Softcover, 224 pages, Published 2003
Customer Reviews:
Pools and Spas.......2007-07-23
There are some good ideas and landscape ideas in this book for designing spas and pools. In the end I probably only spent 20 minutes in this book and didn't get a whole lot out of it. We spent a considerable amount of money on our pool but we live in Arizona and the landscape ideas didn't apply to this climate. Overall, lots of pretty pictures. 2 out of 5 stars.
We Borrowed Then Bought!.......2005-05-28
We also borrowed this from the library, but found we didn't want to return it. We spent hours showing each other what pictures we really liked, got great tips on thhe issues the pool owner faces and have a real idea of what we need to consider. So, since we want to use this during the planning process, we bought it!
Another Winner in Pool Books!.......2005-04-18
I borrowed this book from the library (too many pool books are not worth buying), and spent the rest of the night looking at it. Great photo examples of various types of pools that are described in detail, along with chapters on Safety, Design, Landscaping, Materials, etc... One of the best! (Same review as Pool & Spa Planner by Better Homes & Gardens, because they are both great books!)
Great info, great pictures, recommended resource.......2004-07-08
There are a lot of pretty home design books out there that have very little information tucked between the pictures. This book is full of information but also has a number of handsome photos of pools, spas, and water gardens which will give you ideas if you are planning a custom designed pool or tub. It's a great resource for someone thinking of installing these features in their backyard, and it also touches on landscaping, lighting, and even sauans.
Required reading for pool owners.......2004-04-07
Full of photographs of beautifully designed pools and spas set in various architectural environments, "Pools & Spas" is literally full of creative ideas if you are planning on adding a pool or spa to your home. However, the book does not stop with designs but also includes information on maintenance, various types of pool equipment, and even the process of installing an in ground pool. While the coverage of in ground pool installation is not detailed enough to do it yourself it does give you an idea of what is going on at the various stages so you know what to expect from your contractor.
If you are even thinking of installing a pool or spa, whether in ground, above ground, or portable, you should pick up a copy of "Pools & Spas". It includes a lot of factors that you might overlook when planning your pool and everything you need to know to take care of it correctly when it is finished.
Average customer rating:
- Fabulous
- No stone unturned!
- The One With the Answers
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Designing Your Gardens and Landscapes: 12 Simple Steps for Successful Planning
Janet Macunovich , and
Janet Maconovich
Manufacturer: Storey Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Plastic Comb
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New Complete Guide to Landscaping: Design, Plant, Build (Better Homes and Gardens(R))
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ASIN: 1580173152 |
Amazon.com
In Designing Your Garden and Landscapes, Janet Macunovich lays out a simple 12-step plan that can enable you to design the perfect garden space while eliminating the guesswork. If you're a first-time gardener or a novice, chances are you'll find her sensible approach useful. The book was created as a how-to manual and workbook, so many pages leave space for priority lists or diagrams, and the plastic ring binder means it holds up to plenty of wear.
Macunovich begins by focusing on the importance of setting goals. Why do you want a garden? How will you be using it? What are your favorite plants? This process takes time and compromise, and provides the perfect beginning for moving on to the next steps: setting a budget and planning for maintenance. Once these basics are decided, the real fun begins--the actual design. Important subjects such as site assessment, plant selection, and border mapping are given thorough attention. Macunovich also does new growers a service by decoding plant-marketing comments. For instance, "does well in dry soils" can translate to both tolerating drought and rotting if overwatered, depending on your perspective. By the time you've finished these 12 steps, you'll have all the information you need to design a smart garden space. --Jill Lightner
Book Description
Both first-time gardeners and professional landscape designers will find that this is the book to reach for first. Macunovich's unique and practical 12-step approach takes the mystery out of landscape design. Through helpful checklists, practical illustrations, and creative design techniques, Macunovich makes it easy to plan a beautiful, functional, and elegant garden for every landscape.
Customer Reviews:
Fabulous.......2003-03-03
Well worth the money. If you ever get a chance to see her in person, do it. Very Knowledgeable, very practical.
No stone unturned!.......2002-07-11
This book takes you through every step you will need to landscape your yard and garden. The format is somewhat like a workbook but with a ton of useful information presented in a way that makes it easy for even a "brown-thumb" like me to understand. I especially like how the author left room for notes and grids for designing the garden. Pair this with "The Encyclopedia for Organic Gardening" and you will need no other gardening literature.
