Amazing Treehouses I'd actually live in

Okay, so maybe I wouldn't live in all of these, but definitely most of them. The rest are just amazing to look at. With all the leaves budding on the trees I've been looking up a lot, and it would be oh so nice to just wake up in the tree tops!

A victorian in the trees...
via Treehouse workshop

via Lovely Happenings

a petite castle
via Tree--houses

how dreamy to wake up here!


a beautiful tree house "tent," a rentable getaway in Australia.
via travelnine msn


This gorgeous organic structure was funded by yellowbook, and used to be open to the public as a restaurant.
via yellowbook

An adorable "cottagey" treehouse






ok, so not livable - but very cool regardless

via Flickr


This reminds me of Gisele's treehouse in Enchanted.
via A Soft Place to Land



via Apartment Therapy



And last, but not least, this treehouse is very dear to my heart. My grandfather built this for my sisters and I on our farm on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland . We loved it and I'm happy to see it still stands, though I'm not sure if the current owners use it.

Check out my guest post over at dwellings and decor

Rachel over at dwellings and decor was one of my first blogging friends, so I was very touched when she asked me to guest post while she's on her fabulous honeymoon.

Spring is being a tease up here in NYC. It’ll be a lovely 64 degrees one day and then we wake up in the morning to find it’s turned 38 degrees and rainy. Needless to say lots of us are suffering colds, sleepiness, and other ailments that come with rapid weather changes. However, to keep the optimism and hope alive, I turn to light and airy interiors for some cheering up, and those with generous splashes of green seem to be best at bringing a smile to my face….

I really like the look of the crisp black and white pillow and blanket against this pale green…




via Better Homes and Gardens


Mix and match bedding has to be up there in my top 5 decorating styles!
via Real Simple




via Domino



Go check out more of Rachel's lovely dwellings and decor here!

Bee Friendly and Save the Hives

The bees are welcome in my garden and we are fortunate to have three feral (wild) bee hives located within three miles of our home. How do we know?

A friend of ours, Ronnie Bouchon, is a beekeeper of managed hives. He created and supports a website called Save the Hives in an effort to help protect feral bee hives. The site includes a map of hive locations. Our neighbors registered their hives for the Feral Bee Project and that's how we discovered the homes of our visiting bees. You can check the map to see if there are hives located in your area. The Save the Hives site includes information about how to "beeline" to find the location of hives. If you have located a feral hive, you can also register it on the site.

A guest column, Let's Hear It for the Bees, in the New York Times provides a fascinating story about how the bees know when flowers produce nectar:

Flowers of a given species all produce nectar at about the same time each day, as this increases the chances of cross-pollination. The trick works because pollinators, which in most cases means the honeybee, concentrate foraging on a particular species into a narrow time-window. In effect the honeybee has a daily diary that can include as many as nine appointments — say, 10:00 a.m., lilac; 11:30 a.m., peonies; and so on. The bees’ time-keeping is accurate to about 20 minutes.

Here are a few of the plants in my garden that are loved by bees (and butterflies):

achillea
agastache
azalea
buddleia
echinacea
echinops
fennel
lantana
lavender
nepeta
oakleaf holly
petunia
magnolia
monarda
roses
rosemary
salvia
sedum
verbena
vitex

Of course, there are many more nectar plants than what I am growing. Gardeners who grow vegetables and fruit are providing nectar for the bees. There are also food sources among the wild flowering native plants, weeds and clover, too.

Gardeners love to have colorful blooms in spring, summer and fall. We have a great reason to go buy more nectar plants - we need to provide bees, both managed and feral, with blooms during these seasons, too!

Photo and story by Freda Cameron

A New Volunteer in the Garden

No, I don't have any human volunteers to help me pull weeds. But, I have an interesting volunteer plant that I've been watching since June of 2008.



I posted a photo of this patch of leaves on a garden forum last summer trying to determine whether or not is was a weed. Most felt that it was a weed. However, I thought the leaves resembled verbascum, so I left it alone and have been watching over it ever since.

The verbascum 'Southern Charm' that grows in my garden is not supposed to seed. Therefore, I began to question whether or not my mystery plant was verbascum. Still, I was patient and waited.

