“I find skyscrapers and concrete harsh and depressing,” says Allison Fonte. Still, she’s lived for 12 years in Manhattan, where she’s a co-founder of Pompeii A.D., a retail-design firm whose clients include Levi Strauss, Anthropologie and Discovery Channel stores.
To cope with urban realities, Fonte converted the large terrace of her fourth-floor Upper West Side walk-up into a leafy refuge. But this is not your average rooftop garden. Fonte brought in Japanese painted ferns, gold flame honeysuckle, yellow-groove bamboos and exotic flowers. She added a 7-by-7-foot canopy, an inexpensive plastic fountain and Thai bronze rain drums that serve as side tables. Last year, Fonte’s flora showed up in a four-page layout in Garden Design magazine. Not bad for a woman who says she had no green thumb when she started: “I thought gardening was for retirees.”
