Dirt Queen NYC

10/06/2026

Our Ditmas park pollinator garden on the cusp of fall, just before the amsonia turns a fiery red 🧡 Peak these moon garden elements that serve this garden for cooler nighttime festivities — string lights, pops of white hydrangea panicles, silvery foliage of lavender and pulmonaria— and of course, fire.
And a little nod to the spooky season ahead is Eupatorium maculatum ‘Phantom’ … 👻
Photography: Brett Wood

08/16/2026

Fall is coming and that means it’s aster season! 🥰 my new fave fall combination is asters with shorter arching grasses like carex and deschampsia cespitosa as seen in this first inspo photo. Something about that newborn pop of purple with the summer-weathered blades of grass... Second image is Symphiotrichyum oblongifolium ‘October skies’ from our fort greene garden. tell me — what are your favorite aster combinations? I want to know!
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08/05/2026

Tucked away on a quiet street in Brooklyn, this backyard feels like a refuge within the city.
Our clients reached out to us about their patchy lawn that would regularly turn into a muddy mess after both heavy rainfall and playing fetch with their pup. They asked us to re-imagine the space as a place they could gather with their teenage kids and friends.

We set out to create a naturalistic woodland garden that could function as both a gathering place throughout the seasons and a peaceful respite at the end of each day.

A stately tulip tree stood in the garden already, and we filled in with shade-loving native plants like pulmonaria, aruncus dioicus, and clethra alnifolia to create a garden rich in texture and biodiversity. And what better way to gather than around a fire in the moonlight!

Thank you to our amazing clients for trusting us.
Swipe to see the before!

Landscape design and install: Dirt Queen NYC
Hardscape: Ridgewood Fence & Patio
Furniture: Elissa Pilo Josse
Irrigation : Joel Sosa
Photos by Brett Wood

08/05/2026

05/11/2026

Happy Mother’s Day to all the incredible moms! ❤️ Here’s to my mama who I am so grateful for. My first plant teacher. We went plant shopping yesterday so I’m a day late on here… But when I first started my business, well, back before I knew it’d become a business, my mom helped me pot up a hundred or so succulent cuttings I shipped home from my friend’s garden in California. I didn’t have a plan…We didn’t know exactly how to root succs or whether they’d take to the soil but we figured it out. They rooted! 🥰 My mom still has the handwritten succulent soil recipe I had scribbled down on the fridge all these years later. Love you mom. 😝

05/07/2026

Install season 2026!! So excited to install our garden projects this year with my amazing team . This is every garden designer’s busiest time of year, y’all… if you see me, pls give me a big hug 😝 first stop is a Larchmont backyard! 🐝 🦋 👩🏻‍🌾

03/26/2026

Summoning spring with a friend date to the nursery feat. blushing pansies, ranunculus, and bowie’s nursery debut! Thank you for documenting 💕

03/10/2026

Is it T-shirt weather?! It’s time to start thinking about grilling, growing veggies, gardening and stargazingz Reach out if you have a rooftop or backyard that needs renovating and a beautiful new garden this year 🌷🌼🌷We are booking for the rest of 2026 and can’t wait to hear about your project!
Photos by

02/25/2026

The orchid exhibition at designed by is a journey through an imaginative New York City landscape where the streets and every day institutions are covered in vibrant orchids— on bus stops, in laundromats, newsstands and behind construction sites.

It struck me that in a city running on fast-paced service, where instant gratification can be easily attained, retail-ready orchids in exquisite bloom are both a symbol of that and a direct contradiction.

In nature, orchids aren’t always in bloom. People often worry that when their orchid flowers are wilting, the plant is dying, but it’s not! Their natural growth cycle includes a period of rest before they can gather the energy to bloom again. As houseplants, sometimes it can take a year!

Cultivating orchids for me has been a practice in patience and a reminder to rest too. 🌸 Especially living in New York…adopting the pace of nature can be spiritually necessary, and when my orchids finally bloom again, after witnessing their buds slowly grow bigger and bigger, it’s that much more rewarding.

Ps. Some of my more unusual orchids haven’t bloomed at all since I’ve bought them…but their leaves are still pretty and I’m still patiently waiting!
Thank you for the beautiful photos

02/04/2026

What can you do in a 250 square foot backyard? Check out our latest project in Fort Greene for reference! This is the most *svelt* backyard we’ve designed in the city, and we have found that when you don’t try to do too much in a small space, the results can be quite expansive.

Thanks to our amazing team , for irrigation and lighting, for the hardscape and to our sweetest clients Max and Sydney!
Photography by Kelly McCready