10 great garden ideas _ The Chicago Tribune photo gallery isn’t fancy, but it shows a bunch of do-it-yourself garden designs.

Garden is a seedbed for green cosmetics – A hand-tended, German garden provides the raw ingredients for an eco-conscious line of cosmetics touted by Hollywood-types as the bestest make-up evah. Interestingly, the company started focusing on herbal remedies.

Organic garden uses every sustainable trick – This eco-savvy garden shows how sustainable, organic gardening can look fit so seemlessly into conventional landscaped neighborhoods that you would never know it’s “green.”

Back to the garden – Author Michael Pollan suggests we all dig up our yards and garden not just for pleasure, but to sustain us in the “calamity to come.” He believes growing our own food we will make a bigger impact on slowing our destruction of the planet than the smaller things we are already trying.

The incredible, edible front lawn – Through the Edible Estates project, the Rodriguez family received a grant to plant a front-yard garden to feed their entire neighborhood. This is an amazing concept, and I really hope someone will create a foundation to help more people convert their lawns to vegetable gardens.

The New York Times has imaginative photo composites and a detailed article about the future gardens that the city and Friends of The High Line will build on a nearly a mile-and-a-half long, elevated railway in Manhattan. The project is a fascinating mix of old and new, reuse and repurposing. With native plants mingling with hybrids for year-round color and art installations to catch entertain walkers in Chelsea Market, the space looks like a garden designer’s dream.

With more businesses moving overseas leaving aging factories behind, perhaps this is the future of public gardens in urban areas. Unused, but historically significant, commercial structures won’t be destroyed to make way for greenspace; they will be refashioned into gardens that protect both history and the future.

The gardening life Web site features all sorts of sweet gardening inspiration. From curb appeal projects (including a contemporary Craftsman garden) to an encyclopedia of seasonal living, gardening life has tons of garden pictures that offer great ideas for landscape design and outdoor entertaining.

I have fallen in love with a landscape designer. (I hope my husband doesn’t mind!) Derek Fell designs romantic gardens and photographs the great gardens of the world. I had a chance to see his garden design sensibilities up close when I stayed at Mirbeau Inn & Spa last July. Just recently, I discovered Derek Fell’s Garden Photo Library, which catalogs his work. You can browse over 150,000 garden photos at no charge. The photos are also available to download for private use (as reference or prints) for only $10 each.