to observe the local manners and customs of the world, we must also treasure them. With an appropriate cry of Santé, let us raise a glass to the chauvinistic French, who prosecuted the Body Shop for using English expressions such as "pineapple" and "no frizz" in their adverts. Let us bow low to the Japanese businessmen who remain such sticklers for form as they present their meishi, or business cards. And even smile indulgently at the incorrigibly macho Argentinians, as they greet passing females with such gallant piropos (compliments) as, "If beauty were a crime, you would deserve a life in prison."

Daily life

Tread carefully

In Mongolia, if you step on someone's foot, you're expected to shake their hand and offer to let them step on your foot in return. It can be an odd experience in a crowded bus in Ulan Bator to find an old woman begging you to press your boot on her shoe.

Ahead by a nose

In general, it's best not to blow your nose in front of others across the East, from Saudi Arabia, through China to Malaysia – especially at mealtimes.

Spitting is much more acceptable. In China, people happily spit out bones on the tablecloth during meals; out and about, even on buses and trains, it's a free-for-all, particularly in rural areas.

Petiquette

Attitudes to animals around the world are sadly not always as soft as they are in pet-loving Britain. Dogs in particular get a rough ride in the East.

In Arab countries they're considered unclean, and the Prophet Mohamed is supposed to have said that angels will not visit any house that contains a dog.

Another Hadith (a tradition relating to the life and sayings of Mohamed) proclaims that for every day you own a dog, your good deeds in life are diminished.

To add injury to insult, there are five animals that Islam allows to be killed in a sanctuary: rats, scorpions, kites, crows – and dogs.

In Korea, the species has an even worse time. Though some Koreans do keep dogs as pets, they are also reared as farmyard animals in constricting cages, before being slaughtered to make dog stew.

Though cats have historically been protected and honoured across Asia, and kept as pets, there are still parts of China where they are eaten: particularly in the dish called "dragon, tiger and phoenix", which mixes cat with snake and chicken.

In Korea, cats are not just eaten but boiled alive with herbs to make goyangi soju ("cat tonic"), a folk remedy for arthritis.

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Gifts

Don't say it with flowers

Flowers may seem like the perfect gift to delight the gracious hostess of a dinner, but beware: in many countries particular varieties, colours and even their numbers have unwelcome associations. Chrysanthemums are a reminder of death in Belgium, Italy, France, Spain and Turkey.

In Germany, Japan, Austria, India, Turkey, an even number of flowers can be bad luck. In China, Taiwan and Indonesia, the same goes for odd numbers. In Peru, anything except roses is regarded as cheap, while in Kenya and Tanzania, buying any kind of flowers whatsoever could land you in trouble – they're used to offer condolences only.

So diverse are the rules that a bunch of yellow carnations could send out all kinds of signals. In Thailand, Sweden, Poland or Germany, carnations are to be used only for funerals. In Russia or Iran, yellow flowers signal hatred. Then again, of course, they could simply be a perfectly innocuous gift in many Western countries.

You really shouldn't have

Giving – and receiving – gifts with either the right hand or both hands is important throughout the Middle East and Asia; in China, as in Hong Kong or Japan, it should always be with both hands.

In China, Hong Kong or Singapore, someone may "graciously refuse" a gift three times before accepting it; ideally, you should do the same.

In all these countries – and Japan – you should never encourage your recipient by saying "Go on! Have a look!" The potential disappointment of receiving something they don't need or want could lead to an unbearable loss of face.

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Restaurants

Oshibori

In Japan, before you eat, you will often be offered a hot towel known as an oshibori. You should use this to clean your hands, not your face or neck. And never blow your nose on it.

Chopsticks

When you eat in a restaurant in Japan, you will probably be offered waribashi, or disposable wooden chopsticks. Once you've removed them from their paper sleeve, you can impress your hosts by doing the local thing and turning that sleeve into a rest for your chopsticks. Fold it in half end-to-end, then tie the resultant strip of paper into a knot: on this you rest the blunt end of your sticks. Waribashi usually come joined together at the top. You should separate them over your lap, making sure to keep any little splinters away from your food. When you've finished your meal, untie your knotted paper holder and put your used chopsticks back in their case; this tells the waiter that you've finished.

You should eat everything with chopsticks, down to the last grain of rice in your bowl. For soup, take out the pieces of food one by one, then drink the remaining liquid from the bowl. The one exception is sushi, which may be eaten with your hands. Dip only the top, fishy side into the soy sauce.

