Blog

In partnership with HACE and N.4TH, Apiary Studio designed and installed 18 seed testing plots along the Conrail railroad gulch in North Kensington as a means of testing what plants might survive the conditions there and possibly help to inform future revegetation efforts. This will be an ongoing experimental trial for 2019. As we began the work of […]

We recently had the pleasure of taking a road-trip across the American Southwest to visit several national parks, botanical gardens and cultural landscapes that would help inspire our work back home on the East Coast. The scale, grandeur and seeming physical impossibility of the Southwest landscape was truly inspiring to behold. The vibrant colors of […]

We finally had an opportunity to specify and utilize black locust on one of our projects. We’ve been itching to use this sustainable and locally-sourced material for many years. Black Locust is a native North American tree that grows like a weed, colonizing disturbed site with abandon. A common tree along agricultural wind breaks, successional […]

The backyard garden for a residential project in Fort Green has started to come together this summer. We recently inspected the project to approve the construction of the cedar fence that will separate the garden from the neighbors on three sides. The fence is constructed using thin, western red cedar lattice. We’re very happy with […]

When we designed the Pickle Factory garden for the Fishtown neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia, we wanted to create a modern garden space that utilized interesting materials and reflected the sustainability values that were so important to the client. The paving and seat wall that serve as the central elements of the useable portion of the […]

I’ve admired landscape architect Claude Cormier’s work for quite some time, ever since I encountered photographs of his Blue Stick Garden, which has been installed in several locations between 1999 and 2009. The use of such simple materials – thin wooden stakes and house paint – are so dramatic, beautiful and effective when combined into […]

Ever since I was a little kid, I have always loved the adventure of finding, collecting and cleaning seed, especially from plants in the wild. When I was very young, my mom elected to stay at home for several years to raise me and my siblings in our more formative years. As a way to […]

I’ve been working with my brother to design and build a chicken coop at Pleasant Run Nursery. The predators have made the former location down by the pond an impossible position to raise hens and produce eggs. The chickens have ultimately been extirpated by relentless predation from foxes, hawks, owls, opossums and most commonly, raccoons. […]

Summer has passed and it is the time of year where plants begin to prepare for the coming winter and enter their dormant state – my favorite. There are myriad plants that also use this time of year to bloom and release seed that will remain dormant through the winter in preparation for Spring germination. […]