Price : $11.95

Product Description

Whether you’re starting from the ground up or rethinking your existing outdoor living areas, you’ll find plenty of inspiration in Big Book of Garden Designs.

With over 120 garden plans designed to fit every imaginable landscape situation, this new volume guides you through the issues that perplex anyone planning a garden. Such as, which plants are appropriate for your climate? What species will give you the look you want? How much maintenance is involved?

Each plan includes a flexible planting list adaptable to your climate and personal style. For every space and every need, from entries to side yards to specialty color schemes, you’ll find a multitude of options that will fulfill your gardening desires.

Features:

• More than 120 garden plans, all with planting lists

   

• Ideas for specialty themes, including cottage gardens, color gardens, kitchen and herb gardens, and more

   

• Inspiring landscaping ideas for every outdoor area, from the tiniest entryway to an expansive backyard

   

• Case Studies throughout offer in-depth looks at specific plans

   

• Designer Notebooks feature design tips and advice from a professional garden designer

   

  Customer Reviews

  Review date : 2008-08-17
  The garden on the cover is unbelieveable… inside SUNSET breaks down all that the San Jose family did to create thier yard. The homeowner, Samantha, is truly an artist!

  Review date : 2008-05-08
  Are you looking out at a bare patch of ground and wishing you knew what to do with it?

  Look no further than this book, which is chock full of suggestions. One of the smartest things they have done is to give you a photo of the garden as well as a sketch of the garden in color. It means that whether you live in Maine or San Diego you can adapt the design to your weather zone.

  Design ideas include sitting spots, passageways, beds and borders, specialty gardens, flower gardens and color gardens and backyards.

  Even if you have the brownest of thumbs and have never planted anything, this in-depth, practical guide will be of help.

  Review date : 2008-03-04
  Gardening is an exercise in creative horticulture that when done well gives as much attention to esthetics as it does all the other elements contributing to a healthy garden. Fundamental to considerations of a garden’s esthetic appearance is its design which can be either formal or informal. Offering more than 110 complete landscaping plans covering a wide range of garden spaces, the "Big Book Of Garden Designs", co-authored by garden design and landscaping experts Marianne Lipanovich and Tom Wilhite, provides even the most novice gardener with practical ideas with respect to specialty gardens, flower gardens, garden beds and borders, sitting spots in a garden, and passage ways. From first impressions and curb appeal, to a horticulturally customized back yard, the "Big Book Of Garden Designs" offers a wonderful combination of practical ideas, inspirations, and examples. Beautifully illustrated throughout, and featuring a chapter on Climate Zones that includes maps and descriptions, the "Big Book Of Garden Designs" is one of the newest additions to the Sunset Books gardening series and a welcome addition to personal and community do-it-yourself gardening guide reference collections.

  

Price : $47.25

Price : $27.75

Product Description

Chosen and described by celebrated garden designer Penelope Hobhouse

Features stunning photographs by distinguished garden photographers including Jerry Harpur, Andrew Lawson, Clive Nichols

Published in association with an exhibition at the Chicago Botanic Garden

Great Gardens of the World is a survey of some of the greatest gardens of the world, presented through magnificent photographic images and the descriptions of legendary garden designer and writer Penelope Hobhouse. Here is shown the oases of the Middle East, the gardens of Chinese scholars, Japanese sages and Renaissance humanists, French baroque gardens, the English landscape garden of Capability Brown and his followers. Here too are the gardens of the great modern designers, among them Roberto Burle Marx, Fernando Caruncho, Dan Kiley, John Brookes and James van Sweden.

Penelope Hobhouse is internationally renowned as a gardener, writer and garden designer. The author of many classic works including Colour in your Garden, Garden Style, Penelope Hobhouse On Gardening , and Penelope Hobhouse’s Garden Designs (all published by Frances Lincoln), and Plants in Garden History, The Story of Gardening and Gardens of Persia

Customer Reviews

Review date : 2008-02-23
A wonderful book, with beautiful and inspiring pictures. Always a pleasure to go back again and again at its pages.

Review date : 2007-11-24
Gardens are meant to be paradise on earth. The idea of paradise as a garden has a long history, even before the Garden of Eden was presented in the Bible. What the paradise looks like, there is hardly specific description. The description of the Garden of Eden was not very specific either, yet it gave the garden designer some ideas.

In every culture, garden designers seek paradise through their own creative ways. Penelope Hobhouse, one of the most talented garden writers of our time, started her tour of paradise on earth in Asia: the serene naturalistic gardens and symbolism in China, and the Zen gardens and tea gardens in Japan. She then took us to continental Europe: the hilly regions of Italy where lavish gardens are balanced with the use of axes and symmetry, and gardens in Germany, Netherlands and Russia, as well as the climax of formal gardens, the French gardens.

Penelope Hobhouse’s next stop is England. She discussed in detail the naturalistic Landscape Gardens, the Cottage-style Gardens, and the Eclectic Gardens. She also explored Mediterranean gardens and gardens in America: European influences and naturalistic gardens.

Last but not least, Penelope Hobhouse discuss today’s gardens: water in gardens, gardens and nature, selecting right plants for right sites, reclaiming and revitalizing, and roof gardens, etc.

To Penelope, an ideal garden is "at the balance point between human control and untamed nature."

"Great Gardens of the World: In Search of Paradise" has 240 pages and many beautiful interior color photos. It is a fine garden book that every garden lovers should have.

Gang Chen, Author of "LEED AP Exam Guide" & "Planting Design Illustrated." LEED AP, AIA

Review date : 2006-12-06

The ideal garden we are given to understand is a paradise – "a haven of comfort, abundance, and beauty." Many of us try to achieve that paradigm in our own way, as have countless others before us. Now gathered in one gorgeous volume are the results of those endeavors gleaned from diverse cultures and climes.

We begin our armchair tour with "Gardens Through the Centuries," a journey covering four thousand years beginning with the earliest gardens alive in the deserts of the Middle East. The first Mughal Emperor Babur (1483 – 1530) had a number of gardens including the Garden of Fidelity which was divided into four parts with a central pool.

Of course, the gardens designed in China and Japan expressed a respect for nature, evidenced in vast areas where the placement of each stone had meaning. Places for contemplation, stroll and moss gardens were found in Japan.

For this reader what can compare with the gardens of Italy? Hadrian’s Villa near Tivoli boasts open porticoes, enclosed atriums, fountains, basins, statuary. It is a wonder. La Mortola on the Italian Riviera is a place for dreaming with a steep slope to the sea rich in agaves, aloes, white roses, salvias and citrus trees. A virtual Eden on earth.

Ms. Hobhouse continues our tour with a look at modern garden design as represented by such designers as Roberto Burle Marx, Fernando Caruncho, and Beth Chatto.

"In Search of Paradise" holds 240 pages and 200 illustrations all in glorious color contributed by the world’s foremost garden photographers.

The is a volume to be savored and returned to again and again.

- Gail Cooke