In China and Taiwan, if there's something in your mouth you want to remove – a piece of gristle or whatever – use the chopsticks or the porcelain soup spoon, rather than your fingers. Perversely, spitting it out on a side plate is fine.

The Arab belch

Making a noise while eating is generally considered rude in the West. Masticating loudly, slurping soup or, God forbid, burping are all things that are frowned on in European cultures. In the Far East, however, the loud guzzling of noodles or soup is not just considered fine; it's essential. Slurping, it's said, cools off noodles and enhances the flavour, and is a compliment to the chef.

There's a long-standing Western myth that Arabs like to belch loudly after a meal to show their appreciation to the host and/or cook. Some Americans also believe this to be true of the French and Germans. In fact, this is more of a north and central African custom (you'll find it in countries such as Kenya and Nigeria), and the belch should only be small. In China, too, a little burpette, as part of the post-slurping, "aaaaah" routine that indicates you've enjoyed your meal, is more than acceptable.

Going Dutch in Beijing

In cultures that put an emphasis on, if not social equality, then at least equality while socialising, splitting the bill after a meal out in a restaurant – going Dutch – is common. So you'll find diners divvying up bills in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Australia and the US.

In southern European, Middle Eastern and Latin American cultures, people fight to get the bill – the idea that Katie should pay less because she didn't have a starter or Ian more because he's enormous and drinks like a fish would not be understood or, if it were, would be considered embarrassing.

In China, the concept of splitting the bill can be offensive. If you are invited out to a restaurant, your host will pay: you should politely demur and offer to pick up the tab yourself (up to three times), but to suggest a contribution would cause him or her to seriously lose face. Reciprocate at a later date with a splendid meal for which you fork out. Unless you're out with young people, you should never even attempt to "go Dutch" in Beijing.

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Clothing

Going native

Wearing what the locals wear can be OK, up to a point. Donning the semi-transparent decorated shirt known as the barong tagalog in the Philippines is fine for any social occasion, as is the open-necked, long-sleeved batik shirt in Indonesia. But the risk of causing offence or appearing ridiculous is always there. Wearing local beads as jewellery in Togo could make you a laughing stock: they are traditionally worn at the waist to hold up an underskirt. To hang them round your neck is much the same as putting your knickers on your head.

Sock it to 'em

In most parts of the world, whether you wear black lace-ups, white slip-ons or fake crocodile-skin loafers, the fact that you keep your footwear on can cause more offence than its appearance.

When visiting a Japanese home, leave your footwear in the genkan (area outside the front door), toes pointing towards the exit, before stepping inside. You will be given slippers to take you from the front door to the living-room, where they should be removed before you step on the tatami (reed mat). On a visit to the loo, you'll be given "toilet slippers".

It's a tie

For men, the business uniform of dark suit, conservative tie and dark socks is acceptable pretty much anywhere. Germans are keen on highly polished shoes, while for Italians the concept of la bella figura prevails: use a good tailor, dress stylishly, and they will notice and be impressed. In the Middle East they will clock the quality of your briefcase and watch, while in America good dentistry impresses (the disparaging description "English teeth" says it all). Russians, too, expect sartorial formality: gossip has it that one of the reasons Mikhail Khodorkovsky was destroyed by the government was that he turned up for a meeting at the Kremlin wearing a polo-neck.

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Conversation

Aussie rules

Interest in sport is universal, so it pays to be aware of attention-grabbing events in specific areas, such as Wimbledon for tennis, the Tour de France for cycling, the US Open for golf or Manila's World Slasher Cup for cockfighting. In Australia, however, sport comes close to being the national religion. If you're male, Australians will assume that you share their passion. And not just for their teams and leagues, but yours, too. As with all religions, this sacred activity is not to be mocked. There are no jokes about losing the Ashes, for example – to make one as a visiting Pommie might be to put yourself in a life-threatening situation.

About face

Saving "face" – or the dignity of yourself and others – is central throughout the Middle and Far East. Losing your temper in a meeting or in public, for example, is a shameful loss of face: if you do this in Asia, you'll be neither trusted nor respected. Being confrontational, insulting people, calling attention to someone's error or otherwise creating embarrassment will all result in a loss of face – both for you and your counterpart. In short: you should never do anything in the East that makes you or anyone else look foolish.

On a trivial level, this can lead to some comic extremes. If you're out in a bar in South Korea with a group of business associates and buy a particular brand of beer, you may find that all those with you will do the same, so there's absolutely no danger of you "losing face" over your choice. The trick here is to let them have one round the same as you before graciously suggesting everyone should choose their own brand.