The One With the Answers.......2001-07-12
Since moving into a new house, I've been devouring every landscape book on the market, in hopes of acquiring information that will enable me to transform the weed patch and ugly bush that are the only features of my front yard into something beautiful. This is absolutely the best of the "how-to" landscape books! A real laboratory manual of landscape design, this book avoids the two major failures of many others on the market. First, unlike those that offer page after page of photos of beautifully manicured lawns from which I am expected to magically intuit the rudiments of landscape design, this book assumes rightly that I know absolutely nothing about landscaping. Then, the author uses clear diagrams and graphs to gently but methodically guide me through all stages of a design and implementation process that will enable a previously clueless me to transform my ugly view into a photo-worthy scene. Second, this book avoids the weaknesses of landscape books that so overwhelm me with the theoretical intricacies of landscape design that I am tempted to throw in the trowel and hire the work out (perhaps the authors of those books wanted me to do that all along?). By contrast, this book sequences in clear and concrete language the questions requiring decision that I will confront, lays out a range of possible actions, and then offers specific suggestions (with diagrams and graphs) for implementation. This book is sturdy and it needs to be. Rather than grace your coffee table, it will be with you as you get down and dirty in your yard with tape measure, string, and clipboard to work through the pages of this book on your way to something beautiful.
Average customer rating:
- Gardener's inspiration
- Really, a smallish coffee table book
- Semi-formal vegetable garden?
- A great read on vegetable garden design. Buy It.
|
Designing the New Kitchen Garden: An American Potager Handbook
Jennifer Bartley
Manufacturer: Timber Press, Incorporated
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Taylor's Weekend Gardening Guide to Kitchen Gardens: How to Create a Beautiful and Functional Culinary Garden (Taylor's Weekend Gardening Guides)
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The Kitchen Garden (Garden Project Workbooks)
ASIN: 0881927724 |
Book Description
Most gardeners know how rewarding it is to harvest ripe, sun-warmed tomatoes or pungent herbs straight from the garden. But those pleasures can be multiplied a hundredfold by creating a garden that is not only productive, but also a beautiful, well-integrated part of the home landscape. In this handsome volume, Jennifer Bartley shows how the traditional features of the classic kitchen garden, or potager, can be adapted to contemporary American needs and conditions. The book is informed by her conviction that the nurturing, preparing, and eating of fresh, home-grown vegetables contributes enormously both to our ties with the natural world and our ties to each other. Copiously illustrated with photographs and with the author's delightful watercolors, Designing the New Kitchen Garden offers the perfect blend of inspiration and practical guidance.
Customer Reviews:
Gardener's inspiration.......2007-03-28
This book is filled with beautiful pictures and explanations that inspire and educate. Ms. Bartley has her own garden and I felt that I benefited from her own experience. After reading this book, I was ready to place a potager's garden in my own back yard.
Really, a smallish coffee table book.......2007-03-17
The sub-title for this book might be "A landscape designer dabbles prettily in vegetables" The book is beautifully produced, although I found the strong raking light in some of the photographs actually obscured the plants.
The chapter of historical background is almost worth the price of admission itself (if you're interested in history and the history of gardening) Although somewhat preciously phrased, the author does remind us of the connection of spirit, body, and garden, something we may forget when we in the middle of a vicious battle with cabbage loopers.
But the excursions into real gardens felt to me like a fantasy. If these gardens are meant to be inspiring, they failed with me. Every page I turned reminded me that these gardens are big, and clearly cost a lot of money to build and maintain. I never had a clear sense of the good eating that should be coming out of these gardens. And of course, nothing ever seems to go wrong in these gardens; there is no sense of how the gardeners have learned and evolved their gardens over time.
For a book ostensibly about "American" potager gardening, most of the country was omitted. Including midwest, southern, and western garden would have been a big help.
The design chapter starts off on the wrong foot by discussing a potager garden that was never built. Even worse, it was never built in a large urban space with which few of us will ever have to contend, so I fail to see the point. The second garden design discussed, designed for a small restaurant, also has not been built. The third garden is the author's own, now giving me the uncomfortable feeling that the entire book is a vanity project.
When the winter weather keeps you indoors, this will not a bad book to page through; just don't let it be the only book on your shelf about potager gardening.
