Dreams of the Garden: Thoughtful Gardening

From Art to Landscape

Garden designers face some daunting questions: How do I begin the creative process? Where can I find design inspiration? How will I know if my design is successful? If you approach these questions like an artist, with an artist 's tools and ways of looking at the world, you will be able to design gardens that combine the unique character of a place with your innermost creative spirit. You ll make inspiring gardens that have real meaning, for yourself as well as others.

In this luminous volume, landscape architect and artist W. Gary Smith explores the various means that artists use including drawing, painting, sculpture, meditation, poetry, and dance to create personal connections with the landscape that enrich and inform garden design. Part 1 focuses on simple techniques that anyone can use to nurture creativity, unleash the imagination, and get ideas down on paper. Part 2 shows how these techniques have shaped actual design projects with spectacular results.
Throughout, the author 's friendly and encouraging voice removes the shroud of mystery surrounding the creative process and shows how even the least artistically inclined can tap into inner resources they never knew they had. Smith 's own exuberant sketches and bold paintings illuminate the path from art to landscape.

Infectiously engaging and unfailingly inspiring, this eye-opening book deserves to be read and reread by anyone who aspires to master the rich and demanding art of garden design.

Although the garden may beckon as strongly as ever, the tasks involved pulling weeds, pushing wheelbarrows, digging holes, moving heavy pots become increasingly difficult, or even impossible, with advancing age. But the idea of giving it up is unthinkable for most gardeners. So what 's the alternative?

In Gardening for a Lifetime, now in paperback, Sydney Eddison draws on her own forty years of gardening to provide a practical and encouraging roadmap for scaling back while keeping up with the gardening activities that each gardener loves most. Like replacing demanding plants like delphiniums with sturdy, relatively carefree perennials like sedums, rudbeckias, and daylilies. Or taking the leap and hiring help another pair of hands, even for a few hours a week, goes a long way toward getting a big job done. Or maybe it makes sense to get rid of high-maintenance trees, shrubs, or perennials. The paperback edition features a new chapter in which Sydney 's struggles with hip and back problems force her to walk the walk. As a friend of hers says, "Last summer you wrote the book. Now, I'm happy to see that you've read it." Gentle, personable, and practical, Gardening for a Lifetime will be welcomed by all gardeners looking to transform gardening from a list of daunting chores into the rewarding, joy-filled activity it was meant to be.

Chosen by the American Horticultural Society as one of the seventy-five greatest books ever written about gardening, Second Nature has become a manifesto for rethinking our relationship with nature. With chapter ranging from a reconsideration of the Great American Lawn and a dispatch from one man’s war with a woodchuck to reflections on the sexual politics of roses, Pollan captures the rhythms of our everyday engagement with the outdoors in all its glory and exasperation.

In Thoughtful Gardening, award-winning historian and Financial Times gardening columnist Robin Lane Fox takes readers on a delightful journey through each season of the gardening year. From fending off vine-weevils to visiting Yves Saint Laurent’s private gardens in Marrakech, Fox imbues each of his musings with grace, sophistication, and charm. Essential reading for anyone planting a new garden or taking stock of one after several years, Thoughtful Gardening offers expert advice and a touching reminder of the power of art and literature to deepen what we see and experience in nature.
Combining a vast understanding of horticulture with witty and stylish storytelling, these vignettes form—season by season—a rich reflection on the lessons, challenges, and joys of life with a green thumb.