PBUH

Talking about sex is a taboo in Muslim countries, and dirty jokes a total no-no. If mention is made of the Prophet Mohammed, it should be followed by the words "Peace be upon him", which is generally shortened to "PBUH" in written communications.

Divided by a common language

Even within one language, words have different meanings in different places. In Spain, adios means "goodbye"; in Cuba and some parts of South America, the same word is used as a "Hi, hello" to passers-by. In France, bonjour means "hello"; in Quebec, people say it as they leave. In Portugal, bicha is a "queue"; in Brazil, it means "gay". If you are constipada in Lisbon, you have a cold; in Rio, you have a long time to read the newspaper.

Drinks

Raise a toast

There are local variations everywhere. In Switzerland you must clink glasses with everyone within reach before drinking. In Japan you should never fill your own glass; wait for your neighbour to offer, and when his is half-empty, fill it in return. In China, if your host proposes a toast, you must immediately reciprocate with one of your own. In Germany an old superstition holds that if you don't look into your counterpart's eyes when clinking glasses, seven years of bad sex will follow.

Sobering thoughts

The Chinese will expect you to drink a lot. If you don't want to follow "Ganbei!" with the customary single gulp, say "Suiyi!" ("As you like!"), which allows each of you to sip instead.

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Dinner parties

Am I the first?

If you're invited to dinner at 7pm in Germany, that means 7pm; anything after 7.15 and you'll be thought impolite, even if the invite is for the light cold-cuts collation they call Abendbrot (evening bread) as opposed to the more substantial Abendessen (evening meal) which may also be eaten out in a restaurant.

In France, you may stretch the quart d'heure académique a little, but don't be so late that you miss any of your hostess's carefully orchestrated series of courses.

In Latin America, unless you want to catch your hosts in their curlers, it's not just fashionable but essential to be unpunctual. Turning up to dinner bang on time in Argentina implies that you're greedy. The same is true in Singapore.

Time to tuck in

The world eats, in any case, at very different times. Poles breakfast well and early, then often have nothing till obiad, between 2 and 4pm. Japanese salarymen may scoff a bowl of noodles at lunchtime, but they'll be hungry by 5 or 6pm and ready for something more substantial (though those with a long commute may not get to eat till nine). Americans who still sit down together have their dinner early, around 6 or 6.30 pm, while most Europeans wait till 7.30 or 8pm. If you're asked for dinner at 8pm in Brazil, beware – you probably won't see a main course till 10 or 11pm, if not later.

Goat's eye soup? delicious!

If at some point during a meal you are offered the local delicacy, it's important to accept, even if it makes you sick to your back teeth just to look at the baleful goat's eye on your plate.

Be it bear's paw soup in China, cat or dog stew in Korea, rat pudding in Arunachal Pradesh, in India – to be offered such dishes is always a rare honour, if not an important sign of acceptance.

Second helping?

In Arab countries you will always be offered more food when you've emptied your plate. You will be asked to take more two or three times, in a ritual known as the uzooma. You should refuse the first time; the host will insist and you should refuse again; the host will insist again and then you should give in. If you really don't want more, leave something on your plate.

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Business

Pick a card...

In the UK, handing over a business card to a new contact or potential associate is a fairly relaxed matter. You may well need to be in touch with each other – so here's your card. If you've forgotten it, it's no huge problem; an email address or a contact number can be scrawled on a scrap of paper, an old receipt or even a beermat.

But in many places, and particularly the East, the exchange of cards is a highly formalised procedure. In China, for example, your card should be taken from the breast or hip pocket of your jacket (never your trouser pocket) and offered with both hands, to the most senior person first.

In Japan, when presented with a card – or meishi – study it for a few seconds before putting it away carefully (ideally in a smart leather card wallet). Stuffing it in a back pocket will be seen as a mark of disrespect, while dropping it is an outright insult. Your card is an extension of your person, and should be in the best nick possible. Your counterpart may well bow on the exchange, and though there's no need to bow back, it's polite to drop your head in an acknowledging nod. Should he hiss though his teeth, don't worry: this merely indicates that he considers you important.

If you're then attending a meeting together, the thing to do is to line up the cards you've been given in front of you, corresponding to Suzuki-san and Koizumi-san on the opposite side. Not producing a card will be seen as a sign that you're not interested in continuing the business relationship.