Semi-formal vegetable garden?.......2006-08-17
The concept of edible landscaping is given a boost toward a practical and beautiful kitchen garden in this book. The history behind kitchen gardens ("potagers", that is gardens designed around culinary use rather than solely appearance) is interesting and lively, and the sections on a few modern garden case studies is useful.
The book stumbles a bit in assuming you already know elements of design, and doesn't discuss the practical considerations of some of them. The examples of "shade mapping" could use a little explanation alongside the drawings; I found them confusing. And there's very little discussion of what to plant when -- presumably you'll decide these on your own with various seed catalogs spread around you, if you can find catalogs that detail things such as plant height and habit, colors and seasons. I haven't found many vegetable seed catalogs that spend time on these sorts of topics, and I was hoping this book would provide some illumination.
Still, there are plenty of suggestions and examples for making your vegetable garden a place of beauty as well as a producer of foods and herbs for your kitchen. My personal leanings are toward the concept that a vegetable garden is beautiful if you can see the significant amount of food you'll be eating from it and so regular plots of densely packed plants are just fine; but I'm sure my spouse will enjoy the more formal look the veggies and herbs will take on in next year's garden as a result of this book.
Do you want a vegetable garden that people -- non-gardening people -- would actually want to walk through? Are you capable of designing a beautiful layout but need a nudge in the right directions? Then this is a good book for you. I'd have prefered more meat in it, so to speak, particularly for the $35 I spent on it.
A great read on vegetable garden design. Buy It........2006-08-05
`Designing the New Kitchen Garden, An American Potager Handbook' by professional garden design consultant, Jennifer R. Bartley is a very serious book, absolutely perfect for the zone 6 snowbound gardener to buy in December, when nothing is growing, and it's even too cold to start hardscaping projects.
What I mean here is that not only does the book give very serious guidance on how to build a potager garden, it gives oodles of historical perspective on how the potager garden design evolved from pre-Christian times, through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, with it's flowering in the monastary and royal gardens of France.
One thing to point out early in this review is that the book covers practically nothing about things culinary, in spite of the fact that various methods for categorizing this book put it cheek and jowl with books on culinary subjects, which is how I happened to run across it. But as long as I'm on the subject, its important to note that a good reference on gardening techniques must almost by definition have lots of interesting text and pictures for the armchair. While you can always cook, you cannot always garden, and in temperate climes, there will always be many months of down time. This book is the perfect antidote. In fact, as good as this book is, it is almost completely composed of material for thinking and planning and not about digging, laying stone, or planting. The `Designing' of the title must be taken very seriously. There are no recipes here for laying a gravel walk or laying out a herringbone brick path. Go to your Home Depot manuals and hardscaping texts for theses skills. On the other hand, there is a great collection of ideas one may not have normally thought of, should you have the proper venue to lay out the kind of garden discussed in this book.
I must say that the `potager' of the subtitle is the French word for `kitchen garden', which is how this book landed alongside texts on herbs and vegetables. But, the fact that this notion is originally French has as much or more to do with the subject as the `vegetable' part of the notion. The book does not really discuss your garden variety `victory garden'. It really takes on the design of formal gardens which are build to be grand orniments to the spirit as well as resources for the body.
All in all, this book is a kind of knot joining many different strands of ideas, including design for pleasant sights, design for culinary application, design for historical interest, and design for a refuge for the soul. To these ends, it covers a fair number of rather esoteric techniques such as esplanade and pergola design.
Just like the fact that it does not cover a lot of culinary material, it also does not cover a lot of horticultural material. There are no references in the index, for example, on `mulch', `weeding', or `pruning'. It does, however, cover `Christian Symbols', `Roman garden', and `Holy Roman Empire'.
It also gives a list of gardens one can visit, and I'm surprised that neither Longwood Gardens nor the Winthertur Museum are listed. There is a bibliography which I believe should include Amanda Hesser's `The Gardener and the Cook'. Aside from these miniscule nits, this is a great book for sparking wonder and ideas for the gardener.
