Kendra Wilson

Oxford

Garden and Design Writer at Freelance

Articles

Tom Massey's Garden at the 2025 Chelsea Flower Show Features a Pavilion Made of Mycelium and Wood

2 weeks ago | gardenista.com | Kendra Wilson

“With a show like this, you have an opportunity to be experimental,” says furniture maker Sebastian Cox of the pavilion he made with Je Ahn, of Studio Weave, for the Tom Massey-designed Avanade Intelligence Garden. The brief from Avanade and Microsoft, the show garden’s sponsors, was to highlight the benefits of using AI for improving the survival rate of urban trees, one third of which don’t live past their first year, and half of which will last only 10 years.
Top Garden Design Trends from this Year's Show

2 weeks ago | gardenista.com | Kendra Wilson

Sussing out plant trends at a garden show is a bit of a fool’s errand since colors and shapes are largely dictated by other factors besides the zeitgeist—such as what the main growers have on offer and the time of year. That said, at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, purple (Salvia caradonna), pale yellow (Trollius x culturum ‘Cheddar’), and a lot of green foliage dominate the palette, with every tree a fine, multi-branched specimen and every bit of substrate inviting closer examination.
Niwaki x Newt's Garden Pouch Is Chic Enough to Use as Purse

4 weeks ago | gardenista.com | Kendra Wilson

Sometimes it just takes a color, or a repositioning of a label, to elevate an item from great to need-to-have-now. The new iteration of Niwaki’s classic pouch, part of a collaboration with the Newt in Somerset, is more covetable than even the ultimate tool bag. It’s my new purse, or as my mother used to call it, pocketbook. Or as Brits call it, handbag. Whichever, part of its appeal is that it can be diagonally strapped across the body and worn around town, without making me look like a tourist.
Rethinking Artemesia's Status as a Weed

2 months ago | gardenista.com | Kendra Wilson

The name “mugwort” in the US is a signifier for “invasive,” but when grown purposefully, the aromatic section of the Artemisia genus has much to recommend it. Some species are native in regions of the western United States and are much loved by ecological gardeners, while others are grown for their feathery or felty foliage. Southernwood or wormwood, sagebrush or artemisia (which is what it’s called in the UK), mugwort has many guises.
Reinstate Ben & Jerry’s CEO David Stever

2 months ago | change.org | Kendra Wilson

Recent signers Tarek El Halabi•39 seconds ago Marisa Tamari•2 minutes ago Summer Munoz•2 minutes ago Dylan Ahearn•4 minutes ago Patrick Mathew•5 minutes ago Devon Aurand•5 minutes ago Rania Kanj•12 minutes ago Jana Posner•13 minutes ago Donna Macomber-Cassidy•15 minutes ago Morgan McKeen•17 minutes ago Robin Somers•18 minutes ago Jean Phillips•19 minutes ago Andrea Pierrottet•19 minutes ago Rose Kelly•20 minutes ago Samantha Hargrove•24 minutes ago mariah d•26 minutes ago Chris Gifford•30...
How to Grow Ribes Sanguineum

2 months ago | gardenista.com | Kendra Wilson

Flowering currant is a classic example of a serviceable American plant that, when transported to different continents, takes on a personality that is unrecognizable. In the UK, Ribes sanguineum has an old-fashioned British garden look, primly clothed in pendant racemes of magenta. Traditionally they have been paired to clash with the solid yellows of spring, supplied by shrubby forsythia and King Alfred daffodils.
Save Elizabeth Street Garden, Lower East Side's Most Charming Park

Feb 12, 2025 | gardenista.com | Kendra Wilson

It’s a crucial moment in the fight to save Elizabeth Street Garden. A hearing for the appeal against a decision to allow the city to evict and close the garden was heard last week, and the jury is literally out. Will the eccentric, much-loved and—most importantly—much-used garden be saved, or will it be lost forever to development? As a former resident who would make detours just to pass this intriguing space, I can say that this isn’t just a knee-jerk “not in my backyard” reaction.
'Not Really a Garden at All"

Jan 29, 2025 | gardenista.com | Kendra Wilson

The gardeners featured in Pastoral Gardens, a weighty new compendium that has been self-published by photographer Andrew Montgomery and garden editor Clare Foster, are mainly British. But when the pair crossed the Atlantic to document several East Coast landscapes designed by European superstars, they also took in White Hollow, a five-acre property in Litchfield County, Connecticut, owned and looked after by the artist John-Paul Philippe.
A Photography Exhibit Featuring Dreamy Flowers

Jan 24, 2025 | gardenista.com | Kendra Wilson

Anyone traveling into New York City from one of the nearby airports can see that here is a natural wetland—one that happens to support millions of people. Rivers and waterways define the lay of the land, feeding into the very close Atlantic Ocean. So photographer Mary Mattingly’s Night Gardens (now showing at Robert Mann Gallery on 26th Street), in which groupings of plants are imagined in a riparian environment, is very much connected with reality.
A Visit to the Herb and Medicinal Urban Garden

Dec 31, 2024 | gardenista.com | Kendra Wilson

A mead refresher: This alcoholic bracer made from fermented honey has medieval associations. Paired in the fermenting process with any combination of botanicals, unusual fruit and wild yeasts, modern mead can be sparkling, frizzante, dry, sweet, or a star performer in cocktails. Mead in its many forms can be sampled at Honey’s Bar, the tasting room of Enlightenment Wines Meadery in Bushwick, Brooklyn.