travel-inspired design – MarvinGardensUSA

The Beauty Behind a Rain Garden

The beauty behind a rain garden is not only aesthetically pleasing for your yard but it’s also beneficial for the environment. You can assist your community by reducing the amount of stormwater pollution you produce, and using that water instead to benefit your gardens. A rain garden is even easy to build and very affordable as well.

Building a rain garden allows for rainwater to be captured from your property. The water that comes down from the roof, driveway, and sidewalks is then transferred to a garden that allows for a slow absorption into the ground. Rain gardens are typically dug four to eight inches deep, allowing them to hold a great deal of water at one time. Pollutants are filtered out at a higher rate than your lawn would and in turn your garden will flourish, sustaining itself.

The beauty of a rain garden runs deep. These gardens are a lovely and beneficial choice for personal use and even for an entire community’s use, as they are often used to provide drinking water for communities. Simply put, a rain garden is a wonderful way to boost the unique attributes of your home garden while helping to sustain our environment.

Image via Guardian

Inspiration in the Form of Sculptures

When you think of outdoor art, what sort of items come to mind? You might imagine a beautifully designed landscape, a detailed, over-sized fountain, or even a simple field of flowers. For Henry Moore, his sights were set on creating naturally-themed art with outdoor sculptures.

Seen as one of the 20^th century’s most respectable sculptors, Moore designed pieces that were both primitive in nature and modern for his time. His priority was to create art that could be enjoyed in an outdoor setting that would bring out the sculpture’s earth-like characteristics. He once said, “Sculpture is an art of the open air.”

His passion for this sculpture art led him to win numerous awards and for his work to be featured in dozens of galleries. His work is a tribute to the notion that our outdoor spaces are the perfect place to display our passion for creativity! For inspiration, simply visit our shop at Marvin Gardens.

Source The Artist Who Loved Nature

Images via Henry Moore Foundation on Veranda

A Centennial Celebration of the National Cherry Blossom Festival!

One of the hallmarks of the spring season that we look forward to each year is the blooming of the cherry blossom tree. You might recall that the National Cherry Blossom Festival is held each year to celebrate these beautiful trees and the history of their place here in the U.S.

Almost a century ago, the mayor of Tokyo presented Washington, DC with the gift of 3,000 cherry trees to signify the friendship held between Japan and the United States. Since then, the nation has celebrated the occasion with “the nation’s greatest springtime celebration,” the National Cherry Blossom Festival, which is currently underway.

In honor of this year’s Festival’s Centennial Celebration, a vote is even being held for the nation to decide America’s Favorite Cherry Tree. Americans are asked to choose the Autumn Flowering Cherry, the Yoshino Cherry, or the Kwansan Cherry as their favorite. Then, at the conclusion of the Festival and on Arbor Day, April 27th, the winning tree will be announced.

What do you think about the cherry trees? Share your thoughts with us below!

Image via ccho

How Will You Use Your Storage Bins?

There are few things in our homes that have a fantastic assortment of uses and can be used in many ways. Can you think of some of those things? It’s likely that baskets or some other type of storage tops your list. And why not? Those items create a beautiful way to display things, store things, and can even be set aside as general décor. Every once in a while something catches our eye and we get excited about its possibilities all over again. Such is the case with our industrial bins here at Marvin Gardens.

Can you guess some of the bold pieces we have at Marvin Gardens?

The industrial bins that we carry can be used as beautiful planters or as storage bins for wood. They can even be used for kindling and recycling – it all comes down to how creative you’d like to be. What’s more, our storage bins even have an interesting history. To learn more about the storage bins and our other unique designs, stop by to see us!

Subscribe to Marvin Gardens’ Blog and Receive Posts in Your E-mail!

Keep up with all the latest blog posts from Marvin Gardens the minute they’re out! By subscribing to the blog, you can receive our posts through your e-mail account.

To begin receiving our posts, you must register your e-mail address with us. You can register by submitting your e-mail address in the subscription box on the blog’s homepage. You’ll get a subscription confirmation in your inbox, which you need to read in order to activate the subscription.

Once you are registered, you will receive an e-mail from Google’s FeedBurner each time we post new information on our blog. From the e-mail, you can read the post in your inbox or choose to visit our blog directly.

Follow these simple steps and you’re done!

Follow HM Oliver Interiors on Twitter!!

Are you already following HM Oliver Interiors on Twitter? If not, check us out at @HMOliverInter !!

Get Inspired!

When you take a vacation to a new destination — be it exotic or simply different from where you live your daily life — there are plenty of adventures waiting to transpire. Maybe you take pleasure in seeing the architecture, savoring new foods, or hearing a different language. Maybe you just like the experience of a different culture and the feeling you get when listening to music and entertainment that is completely different from your own. Or maybe for you, the best part of traveling just might be the fact that it provides heaps of decorating inspiration! If so, voyage cautiously — there are definitely some common mistakes you’ll want to steer clear of.

Home Envy has put together a great DOs and DON’Ts list for travel-inspired decorating for those of you hoping to recreate that dream destination atmosphere right at home.

A few of our favorites are:

DO make room for furnishings that look well-traveled or well-loved. A Turkish table with inlaid mother-of-pearl and ivory suggests a trip to Morocco or Turkey, while a vintage trunk may have traveled on the Queen Mary.

DON’T copy any regional style literally or you run the risk of developing “Epcot Syndrome”. Santa Fe style looks perfectly appropriate in New Mexico and works very well in Arizona and Los Angeles, but it may fall somewhat short in eastern Canada where geography and light are vastly different. Terracotta tiles, Navajo rugs, and religious iconography can however mix well (and look appropriate) when combined with other classic American-style furnishings.

Click here for the compete list.