And now... our four key points

When making presentations in the Far East, be aware of auspicious colours and numbers. Avoid that unlucky green or funereal blue in PowerPoint presentations in China; and four of anything there or in Japan is just as unlucky in business as in leisure time. If you're going to make key points make them in threes, sixes or eights. If all goes well in China and you get applause for your presentation, the form, as at the entrance to a banquet, is to applaud back.

Eyes wide shut

In Japan, sitting with your eyes closed during meetings is common and is not in any way an insult. That person may well be concentrating hard to understand your English or the words of the interpreter. Or he may just have nodded off; this isn't unusual and shouldn't be taken personally. In Asia generally, eye contact is at a minimum, and a full-on, direct stare could be interpreted as an attempt to intimidate your counterpart or to "stare them down". Not so in the Arab world and the Mediterranean, where the reverse is the case: it's important to hold eye contact as an expression of interest; someone who doesn't meet your eye may be regarded as evasive, even untrustworthy.

Meeting in the middle

Negotiating tactics vary radically around the world. The bottom line, internationally, is that you will only be sure of getting what you want if you're prepared to walk away, but the path to that crunch point is a very varied one.

The Chinese, for example, are always polite but will haggle expertly and for as long as it takes to get the deal they want.

Flattery, exaggerated demands, meaningless concessions, false deadlines – anything is fair game. But remember, this is a culture whose philosophical basis comes not just from Confucius but Lao Tsu, who taught that the key to life was to find the tao – or "way" – between two opposing forces, the middle ground.

In Russia, by contrast, willingness to compromise is seen as a sign of weakness (if not, in fact, morally wrong). So, if you are trying to suggest such a thing, better to talk about meeting each other half-way or making your proposal conditional on an equivalent concession, rather than using the dread word kompromiss. And don't be put out if you find your counterparts theatrically confrontational.

"Face" is not a consideration here. In order to get their way Russians may use all kinds of strategies, from showing exaggerated patience to the staging of temper tantrums and walk-outs. Delaying tactics, pressure and threats are all a normal part of the horse-trading that is Russian negotiation.

Silence is golden

When negotiating in Gulf countries, be prepared for the strategic use of silence. Arabs are well used to periods of communal quiet in all kinds of meetings but know how embarrassed Westerners can be made by it. If you sense that this tactic is being employed deliberately, fight fire with fire – fall silent in return.

Lost in translation

Even when negotiations are over and contracts are signed, there is still plenty of room for disaster when operating in a new and unfamiliar culture. When Coca-Cola first launched in China, shopkeepers trying to come up with characters that sounded like ko-ka ko-la ended up with a name that meant "bite the wax tadpole".

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Dating

Over the hill... At 30?

In the West, dating was traditionally a stage on the road to marriage. Some cultures developed customs to emphasise this. In Germany there's still a charming event where individuals who have reached the age of 30 and not got hitched are publicly punished. Accompanied by their friends, the offenders are taken to a local church, town hall or opera house, where the men are made to sweep the steps while the women have to clean shoe polish-covered door handles. They can only be released from these onerous tasks when kissed by a virgin of the opposite sex, possibly one who may release them from their offensive state of singledom. An all-night party generally follows.

Here comes the groom

In most places the groom stands waiting for the bride, who traditionally arrives late enough to hold up the ceremony. If you should find yourself in El Salvador, however, don't be alarmed if the wedding starts without her. This is normal. As she finally enters the church, the congregation breaks into the nuptial song.

At Hindu weddings it's the bride who waits for the groom and his party, who arrive in a procession; by foot, on horseback, or even – as in the cliché – on an elephant. Should you ever find yourself in this invidious position, you must remember to bring a garland for your bride and a coconut for her mother.

source: www.independent.co.uk (Mark McCrum)

Luxury Gardens

The Vegetable Patch Goes Luxe

Homeowners Hire Experts to Install Lavish
Gardens; Why the Help Gets the Bounty

By ELLEN GAMERMAN
July 25, 2008; Page W8

Home vegetable gardening is surging thanks to rising food prices and health scares with commercial supplies. But at the rarified end of this horticultural renaissance is a world of backyard produce that has more in common with designer boutiques than the local farm stand.

Some people are paying tens of thousands of dollars to have landscape architects design and install elaborate vegetable gardens. These homeowners regard their plots as edible showplaces, where they take guests on tours of manicured beds of baby bok choy and Japonica maize the way others show off their koi ponds and rose bushes.

But since many homeowners have these gardens installed at second homes they rarely visit, or are away from their garden for weeks while on vacation, the owners may not even be around to enjoy the bounty.