Last week, the plant suddenly started growing. Soon, it took the form of two plants in my butterfly garden. Both are salvia nemorosa varieties 'Caradonna' and 'Marcus' - both have purple blooms. I posted a question on a salvia forum to ask how to tell which one was the parent. Before a person could answer my question, the plant sprouted a bloom overnight.

From the green stem color, I was able to determine that 'Marcus' is the parent as the 'Caradonna' has dark, almost black stems (and grows twice as high). There are now several of these welcome 'Marcus' offspring sprouting up in my butterfly garden. These plants are loved by butterflies and by hummingbirds.



Salvia nemorosa 'Marcus' is a short 12" high salvia that will bloom off and on through the summer with deadheading. It is blooming early this year, probably due to the 90°F temperatures that we've been having over the last week. This salvia is rated for zones 4-8 and is deer and rabbit resistant as well as drought-tolerant.

It took a year of watching and waiting, but now I'm glad that I didn't pull out this mystery plant. Time reveals so much.

When you're weeding a garden, how do you tell the difference between a weed and a wanted plant? I've always heard that if you see the same seedling all over your garden, it's probably a weed. If you see a seedling that's unique to one section of the garden, it MAY be a welcome plant.

Story and photos by Freda Cameron

A STUNNING Victorian Restoration

Tattersall Love says "A striking Victorian renovation which retains period features, but offers an all-white backdrop to bold colour and pattern accents, successfully juxtaposing quirky vintage finds with more contemporary designs. The bathroom features a marble tiled wall and very modern fittings alongside its ethnic furniture pieces and the kitchen opens onto a wrought iron balcony which leads in turn down to the ivy strewn courtyard garden."

Check it out below -


My bedroom is a similar blue and I love it!


very nice salon-style wall

*heart* the fireplace!



woah! woah! That blue cupboard!! I have to get something that beautiful color...

Have No Sphere? Grow Alliums

I've admired alliums for years, but have deliberated on how to use them in the garden. There are different colors, heights and bloom sizes. One allium, appropriately named 'Globe Master' has blooms that are ten inches across!

A cottage gardener friend successfully inspired me with her plantings of alliums and irises. Last fall, I planted allium aflatunense 'Purple Sensation' (zones 4-10) with iris x hollandica 'Rosario' (zones 4-9) in several groupings around my garden. This is the first bloom season and I must say that I've totally fallen for this combination of Dutch irises with alliums! Of course, my plantings need a few more years to mature and fill in the space that I've allotted, but I'm already convinced that I must have more alliums.

I have planted several groupings outside the fence since both the Dutch iris and alliums are deer resistant. I have sown annual seeds along the areas with the intention of hiding the fading foliage of these bulbs when the annuals bloom later.

'Purple Sensation' is a wonderful purple (see smaller photo of same allium that was taken in dim light versus the bright sunlight in the photo with the iris) with blooms that are four inches across.

Inside the cottage garden, I have planted the irises and alliums with my Knock Out® Roses. To hide the bulb foliage when it begins to fade, I had the idea that a mass planting of hardy geranium 'Rozanne' (perennial) would do the trick.

Well, the rabbits feasted on the geraniums over the winter, so I have only three tiny little plants left out of nine. The plants are tiny (they were large last year) because the rabbits ate them down to the ground. What I don't understand is why the rabbits haven't touched my geranium 'Brookside' that are planted along another path in the cottage garden. Of course, the rabbits know that 'Rozanne' is more expensive than 'Brookside' and they have exquisite taste when it comes to plants.

On our Sunday walk through Sarah P. Duke Gardens, there were even more alliums and combinations to inspire me. I'll be watching the performance of my 'Purple Sensation' and start putting together a wish list for planting additional alliums this fall.



Story and photos by Freda Cameron

Can you pick? 3 pretty apartments up for a prize...

Skona Hem holds a monthly contest where readers can vote on the most inspiring homes of other readers... I decided to compile some of the entries here to see what you guys thought!

House A: bright, open, and airy





House B: comfy, feminine, and cheerful







House C: luxurious, textural, elegant:




I'm so glad purple has been getting the love it deserved recently!


I'm leaning towards B because it feels a little warmer to me, and more realistic to maintain. I'm open to persuasion though!
via Skona Hem