Price : $21.96

Product Description

The Well-Designed Mixed Garden is a design book with a difference. Written for gardeners who are passionate about plants of all kinds (hence the mixed garden of the title), it reflects decades of professional experience and artistic innovation. As with her bestselling book The Well-Tended Perennial Garden, master designer and plantswoman Tracy DiSabato-Aust provides not only inspiration but also scrupulously organized information on design and connoisseur plants — all from original research dating back to her degree work in horticulture.

Her new offering is a master class of design fundamentals, with an emphasis on often-neglected topics, such as site evaluation, color theory, and planning for maintenance. It is also a gallery of detailed design plans that show how ideas are put onto paper and then translated into three dimensions. Lessons learned in its first two parts are strengthened in an Encyclopedia of Plant Combinations; each entry notes the design considerations at play and provides tips on how to keep the combination looking its best. And the lifetime care needs and unique design characteristics of featured plants are summarized in the useful charts and lists that conclude the book. The result is a nearly foolproof guide to every aspect of designing superior gardens with superior plants. With more than 250 color photos and illustrations, this book is as much a feast for the eyes as it will be a trusted reference for the library shelf.

Customer Reviews

Review date : 2007-09-03
Comprehensive and very user friendly. A book every home flower gardner would want to have.

Review date : 2007-05-16
I’ve heard other gardeners talk about Tracy’s books and what an inspiration they are, so I bought "The Well-Designed Mixed Garden" expecting to learn some GREAT ideas for my gardens. It has some good information on principles of design and how to work with color, texture, and so on. But I was disappointed at how weak and uninspiring the section is on plant combinations. She calls it an "encyclopedia of plant combinations," and the section is full of photos of flowers and plants she thinks are winning combinations. The combinations mostly have no real visual appeal, the photos (in that section) are plain, and it’s a wasted section of the book. I think there was only one of these combinations that actually looked beautiful. Most of these photos were from her own garden, and perhaps she let her personal affection for her own gardens cloud her judgment on what to include.

I like the rest of the book, however, and her examples of garden designs in other parts of the book have good photos and design layout drawings that are quite useful.

Review date : 2007-05-12
This book is so helpful in figuring out how to mix flowers and plants in border-type gardens. It details color combinations and tells what flowers go well together. It provides pictures of various gardens in different season to provide an idea of how the landscape will look in Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter.

Review date : 2007-02-05
This is the first book I would recomend to anyone! Ms. Disabato-Aust compiles a vast amount of quality information in one book, and she explains abstract concepts in a way that regular people who aren’t master gardeners can understand. She also includes insights from her vast experience; it’s not a dry recitation seen in other sources. She explains when and why to break the generally-accepted guidelines.

I’ve been a hard-core gardener for about three years, and I’ve already gleaned some of the information from other sources. But I had to read a lot of different books and articles to get it, and it was often contradictory. The book not only ties it all together in a cohesive manner, but gives very detailed examples.

I particularly enjoyed the section on combinations, where Ms. Disabato-Aust explains why certain things work together in a converational tone. Far from being a preening dilletante, the author’s manner is friendly and warm.

I only had two complaints, and they are possibly unique to me. As you might expect, the "example" gardens shown used Ms. Disabato-Aust’s style of gardening. It’s wonderful, but I have a different style, and would have appreciated seeing the gardening principles illustrated using different styles. Second, I garden in North Florida. A fair number of the plants that look so beautiful in her Ohio garden wouldn’t make it in North Florida.

Review date : 2006-03-24
I’m a master gardener from Illinois,and have heard Tracy Disabato-Aust on a number of occasions. Her book The Well-Tended Perennial Garden has long been our bible for perennials. In this new book, she makes accessible for all gardeners the depth of her experience and research in incorporating many kinds of plants in a mixed border. The book is worth buying for the appendices alone: plants by design and maintenance characteristics as well as common/scientific name cross-references. A must-have garden reference book!

Well-dressed porches everywhere wear colorful hanging baskets and fantastic mixed containers for summer. Even if the occupants budget only allows one 10 pot hanging pot there will be brilliant color somewhere on that porch. The well-dressed porch is a must do thing whether your porch is a tiny point of entry or a Victorian wrap-around the code is that flowers are supposed to spill color from the facia toward the ground. If there is a railing then an assortment of pots and more plants of varying types begin to cluster up on the flat surface. Planter boxes and clay pots appear like runway markers down the sides of wide front porch steps. Stately terra cotta pots and urns mark the front approach to many a home. Many different styles of well-dressed porches can be chosen from and created but the fact remains that you must dress that porch. I am all for this dressing of porches. There is no bare rail space left on my own deck any summer. There have been years that the front porch was virtually hidden behind the curtain of flowers and ferns.

Greenhouses across America do a fabulous job of turning out a lot of beautiful annual containers. Delight will seize your senses the moment you step into the retail greenhouse in April and May. The warm humid atmosphere is a jungle of rainbow colors all grown to perfection. Your hair may go flat in there but it is worth the leisurely trip down the aisles. It could be hours later before you can manage to drag yourself back outside again. The showing of jungle flora at its finest can hold rapt attention for very long spans of time.

The selection of the perfect color statement for the porch is not made quickly or easily; finally you complete the mission inside the glass bubble. The pots are loaded into your vehicle and you are off to deck out your porch and patio. Some merely hang the pots just as they are from the hooks at the roofline. Others remove the hanger and slid into the yawning cavity of ornamental pots and urns strategically place for visual effect. Moss baskets, clean plastic pots and new terra cotta all filled with a garden of earthly delights festoon porches, decks and patios from sea to shining sea by Memorial Day.

