Gardenig in San Francisco. Tips & Guides

Christian Petersen / Getty Images

Pale brick pavers, laid in a herringbone pattern, run from the open-plan ground floor out into the garden, creating a seamless transition between the two spaces.

Jason Donnelly

While we’ve been tracking the 2024 colors of the year for quite some time now, it’s recently come to our attention that there’s another design category worth keeping an eye on for the year ahead: pattern.

On October 9, 2023, Travis Gienger from Anoka, Minnesota, set the world record for the heaviest pumpkin, weighing 2749 pounds. The record was previously held by Stefano Cutrupi with a pumpkin weighing 2708.8 lbs. Gienger had already established the U.S. record in the previous year with a 2560-pounder and in 2020 with one weighing 2350 pounds.

With 2023 drawing to a close, interior designers and design enthusiasts alike are already looking ahead to the New Year and the trends that are expected to be big. From trending colors to lighting trends, living room trends, bathroom trends, and more, design experts are excitedly preparing for what 2024 will bring.

Cake stands are timeless, versatile, and stellar centerpieces for any table. Whether you top them with seasonal decor, plants, charcuterie, jewelry, or dessert, our best cake stands never go out of style. 

As we inch closer to 2024, we're eager to see what trends will reign supreme in the design world, especially when it comes to bedrooms.

Leonardo Marino / Getty Images

Header image: Suited up to simulate the conditions of working outside on Mars. Jonathan Clarke (the author, left) with visiting engineer Michael Curtis-Rouse, from UK Space Agency (right). Jonathan Clarke personal collection, Author provided.

ANNIE SCHLECHTER

Just because our attention is focused on keeping things steady (ahem, alive) in the garden this deep into the summer, it doesn’t mean we should neglect our leafy loved ones who live indoors—especially if you have travel plans! Houseplants have special needs every season, but summer heat and time away come with their own set of challenges. 

Have you ever heard that planting a small garden is like writing a short story instead of a novel? Well, I hadn’t either—until Los Angeles designer Adam Sirak said it—and I think it’s brilliant. “Some people might think they can’t have an amazing garden or that it’s not worth the trouble because they don’t have a big space,” Sirak says. “But a small space only means you have to take all your ideas and distill them down to a concentrated big idea.” He adds that, as with a short story, there’s no room for filler, and each choice must be thought of in relationship to the whole. “In this way, a small space can be a very exciting puzzle to put together,” he says.  

This functional rooftop garden in London has vegetables and herbs growing in containers and raised beds/planter boxes that are movable.

The backstory: About 20 years ago my longtime friend and fellow garden writer Ken Druse and I were working on a book about native plants, called “The Natural Habitat Garden,” and I joined Ken as he traveled around the country photographing natives, in nature and in gardens.One of our wildest stops was up in Sebastopol, California, at California Carnivores, which has been open and dedicated to cultivating these dramatics plants–including various native American species–since 1989.  (A highly recommended destination if you are near San Francisco.) In 1998, Peter wrote “The Savage Garden,” but a lot has changed in carnivores in 15 years since the first edition–and even more so in the 40 years D’Am

If you have not “met” Heidi, she lives, cooks, and writes in San Francisco, where she began 101 Cookbooks in early 2003. It quickly grew into one of the most-visited food blogs, with a look and approach that’s at once ultra-modern and old-style homey, not unlike the food she prepares.Heidi won’t proselytize or badger with her vegetarian philosophy in her book or online, but rather draws you into a happy day of Yogurt Biscuits or a handsome Frittata of seasonal produce and goat cheese, with a stop perhaps at Chanterelle Tacos—use any mushroom you like—along the way to a savory supper (Stuffed Tomatoes loaded with couscous, or Weeknight Curry with a splash of coconut milk, anyone?).  These are recipes that take only a couple of short paragraphs to expla

THE ADVENTURE IN Mollie Katzen’s “The Heart of the Plate: Vegetarian Recipes for a New Generation,” begins even before the first recipe page. It starts in the delicious, intimate endpapers—which came from illustrated journals that the author has been keeping since she was a teenager, which were also the origin of her beloved, bestselling “Moosewood Cookbook.” The musings (that’s one in the photo above), in drawings and hand-lettered words, speak to how Mollie—a keen gardener, and the guest on my latest radio show—approaches food today. Learn how she suggests we re-define “vegetarian;” how she “paints [her] rice,” and makes her simplest, most delicious tomato sauce. And maybe win her newest book, too. 

LAST FALL, a month apart, the earth lost two of it great plantswomen. They were from opposite coasts, and one—Californian Ruth Bancroft, at 109 years old—was twice the age of the other, New Englander Elizabeth Farnsworth, 54. Both were individuals of great focus and optimism and energy whom I enormously admired, and will not forget.

It’s a soup you can make and enjoy now, or freeze, depending on how many willing yellow onions you can get your hands on, and on whether you can resist eating it all right away. With my first bowlful, I didn’t even manage to wait long enough to melt the cheese on top of the recommended toast. It just smelled too inviting as-is (or was), and then, suddenly, gone.If you haven’t met David Lebovitz, the story, in brief: In 1999, he left Chez Panisse and a career in the restaurant business. He moved from San Francisco to Paris—where he jokingly says Belgian endive is so inexpensive as to be the French version of “trash” lettuce, and reports there are more than 1,260 bakeries. Packing up little more than his best skillet, cookbooks and trusty laptop, David turned to writing, and his 2011 memoir, “The Sweet Life in Paris” (Amazon affiliate link), became a “New York Times” bestseller.His website has likewise been a giant hit (and has an e-newsletter I enjoy); he is lately (as of 2021ish) moving more over to delivering his latest writing via a Substack newsletter.No wonder he is so perennially popular. Besides having a way with food, he is a delicious storyteller, too, always layering in the essential ingr

Ridofranz / Getty Images; Design: Better Homes & Gardens

When Saffron + Poe shop owners and designers Fiona Bronte Burr and Johanna Vente Anderson saw the tiny 330-square-foot patio their new clients wanted to use for hot tubbing, entertaining, grilling, and more, they looked at it not as an impossibility, but as an opportunity.  

Garlic is such a phenomenal bulb that there’s an entire California restaurant devoted to it. The original location is in San Francisco and it’s called, The Stinking Rose: A Garlic Restaurant.I’ve walked past its aromatic do

Despite offices being closed, Sundays are the busiest day of the week at the Marin County Civic Center. Located half an hour north of San Francisco—and within a couple of hundred miles of California’s many agricultural regions, including the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys and the North and Central coasts—the Sunday Marin Farmers Market is the third largest among the state’s 655 open-air greenmarkets.