Average customer rating:
- ELEMENTARY
- THE Guide to simple bathroom design
- The Definitive Guide to designing the perfect bath
- A Fantastic Tool
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The Definitive Guide to Designing the Perfect Bath
Barbara Sallick
Manufacturer: Barbara Sallick
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Perfect Paperback
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Tile Style: Creating Beautiful Kitchens, Baths, and Interiors with Tile
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ASIN: B000KCIBSG
Release Date: 2006-11-01 |
Product Description
Barbara Sallick, Co-founder and Senior Vice President of Design at Waterworks, releases her second publication this November, titled The Definitive Guide to Designing the Perfect Bath. The ideal shelf-mate to her previous book, Waterworks: Inventing Bath Style, The Definitive Guide emphasizes the importance of planning, meticulous installation, choosing and trusting your design professionals, and accessorizing as the finishing touch for the complete bath experience. The Definitive Guide is the perfect tool for anyone building a new house, planning a major renovation, or making just a few small changes to the bath. It is the ultimate companion throughout the bath design process. The guide provides useful worksheets and checklists, and defines important questions to ask before embarking upon your design journey. Barbara says of The Definitive Guide, "A space will yield the most complete bath experiences when each decision that you have made about architecture and design feels right and the bath becomes a private retreat for your daily bath rituals." As arbiter of the Waterworks' influential bath aesthetic, Barbara brings a lifelong background in design to her philosophy of modern bath style, employing formal principles of architecture and decoration to make this utilitarian environment as rich and livable as any other room in the home. Barbara has continued to build on this precedent for nearly 30 years, seeking inspiration in past design traditions as the basis of an evolving, modern bath viewpoint.
Customer Reviews:
ELEMENTARY.......2007-08-03
If you have had any experience at all in remodeling or building a new bath, this book is way too elementary. I had hoped to find new and useful information but did not. There was nothing that cannot be found in any well written article on bath design in a monthly magazine on home decorating.
THE Guide to simple bathroom design.......2006-12-13
I loved this book; I was impressed with its simplicity and clarity. The photos are beautiful, the book is really user friendly and I will call it an indispensable guide for anyone even fantasizing about renovating their bathroom!
The Definitive Guide to designing the perfect bath.......2006-12-13
This guide goes back to the basics of bath design. The illustrations are helpful and the terminolgy is easy to understand.
A Fantastic Tool.......2006-12-13
This book is a fantastic tool for bath design. Great organization, lovely imagery, and extrememly useful information!
Average customer rating:
- Very informative
- as practical as it is beautiful
- Inspiring and educational
- A MUST HAVE
- Great photography, modestly informative
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The Exotic Garden: Designing with tropical plants in almost any climate
Richard R. Iversen
Manufacturer: Taunton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1561582328
Release Date: 1999-04-01 |
Amazon.com
There's nothing new about the temperate gardener's love of hot tropicals: the not-so-secretly sensual Victorians planted lavish, whimsically shaped beds full of palms, giant reeds, and angels' trumpets, many of which still survive. (Of course, manual laborers were easier to come by in the 19th century.) This book shows not only how to re-create this sort of tropical bed and border, but how to fake it on small city plots and patios with tropicals planted in sizeable containers. Author Richard Iversen, who has gardened professionally in Barbados as well as on Long Island, New York, says, "Popping a banana plant into the soil next to an azalea may look exotic, but it doesn't make an exotic garden." His emphasis on color, texture, and form turns this from a book on novelty gardening into a fine garden-design book.
If you crave a bed of exotic plants and are willing to do a bit of extra work, you can grow ficus and canna in Cleveland or Vancouver, but it is important to realize before taking on a tropical garden project that growing them is a year-round proposition, while enjoying them is a six-month pleasure; in colder climates, such as those colder than zones 7 or 8, many tropical and subtropical plants must winter over in a heated area such as a garage or greenhouse. Iversen is good at imparting this kind of careful detail, showing when to dig up tubers and how to store them, and including a picture demonstrating how early spring bulbs can share the garden with later-blooming tropicals. A glossary of 100 tropical plants at the book's end will get gardeners with a passion for the lush and dazzling off to a great start. --Barrie Trinkle
Book Description
The idea of mixing tropical plants with perennials and hardy annuals has been around since Victorian times. It is now enjoying a newfound popularity because tropical plants are more widely available. Gardeners who want to bring the lush beauty of tropicals to an existing garden, or who want to create an authentic vintage garden, will delight in The Exotic Garden. Although tropicals are novelties in temperate climates, they can successfully be grown anywhere. Iversen shows how tropicals can easily be used as annuals to perk up a garden with color during non-blooming seasons. The author's expert advice shows how to grow tropicals in beds, borders, and containers, select and combine plants, and use the tools of color, texture, and form. Plus, there are special overwintering tips and a full color glossary of more than 100 plants.