Rick Norling spent $10,000 to have a vegetable garden created on his property in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., earlier this year. He turned to the elegant gardens at the French palace of Versailles to help inspire the plan that he and his designer put together. It features raised beds of haricot vert, squash and 12 varieties of heirloom tomatoes. But Mr. Norling, who is known for wowing dinner guests by drizzling truffle oil over homegrown lettuce, doesn't toil in the dirt every weekend. Before a recent three-week trip to China with his wife, Mr. Norling, the chief executive of the nonprofit-hospital alliance Premier, invited his landscaper to harvest the vegetables and eat them himself. "He thought it was real heaven," he says.

Greg Hebert Landscape Architect

A blueprint that inspired Rick Norling's garden in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., was based in part on the gardens at the palace of Versailles in France.

At Garden of Ideas, a landscape-design firm in Ridgefield, Conn., owner Joe Keller says he recently completed a $60,000 garden at a weekend house in North Salem, N.Y. Mr. Keller says he tends the plots during the week, and the stable workers who care for the owner's horses often get the vegetables.

In Newport, R.I., landscape architect Kate Field says she is designing three times as many vegetable and herb gardens for luxury properties as a decade ago. Clients pay roughly $50,000 for installations that feature distinctive touches -- such as granite-edged vegetable beds, fish ponds, sculptures and grapevines wound like topiaries. Edible plants are arranged by color, height and texture, similar to the way garden designers lay out flowers and shrubs.

Clients' culinary tastes also influence garden installations. San Diego landscape architect Greg Hebert says the personal chef of one of his clients asked Mr. Hebert to include kaffir lime trees and lemongrass at the family's California property so they can enjoy homemade Thai meals when they aren't at their homes in Miami and New York City.

Peter Wynn Thompson/Getty Images for The Wall Street Journal

Maureen Carson of Golf, Ill., asked her husband for a vegetable garden for her 50th birthday. It cost about $70,000.

Until recently, Maureen Carson had to roll back a chicken-wire fence to get to her vegetable garden in Golf, Ill. She spent hours on her hands and knees ripping out weeds and trying to control the oregano choking her tomatoes and rhubarb. As her 50th birthday approached, Dr. Carson told her husband, Robert, she didn't want a European vacation or diamonds. She wanted a professionally designed kitchen garden.

Last fall, Dr. Carson watched as a more than $70,000 landscaping plan went into effect. Her landscaper, Craig Bergmann Landscape Design in Wilmette, Ill., put in 14 raised beds lined with stone or cedar; three rustic wooden gates; eight hazel-stem obelisks to support climbing vines; a gazebo; wooden fences that support apple and pear trees that are trained to grow flat; an irrigation system and a small orchard with plum, peach and cherry trees. But the designer left the vegetable beds empty, allowing Dr. Carson to plant whatever she pleased. "That's the fun part," she says.

Dr. Carson, an obstetrician-gynecologist, says the garden will help her fill the time while waiting for her patients to go into labor. The garden is so elaborate and satisfying that she and her husband have ditched plans for a pool or a second home. "Now we have this beautiful garden so there's never any reason to go anywhere else," she says.

Some real-estate agents say vegetable gardens are a selling point at upscale properties that can rank alongside Viking ranges and imported-tile baths. Connie Antoniou, a broker in North Barrington, Ill., recently showed a $1.2 million house with a pool, but it was the vegetable garden that particularly caught the eyes of one couple. They "spent quite a bit of time" walking along it, Ms. Antoniou says. "It's an asset to the house." The family moved in two weeks ago.

High-end vegetable patches -- some call them by the French term "potager" -- are also becoming popular spots for entertaining. Lin Lavery, a recently elected town selectman, or council member, in Greenwich, Conn., says she plans to invite members of the town's environmental task force to her home for a dinner party this summer. Before she serves soup made with homegrown leeks, she'll give them a tour of her garden.

Gerardo Somoza for The Wall Street Journal

Lin Lavery's vegetable garden in Greenwich, Conn., is so elaborate she gives guests tours -- and lets them take produce.

That wouldn't have happened four years ago, when Ms. Lavery was gardening in a former dog pen enclosed by a chain-link fence. Now, her garden sports stone and cedar fencing -- part of a $15,000 landscaping job. She has planted six kinds of lettuce in a pattern using red and green leaves. She won't plant corn -- "It's messy," she says -- and favors organic vegetables with photogenic foliage, like asparagus, cabbage and eggplant. But she realizes vegetables aren't just for show. At parties, she often catches guests admiring her produce, and she knows what that means: "I say, 'Help yourself,' " she says.