We write about
the art of
living outside.
Garden Design Co. publishes The Outdoor Living Journal — an editorial magazine about pools, gardens, courtyards, materials and the objects that make an outdoor space worth sitting in.
Why we started
Most outdoor design writing is either a catalogue or a fantasy. Beautiful photographs of gardens nobody explains, in climates nobody names, at prices nobody prints.
We wanted the other thing. What a project actually costs. Which materials survive salt air and which quietly fall apart in two summers. How to tell a good contractor from an expensive lesson before you pay the deposit.
Where we write from
Aruba, in the Dutch Caribbean. It is an unusually honest place to test outdoor design. Constant sun, constant wind, salt in the air, and the reality that shipping something in often costs more than the thing itself.
Materials that work here work almost anywhere. The ones that don’t, fail fast and in public. That is a useful place to write from.
Say the number
An article that won’t tell you what something costs isn’t helping. We print prices, and we say when we don’t know.
Recommend only what we’d use
If we wouldn’t put it in our own courtyard, it doesn’t go in the Journal. That rule has cost us articles.
Slow is the point
Outdoor living is not a renovation sprint. It’s shade, water, a chair in the right place, and time to sit in it.
There is an iguana in these pages. He has been sitting in the shade doing nothing for forty million years, which makes him the most qualified outdoor living expert we know.
Written by Gilbert de Cuba
Founder and editor. Based in Aruba, working across the Caribbean, sourcing direct and publishing what the work actually costs.
Read the Journal →