Price : $19.79

Product Description

THE BEST OF EVERYTHING A GARDENER COULD WISH FOR

In more than forty years of travel, Stafford Cliffdesigner and gardenerhas gathered a planets worth of inspiration on elements to enhance a garden. The result is 1000 Garden Ideas, a visual encyclopedia bursting with just about every garden idea ever invented by man or inspired by nature, artfully presented in more than 1000 photographs.

Plantings may be the essence of the garden, whether its a tiny patch in the backyard or acres of land extending for as far as the eye can see. But elements worthy of the planting can take a garden to unique and exciting new heights.

With a designers eye and a gardeners heart, Cliff has assembled an endless array of ideas, from all over the world, to make a garden more personal: fences and pools, paths and benches, statues and waterfalls, borders and bridges even birdhouses and follies. Within each category are hundreds of illustrated examples, ranging from traditional to contemporary; from simple to complex; from homey and rustic to downright Byzantine. Its all here, whatever your taste, your need, or your fantasy.

And if youre breathless with so many choices, Stafford Cliff is there to help you arrive at the best decisions for your own particular space, through a series of questions:

Do you want privacy or maximum light?
Do you envision a contrast to the style of your home or neighborhood, or complete harmony?
Do you prefer peace and quiet, or the soothing sounds of rustling leaves, bubbling water, and bird song? Theres glorious visual advice on plants and plantings: what kinds of containers to put them in; how to use them in your space; what to surround them with; and much more. In addition, an extensive list of suppliers makes it possible for you to turn inspiration into reality. If youre a seasoned gardener, or even if youre an aspiring one, this is a book for you, lush with ideas for the garden of your dreams.

Customer Reviews

Review date : 2008-06-09
I love the quantity of photo’s in the book. It’s not a ‘how-to-do’ book. It is a book that provides you with a variety of options for a specific part of a garden. Enough to get our creative juices flowing.

Review date : 2008-06-08
I bought this book on a whim and surely regret it. I do a lot of gardening and have visited a great many gardens in our country, some famous & some not. I am currently building new gardens, again, and this book was recommended. This is a picture book w/no details regarding the gardens and/or plantings. Put it on your coffee table for friends to see. Or if like me you don’t subscribe to the coffee table/coffee table book idea I will probably try to pass this off as a gift for someone who aspires to garden but doesn’t. Do not buy this book. Look at the pictures at the library or bookstore. It just takes a few minutes.

Review date : 2008-04-17
This book contains maybe 1000 pictures… all relatively small. This in no way gave me any ideas whatsoever. If you are looking for ideas for a backyard, patio, garden shed, flowers, pergolas. etc.. I suggest Lee Ann White’s "Backyard Ideas".

Review date : 2008-04-01
The photos are beautiful. But it is just a series of photos, almost like inventory from a catalog. Containers without plant material, seating without any a setting, ancient stone statues that cannot be purchased, it has no application to a new garden. I would stick to a standard Sunset book, you would get a much bigger picture, application and complete ideas.

Review date : 2008-03-10
I checked this book out from the library, and was thoroughly impressed! I have since put it on my wish list. Tons of ideas for every aspect of your garden–WOW!

Price : $15.49

Product Description

Permaculture is a verbal marriage of permanent and agriculture. Australian Bill Mollison pioneered its development. Key features include:

• use of compatible perennials;

• non-invasive planting techniques;

• emphasis on biodiversity;

• specifically adaptable to local climate, landscape, and soil conditions;

• highly productive output of edibles.
  Now, picture your backyard as one incredibly lush garden, filled with edible flowers, bursting with fruit and berries, and carpeted with scented herbs and tangy salad greens. The visual impact is of Monets palette, a wash of color, texture, and hue. But this is no still life. The flowers nurture endangered pollinators. Bright-featured songbirds feed on abundant berries and gather twigs for their nests.
  The plants themselves are grouped in natural communities, where each species plays a role in building soil, deterring pests, storing nutrients, and luring beneficial insects. And finally, you–good ol homo sapiens–are an integral part of the scene. Your garden tools are resting against a nearby tree, and have a slight patina of rust, because this garden requires so little maintenance. You recline into a hammock to admire your work. You have created a garden paradise.
  This is no dream, but rather an ecological garden, which takes the principles of permaculture and applies them on a home-scale. There is nothing technical, intrusive, secretive, or expensive about this form of gardening. All that is required is some botanical knowledge (which is in this book) and a mindset that defines a backyard paradise as something other than a carpet of grass fed by MiracleGro.

