On Friday I traveled up to Detroit with the family to pick up some containers at Detroit Garden Works for a client. Since we needed to be in Toledo, Ohio the next day we made it a mini-holiday. We did not do any planning, but asked if there were any nice neighborhoods near Detroit Garden Works to walk and shop and they pointed us to Birmingham, MI.

We spent the afternoon walking , stopping at garage sales and visiting shops. We brought James along for the trip and he had a wonderful time at the play ground. We loved the homes and gardens in Birmingham. It was an older town, where people have maintained the beautiful older homes, and in a few cases demolished to build some good and some not so good looking homes. Over all it was very inspiring walk, only noticed the lack in color in the landscapes over all. Below here are some of the homes I liked.

This house was a renovation, but was sided in French Limestone. The landscape to the curb was beautiful and made the  house look larger.

Classic wraparound porch with an equally classic landscape of boxwood and pear trees.

This front yard was surrounded by large trees, making it a perfect shade garden. There was no turf in the entire front yard.

An example of a tear down to build an ugly house. Also an example of good intentions with the landscape, but not executed well.

I am obsessed with this house. The entire house was painted black – siding, gutters, casings, shutters and doors. EVERYTHING. There were a few select hits of gold on the lighting and house numbers. The landscape was equally risky, again with no turf just plants. Notice on the fence in the first photo the Black Ravens? They were placed on all four corners of the fence.

This house was another fun landscape with some great garden art.

My favorite house of the whole trip was this Japaneses garden.  The winding stone driveway with placed larger stones.  The house was equally amazing with the shutters on the balcony on sliders.

This was a matching pair of two modern homes. This is a photo of the garage with the home behind with a court yard entrance.

This is another example of a house with the landscaping to the sidewalk. The tall evergreens allowed for a very private front yard, and made a huge statement when approaching the home from the street.

The scale of this house was 2x times that of the others in the area. I loved the bunting from Memorial day on the porches and the boxwood standards in the zinc containers. This house had a huge side yard behind a tall privet hedge that I would have liked to see.