Customer Reviews:
Very informative.......2002-11-02
Dr. Iversen's book is full of wonderful ideas on using tender perennials and annuals for an exotic look in stunning combinations. In addition, there is a guide on how to care for and overwinter these plants.
as practical as it is beautiful.......2002-10-22
Gorgeously illustrated with color photographs and garden design plans, "The Exotic Garden" convincingly maintains that the luxurious foliage, texture and bloom of tropical plants will work in any garden, providing you can give the plants house room during winter.
There are separate chapters for designing tropical gardens, borders and beds, planting and caring for containers, and the care tropicals require. Many of Iversen's ideas combine tropicals with temperate-zone plants, and he uses color, leaf texture and height throughout for striking effects.
The last 30-plus pages offer a glossary of 100 tropical plants. Each entry includes a color photo, the plant's origin, decorative interest (foliage or flowers), culture characteristics, height, propagation (cutting or seed, season, time to maturity), horticultural use and overwintering needs. Iversen also provides mail-order sources.
An attractive book with ideas to fit anyone's garden.
Inspiring and educational.......2002-09-09
I had the pleasure of studying under Dr. Iverson at SUNY Farmingdale. This man knows his plant material and how to use it effectively in challenging landscapes and spaces. If you are a northern gardener looking for some new ideas instead of the same hum-drum gardens buy this book ! This man got me to learn the Latin for some 200 plants..trust me you will close the book and have learned something.
A MUST HAVE.......2001-10-25
This book is a must-have. I had Dr. Iversen as a professor at SUNY-Farmingdale and reading this book is like sitting in one of his classes or lectures. It is very clearly written and eloquent, and very informative, explaining everything from the culture and history of tropical plants, designing gardens, to the care and planting of tropicals, with beautiful photography. The SUNY-Farmingdale tropical garden is a beautiful site to see on campus. I have my own tropical container garden with my banana trees and angel trumpets by my back door at my apartment during the warm weather and inside my apartment in the cool weather. This book is excellent and should be on everyone's bookshelf.
Great photography, modestly informative.......2001-09-06
The has two main sections. The first section is about garden design and plant care, about 119 pages. It contains 11 pages on tropical environments and habitats. 22 pages on color, form, and texture. 48 pages on tropical borders and beds. 20 pages on containers. 18 pages on growing and propagation.
The second section is 33 pages. It contains an encyclopedia of 96 tropical, or exotic looking, plants. Each plant is described by common name, scientific name, country of origin, growing conditions, propagation tip, overwintering instructions, and a 2 inch photograph of the plant.
The book also contains 2 pages of common names indexed to family names, 4 page topic index, over 130 large full color photographs and dozens of drawings.
The first section about garden design and plant care is good, but not great. Much is the same old information that you can read in most every garden book. Nothing special.
Photography is awesome. Images cover a great variety of plants, design concepts, and unusual situations. Very interesting and informative captions follow each photograph.
The second section which is the tropical plant encyclopedia is great. Information is interesting and content is meaningful. Great layout of information with a photograph of each plant. Too bad this isn't the major concentration of the book - because this section is awesome!
Overall the book is a good general guide to designing with tropical plants. There are sections of great content, but they do not fill the book. Solid information for beginners, although nothing that could not be found in other texts.
Average customer rating:
- Practical Orientation to Natives
- The Perfect Book for Any Californian Who Wants to Save the Environment in Their Own Backyard
- best book for gardeners
- Colorful new gardening book focuses on state's native plants
- Great guidebook!