   

  Customer Reviews

  Review date : 2008-12-06
  Maybe I’m naive and uninformed, but I found this book eye-opening. I did read it a couple years ago now, but its ideas and principles were fascinating to me. Much of what it recommends, I was already doing, because most of my gardening techniques come from foggy memories of my grandmothers and their gardens. Because both my grandmothers were pretty poor (dirt poor?), they couldn’t afford pesticides or herbicides or irrigation or manicured lawns. So, they built up beautiful gardens with crush planting and recycling of resources and careful siting of particular plants. They knew their space and their plants, and they never wasted anything. I try to do what they did and expand on it through what I can learn from books. This book gave me a lot in terms of principles for what I do and why I do it. What I maybe understood on an intuitive level or didn’t understand at all but just did, this book provided a foundation for and then built further on that foundation. I’m always in search of more books of this type — that address how a home-owner can use some of the principles of permaculture and ideas for minimizing work and human input in the garden through more "natural" methods of gardening. Too few books seem to try to tackle such issues on a small scale for single homes. This book was a great start. So, if you didn’t have grandmothers like mine but you’re interested in learning how to make the most of your garden with the least human input, start with this book.

  Review date : 2008-09-09
  The Library journal review does a huge disservice to this book.

  Imagine a beautiful, highly productive, virtually weed-free,

  drought-resistant, inexpensive, low-maintenance and ecologically sound

  garden bed in your yard. It sounds impossible, but it is very simple

  and only requires a few hours to create this fall, no digging required.

  You can put to use the bounty of leaves and/or pine needles that are

  provided for free to almost every suburbanite in the fall. This

  is the ideal time, as the bed is better if it can break down over the

  winter.

  I have been gardening for about 25 years, and wish had I had heard of

  this method sooner. It is perfect, especially for those who are not

  physically able to dig, till or do a lot of weeding or simply have very

  little time for gardening.

  It involves piling up and wetting down 8 -12 inches of layers of

  organic matter (we used leaves and some manure) on top of a thin layer

  of newspapers or cardboard, with a small amount of amendments such as

  greensand, lime and rock phosphate and manure underneath the paper. On

  the top is a 1-2 inch layer of mulch (we used white pine needles), to

  keep in moisture and suppress weeds. Come spring, you simply push aside

  the top mulch and plant seedlings.

  This ’sheet mulching’ method came from this wonderful book by Toby

  Hemenway. We have several sheet mulch beds this

  year, and they are outrageously productive. For example, one 4′ x 9′

  bed in a very sunny spot, contains 6 large tomato plants, 3 sweet

  pepper plants, 3 cucumber vines on a trellis, a short row of

  sunflowers, one summer squash plant, and 7 winter squash plants. I

  find this amazing considering that the ground underneath is very poor,

  sandy and barely supported grass.

  With apologies to Mae West, I have learned a big lesson, it’s not the soil

  in your life, it’s the life in your soil!

  I bought this book in January and have many times over saved the price in
  time, mulch and bought amendments using ONLY the sheet mulch idea.

  Review date : 2008-09-02
  An excellent book and resource. At the time I purchased this book, I also purchased Bill Mollison’s seminal work on permaculture. I intended to read Mollison’s book first and Gaia’s Garden second. After reading the first few pages of Mollison’s book, I set it aside to "look through" Gaia’s Garden just to familiarize myself with its contents. I discovered that I could not put it down because it is so well written and informative. I recommend this book to all persons interested in the subject of permaculture.

