Friday 24 October 2014

Baby it's cold outside

The weather! Oh my what a past couple of days; the tail end of an ex-hurricane is more than enough for this girl. It's really starting to feel like the dreaded winter now with the darker nights starting to draw in, the wind having a bite to it and the grey and rainy skies. I believe the clocks may even turn back this Sunday but I try not to listen to such terrible news.

So I wanted to talk about bringing the outdoors inside instead with the use of houseplants and I have a book here that illustrates that idea beautifully.


Those lovely people at Quarto Publishing sent this book for me to review 'Decorating with Plants' by Satoshi Kawamoto. I must say first off that it is a beautiful book to look through and I do believe in the author's ethos of enriching our lives by transforming the way we relate to flora and fauna in everyday life.

The blurb is thus - ' Using his own house as a studio, garden stylist Satoshi Kawamoto guides you around each room in the home, demonstrating how to incorporate a variety of plant life seamlessly indoors.' However, his house we are nosing around is, to me, is unrealistically arty, cluttered and claustrophobic (the step ladder on the front cover is in his dining room for instance). Just my opinion but with my double vision I would not be able to cope to his decorating ideas as presented...but one or two things out of each section - yes I love and would do.


To be extremely honest I just couldn't get into the book and thought the ideas worked the best in his high end shops in Tokyo and New York; here the spaces were urban oases and there seemed a feel of a beautiful jumble of gorgeousness - it would be a delight to find that special something to take home.

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Personally (if I wasn't such a liability), I would love more plants indoors but I also encourage the use of fragranced candles, bouquets of flowers and daylight simulation bulbs - they are my go to tricks and they really work.

Hugs and love
Carrie

3 comments:

  1. I'm glad of your honest reflections on the decorating styles recommended. I find indoor plants to be a huge liability with my cats. They tend to harbor more bugs (at least here in my climate zone) than I would like to manage. But maybe if either of us ever gets to live in high-end lofts, we'll employ one or two of these ideas!

    Hope that hurricane's gone for good.

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  2. It's sure is heading towards armchair gardening season. I think that a garden stylist has to have the right kind of house to show off the plants, and I agree with what Nikki says.
    I was please to grow a few coleus for the window sill this year, and will try a couple of plants from seed next year. Take care. Flighty xx

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  3. My first thoughts on the photos were ' he thinks THAT is uncluttered!' Also it doesn't look like an ordinary sized house - if I had a stepladder in my dining room we couldn't get a table in. You do realise that you are likely to be blacklisted and be strucj of the reviewers list.

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