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Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens
Glenn Keator , and
Alrie Middlebrook
Manufacturer: University of California Press
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Binding: Paperback
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California Native Plants for the Garden
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Native Treasures: Gardening With the Plants of California (Phyllis M. Faber Books)
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The Landscaping Ideas of Jays: A Natural History of the Backyard Restoration Garden
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Gardening with a Wild Heart: Restoring California's Native Landscapes at Home
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Plants And Landscapes For Summer-dry Climates Of The San Francisco Bay Region
ASIN: 0520251105 |
Book Description
Inspirational, practical, and easy to use, this book was created with the aim of conveying the awesome diversity and beauty of California's native plants and demonstrating how they can be brought into ecologically sound, attractive, workable, and artful gardens. Structured around major California plant communities--bluffs, redwoods, the Channel Islands, coastal scrub, grasslands, deserts, oak woodlands, mixed evergreen woodlands, riparian, chaparral, mountain meadows, and wetlands--the book's twelve chapters each include sample plans for a native garden design accompanied by original drawings, color photographs, a plant list, tips on successful gardening with individual species, and more. Both residential and professional gardeners will learn the benefits of going native with gardens that require less water and fewer fertilizers, attract wildlife, engage the senses, create a sense of place, and, at the same time, preserve our rich natural heritage.
Designing Native California Gardens includes:
* More than 600 selected native species recommended for the garden
* More than 300 photographs of native plants, natural plant communities, and residential native gardens
* Recommended places to visit for viewing each plant community
Customer Reviews:
Practical Orientation to Natives.......2007-10-10
-We need more books like this to make Native Gardening more amenable. What "Landscapers' Challenge" did for Landscaping, this book will hopefully start to do to open up the still rather arcane world of Native Plants. It is practical and full of detailed, appropriate, high quality photographs of sample materials. Visually on par with "Landscape Plants for Western Regions" by Perry.
The Perfect Book for Any Californian Who Wants to Save the Environment in Their Own Backyard.......2007-09-26
This book is excellent, with many good photographic examples of complete native landscape. It also set for an excellent philosophy for landscape design for the both the use of native and non-native plants. However it really shouldn't be thought of as a complete source for native gardening. I would also suggest that you pick up 'California Native Plants for the Garden' by Carol Bornstein, David Fross, and Bart O'Brien. Even between these two books all of the possibilities for beautiful California native plants and landscapes created using them have not yet been fully explored, but these books are an excellent start.
best book for gardeners.......2007-09-06
This is the book I have been waiting for! It has all the information to learn about and appreciate the value and beauty of native gardening. Practical and inspirational, with lovely photos and illustrations. The book helps the reader incorporate the beauty found in nature in a home plot. If I were going to buy one book about making/keeping a garden, this would be it.
Colorful new gardening book focuses on state's native plants.......2007-08-04
Bay Area botanist Glenn Keator and San Jose horticulturalist and designer Alrie Middlebrook are on a mission. They want to convince Californians to plan and create gardens with native plant species in mind.
Why?
As Keator writes, "the most compelling reason is to create a sense of place. & What better way is there to remind ourselves of this special geographic region we call home than to recreate, in our own yards, the native gardens found in the wild? Anyone can have a garden with roses (mostly hybrids from China and Europe), petunias (from South America), fuchsias (from mountainous South and Central America), and impatiens (many from Africa)."
Besides, says Keator, native plants are already adapted to the area and likely will survive. They attract native pollinators and reduce the amount of water and pesticides required. Keator and Middlebrook make a convincing case in "Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens" ($27.50 in paperback from Phyllis M. Faber/University of California Press).
More than 300 full-color photographs enrich the book and several appendices provide sources of natives and a planting calendar.
The book is a practical exploration of a dozen plant communities in the state, several of which are well represented locally. Each chapter begins with an overview and is anchored by a diagram and explanation of one of Middlebrook's own garden projects or concepts.
Readers are provided with design notes, a scope of work for the given project and a rich compilation of plants to use. The goal is not to duplicate Middlebrook's work but rather to appreciate the beauty that can be created using California natives.
The authors conclude their chapters with an annotated list of "places to visit" to see the native plant communities in the wild. The Oak Woodland chapter, for example, pictures a "carpet of Ithuriel's spear (Triteleia laxa)" on Table Mountain; readers are directed to Loafer Creek State Park at Lake Oroville to observe "blue oak woodland mixed with gray pines and scattered interior live oaks." Keator notes that "many fortunate gardeners already have oaks on their property, yet many ornamentals require the summer water that slowly kills these magnificent trees. California's oak woodlands provide a fine palette of plants perfectly adapted to grow under oaks."
In the Grasslands chapter, Bear Valley in Colusa County features "glueseed, goldfields, royal larkspur, creamcups and owl's clover"; Feather Falls, an example of mixed-evergreen forest, presents such understory plants as western mock-orange and Sierra fawn lily.
And then there's the ponderosa pine. A sense of place, indeed.
Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.
Great guidebook!.......2007-06-16
As a beginner with CA natives I found this to be the book I was seeking. There are good explanations of the state's plant communities, examples of design plans, guidance on how to implement a plan for that community and good photos of real landscaping and the plants. The plant selections presented for each community have good descriptions and and seem from my weekly increasing experience to be those that succeed in home landscaping. I refer to it all the time as I take on areas of my yard to restore. North, south, east, west our yards are complex. This book helps one figure them out relative to CA natives.
Average customer rating:
- Paths Steps and Footbridges
- A Landscape Architects View
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How to Build Paths, Steps & Footbridges: The Fundamentals of Planning, Designing, and Constructing Creative Walkways in Your Home Landscapes
Peter Jeswald
Manufacturer: Storey Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Garden Design
| Gardening & Horticulture
| Home & Garden
| Subjects
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General
| Gardening & Horticulture
| Home & Garden
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Landscape
| Gardening & Horticulture
| Home & Garden
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Outdoor & Recreational Areas
| Gardening & Horticulture
| Home & Garden
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Do-It-Yourself
| How-to & Home Improvements
| Home & Garden
| Subjects
| Books
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The Fence Bible: How to plan, install, and build fences and gates to meet every home style and property need, no matter what size your yard.
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ASIN: 1580174876 |
Book Description
Incorporating movement in the landscape is one of the hot trends in gardening today. As people invest more time and money in their homes, landscaping a primary focus. How can we make the outdoors more inviting? Paths, steps, and footbridges are three key elements that help define a landscape and how people move through it and enjoy it. An inviting path that meanders through a garden, steps that connect terraced outdoor "living rooms," and a footbridge that spans a small stream each serves a utilitarian purpose, but when designed creatively and well can infuse a property with an irresistible sense of wonder and delight.
In How to Build Paths, Steps & Footbridges, builder Peter Jeswald explains how to add practical and visually pleasing elements to any property. He advocates choices that complement, rather than dominate, the home and landscape and recommends natural and manmade materials appropriate for the goals and objectives of each project. Wood, masonry, stone, earth, and vegetation are all options he discusses for building and creating an environment that complements the topography.
Filled with color photographs, How to Build Paths, Steps & Footbridges also includes hundreds of clear instructional drawings of plans and construction techniques. Jeswald provides careful advice for every stage of a project--up-front planning, assessing a site, finalizing a design, and selecting proper tools and building materials for construction--all with the goal of providing a strong theoretical basis that will allow readers to achieve the best possible result: greater access to and interest in their outdoor spaces.
Customer Reviews:
Paths Steps and Footbridges.......2005-07-11
A "fresh", well conceptualized and practical book that deals effectively and quite thoroughly with one of the two strategic components of any landscape --- the movement space. The other being landing or gathering space. The book is well illustrated and profusely augmented with simple clear diagrams. It benefits from a strong outline and simultaneous information on how to build paths, steps and footbridges It offers practical implementation tips. Stunning even inspiritational photographs complement the diagramatic graphics. A very good book for the "do it yourselfer" who could benefit from wisdom of those who have constructed well.
A Landscape Architects View.......2005-03-30
Outstanding selection of photos defining numerous material selections and their designed use.
Paramount to the process is Peter's description of the planning and design process. Easy to follow, thorough, and it leads the amature and professional through the inital idea(s) to a well defined project - bricks and mortar.
The step by step direction tool(s), material(s) and know how should result in a successful project for friends and family to enjoy and rave about. Just look at the pictures. HUNGER!!!
A wonderful book for young and old, amature and professional.
JOHN W. CAMPBELL
Landscape Architect
Average customer rating:
|
Garden Artistry: Secrets of Designing and Planting a Small Garden
Helen Dillon
Manufacturer: MacMillan Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Flowers
| Gardening & Horticulture
| Home & Garden
| Subjects
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Garden Design
| Gardening & Horticulture
| Home & Garden
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General
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General
| Techniques
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ASIN: 0028603796 |
Customer Reviews:
A Feast for the Eyes.......2001-03-09
This is a book to savor, packed with beautiful close-ups of plants as well as photos of the author's various borders. Written by someone who obviously loves both the plants and the planting process, it's like taking a walk with an experienced gardner and getting the inside story on each flower.
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- Frank Lloyd Wright The Houses
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