  Review date : 2007-12-26
  This was recommended by someone when I started asking questions about permaculture. I am glad he did! It is a great introduction without being too simplistic. It is showing me how to start small and gradually increase the use of permaculture.

  I have shown it to friends who are all waiting to borrow it from me!

  Review date : 2007-11-09
  This book is excellent for establishing new concepts of applying time tested old technology. I use these principles everyday and I look forward to the days when we need to rely on our local resources and skills in order to make a living. This book teaches you how to make a start with permaculture.

  

Price : $3.92

Product Description

Julie lives in Paris, but she longs to walk in a beautiful country garden. When her mother takes her on a visit to rural Giverny, Julie discovers a beautiful garden and befriends the man she believes is the gardener. In fact, he is the gardens owner, the immortal artist Claude Monet. This is a title in Barrons Anholts Artists Books for Children series, in which author and illustrator Laurence Anholt recalls memorable and sometimes amusing moments when the lives of the artists were touched by children. Anholts fine illustrations appear on every page and include reproductions of works by the artists.

Customer Reviews

Review date : 2008-05-05
What a beautifully illustrated book! This was a wonderful book based on a true story. I used it with pre-schoolers and they really enjoyed the story as well as the beautiful artwork. I highly recommend it!

Review date : 2006-08-12
Anholt’s lovely book about Monet is my favorite of the series about famous artists. He demystifies impressionism and actually inspires children to paint their own "magical gardens"!!

Review date : 2005-11-11
Fine art apprecation was a lost thing among adults let alone children, encouraging an understanding of art at a young age will encorage intrest in art in children and their caregivers alike. Help kids enjoy art and culture while reading a fun story. With this book, (and the others in the series) they introduce kids to the famous artworks of great painters throughout history while encoraging a childs imagination to be creative and tell a story with each picture.

This story is even better because it is based on factual people, even the little girl. She embarks on a journey with her mother to visit a friend..the little girl ends up chasing her runaway dog on the trip and finds herself in a most magnificent garden..only to find out that is the "friend" they were going to visit. This book is wonderful, historical, educational, and fun. It encourages children to think about paintings, and to form images and stories for each one, to think about "what would it be like to be inside that painting".

Review date : 2005-08-12
The Magical Garden of Claude Monet is a great way to expose young children to impressionist art. My son loved the story of Julie in Monet’s garden. Julie is a young French girl who takes a train with her Mother to visit Monet’s garden. As they arrive into the countryside, her dog runs away and is found in Monet’s garden. Soon the painter and Julie become friends. The illustrations are bright and colorful. You almost feel as if you are inside one of Monet’s paintings. Children will be captivated by the story as well as the beautiful pictures.

Review date : 2004-10-15
I have long been a fan of Linnea in Monet’s Garden - so I was very excited to find this new series of books by Laurence Anholt. Anholt’s approach to introducing children to these artists - he has covered Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh, Degas, and DaVinci - is to use their art to create the backgrounds and settings for his characters. This book in particular is my favorite of the series because it is crowned with a fold out of Monet’s vivid Waterlilies with a tiny boat floating across it carrying the story’s members - Monet and a little girl who happens upon his garden. Before it is over, the little girl plucks one of the lilies from the famous painting as a memoir. My daughter loves this picture - and it is almost surreal to me to see Monet’s art coming to life in such a manner. I can hardly wait until she visits the museum and sees the real painting. Watching her make this connection should be very exciting.

Aside from this stunning mixture of Monet’s work and Anholt’s own lush artwork - carefully drawn to compliment the featured art - the book gives some great educational information about Monet by weaving it into the story - all this without ever starting to sound like a textbook. The story retains its’ focus and its’ charm without becoming boring. That is an amazing accomplishment in my opinion.

I hope to purchase the entire set for a lovely and educational Christmas gift. These are sure to become beloved classics. Any children’s book that learns to entertain both child and parent equally often does.