The greenhouse did its job keeping that container feed and watered in optimum performance levels at perfect temperatures for its rapid growth. The fact that you get to cast your eyes upon that beauty every day fills your soul with a feeling nothing else would impart. The convenience of being able to walk in a store and carry out very mature and lovely mixtures of plants only hardy in the tropics is one that America enjoys with gusto.

The adoption of a moss basket while visually stunning compared to the same in a plastic hanging pot shows you nothing of the road that lies ahead for the two of you. Consumers like the fact that that huge 15 moss basket is light as a feather and easy to tote around. The one fact that everyone seems to not grasp is that the beautiful things you have just adopted are planted in a mixture designed to not hold moisture and drain out very rapidly. Those plants are addicted to drip-line water and food intravenous nutrition turned on and off by a computer if you will. While they will adjust to you only feeding them once a month, they cannot go without the correct amount of moisture throughout a day in the hot dry air and relentless sun. Not if you want them to remain lush and alive, which is most likely the full intention behind you purchasing them.

Plastic containers planted by a greenhouse will hold moisture twice as long as a moss basket. The breeze can go right through the moss causing it to air-dry the potting medium at a rapid pace, add heat to that air and the dryness happens even faster. Inside a greenhouse there is no breeze, the still air is filled with humidity. That non-moving humid atmosphere breeds pests and disease. To ward off rot and other unwanted occurrences, the growers must use rapidly drying content in their pots or face loosing vast quantities of plants to problems that occur in the greenhouse bubble. Once out in the real world, you must supply enough moisture to the same pots to help them thrive in an alien atmosphere.

Fuchsias in moss baskets even when watered before you left for work will most likely be beginning to droop by about 2 pm and you will not be home for at least 4 more hours. If you only for one evening forget to water those Ivy Geraniums they will show signs of damage by the next morning. An occasional slip up is usually repairable, but let it happen one too many times and you will undoubtedly have a basket full of toast colored has-beens. The best outcome with all of these beautiful plants is achieved if you repot them in a larger container than the one you got it in with real soil mixed with a bit of sphagnum and pearlite for drainage and cover the top of that sphagnum core with some soil as well. That simple inch of soil around and under the existing quick-dry core will help it hold moisture better until you return home at the end of the day. Real soil in a moss basket is not going to work however as the soil will wash out with draining water and deposit mud on the floor beneath it. Moss baskets are very thirsty things. You might consider creating your own drip-line irrigation system for them and other hanging baskets. All the parts are available at Home Depot, including inexpensive timers you can put on your hose and set to go on and off at intervals throughout the day. This would be the optimum solution as even when you go on vacation, it will water your hanging pots and you will not have to rely on a neighbor or family member to do this for you.

I have found that I have far better luck with my annual baskets if I buy the plants small and pot the baskets myself with real soil and pearlite so they do not get water logged. No the pots will not be overflowing until the end of June, but if I forget to water them one night they will be fine and not get too dry before the next morning. I can with my busy schedule keep nice looking plants on the front porch until the frost takes them out at the end of well-dressed porch season. One of these days when I find the time to install a drip-line water system I will go back to buying my hanging plant baskets from a local greenhouse. Until them, I am just as happy with not cooking them all to a crisp while I am madly dashing through my hectic schedule that does not take me past the front porch so that I am reminded to water the plants everyone sees from the road. Some day I will have lovely moss baskets of fabulous red & purple Fuchsias there instead of dependable old Geraniums.

Read more great Gardening articles at: LostInTheFlowers.com

About the author: Raised by a highly respected & successful landscape contractor in the metro Detroit area, Clayton wanted a career in anything but landscaping! Now an award-winning landscape designer, Clayton runs Flowerville Farms, a mail-order nursery in Michigan. Read more at LostInTheFlowers.com.

Creating a lush flower garden from scratch takes time – many perennial plants need a couple of years to grow to showy sizes. So don’t worry if it takes several seasons to get your flower garden looking the way you’d want it to. That’s perfectly normal.

This is a good time of year to take stock of your garden design. Ask yourself the following questions – the answers should give you some ideas on which projects to do this spring:

• Are the flower beds too narrow? A narrow bed isn’t wide enough to show off layers of plants. If you have a skinny bed that can’t be widened, between a hedge and a walkway, for instance, fill it with low-growing ground cover plants of one or two kinds.
• Are the planting areas all over the place? Look at the entire yard, not just the individual planting beds. Try to link beds, rather than having one here and another over there.
• Have you crammed in too many types of plants? You’ll get more impact from perennials if you put three of one type in a clump, rather than three different plants or three of the same plant in different locations. Repetition of key plant groups or a key color creates harmony and coherence. Add contrasts in texture and form – for example, bigger leaves next to fine ones, or spiky flowers next to rounded and mounded ones.
• Have you screened eyesores? Treat the space around your house as a garden, not a yard. Your backdrop should complement your plants. Make storage sheds or garage walls into garden features (vine-covered trellises can hide ugly ones). Be sure to screen utilitarian necessities like the compost pile, air-conditioning units, heat pumps, and so on with attractive fences or evergreen shrubs.
• Do the garden and house complement each other? Look out the windows to make sure the picture is pleasing from inside the house too.
• Do you have a focal point? You could be asking plants to do all the work. Perhaps the missing element is what garden designers call a focal point. Try adding a bird bath, a sundial, an arbor, or a trellis. And of course no garden is complete without an inviting bench, or two.

Yvonne Cunnington is an avid perennial gardener and the author of Clueless in the Garden: A Guide for the Horticulturally Helpless. For lots more perennial gardening tips, visit her website http://www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com For more garden design tips, see http://www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com/gardendesign.html