Ferns Can Make A Lasting Impression

Magazine notes

March is the month you want to go somewhere, anywhere. And this month’s magazines can really help:

First stop, springtime: Martha Stewart takes readers to the ultimate destination midspring. The March issue of her Martha Stewart Living is devoted entirely to gardening, and it is a good one for those who like to commune with their back yards and those who don’t. The lush green photographs speak to everyone.

Three items are particularly notable:

Start on Page 61 with a Martha project that sounds doable - fern napkins. They’re little, cocktail-size linen (or cotton) napkins with real ferns “printed” on them via a hammer.

“The pounding will release chlorophyll into the fabric, creating the image,” says the text, which also notes that “ironing and washing will not harm the image, but with time, or exposure to the sun, it will fade to an attractive brown.” The idea was inspired by John Mickel, a curator of ferns at the New York Botanical Garden.

This is a simply brilliant, simply beautiful, simple project. Trust us; we gave it a pound and were pretty pleased with our napkins.

Gardeners will want to go straight to Page 116 for the picture story “Chartreuse.” The acid-yellow/green color is hot in fashion right now, but, as the text relates, “has been around (in the plant world) as long as they have been photosynthesizing on Earth - like several hundred million years.”

Find lots of garden photos showing how to use shocking chartreuse shrubs, flowers, ground cover, etc., in dramatic combination with other plants and flowers, along with names and growing information on many of these chartreuse beauties.

And finally, “Pressed Plants” (on Page 128) is a good read and, perhaps, another project-in-the-making. Garden editor Margaret Roach, who penned several of the features this month, visits the New York Botanical Garden herbarium, “the largest such repository in this hemisphere,” for advice from its botanists on how and what can be pressed.

Beyond that, there are ideas for what to do with all those dried-and-flattened wonders. Among the most striking is a do-it-yourself sheer organdy curtain with little pockets sewn all over it. Into those pockets goes a colorful assortment of pressed leaves that you can take out and change around as you wish.

The editors at Victoria, in celebration of the magazine’s 10th anniversary, already did the legwork for a jaunt abroad. The March issue takes readers on a “grand tour,” as the magazine touts it, of homes, inns, gardens and best places to shop in the English countryside, French countryside, Venice, Holland and Ireland.

Don’t miss the visit to actress Jane Seymour’s impulse buy: a huge 15th-century monastery (and one-time property of Henry VIII) on a hill near Bath, England. She bought the castle in 1982 after one day of filming there.

Also of note is the story/guide to shopping in Venice for new versions of Fortuny hand-painted silk lamps, tassles and scarves; handmade papers; lace; and, of course, Murano glass.

Both Metropolitan Home (the March/April issue) and Home (March issue) offer grandiose stories on design. Met Home’s “Design 100” features the top 100 people, places, ideas and things in the world of design, according to Met Home editors. Maybe 100 was too ambitious.

The piece rambles. Entries are often so disparate it’s hard to remember that you are reading the same story more than 100 pages later.

Much better is Home magazine’s special report “How You’ll Live in 2012.” (The magazine is celebrating its 15th anniversary, thus the look 15 years ahead.) To come up with its predictions, the magazine consulted with “pundits and soothsayers in the building, design and remodeling industries,” writes Editor-In-Chief Gale C. Steves.

Especially interesting are the pages on water use, windows and the bath of the future. We liked the idea of “special antistatic and photocatalytic coatings” for windows to prevent grime from building up on the glass or even dissolving. Could it be the end of window washing?

Designer Brian Murphy proves that an all-white interior can be extremely colorful. The February/March issue of Elle Decor features the California designer’s 700-square-foot rental cottage in Santa Monica. His design strategy: “a massive whiteout.”

White paint or fabric covers walls, floors, furniture, everything. The effect is serene, almost celestial - and not cold as one would expect.