The Ultimate Garden Designer: New Edition

Rating:
Summary: Very comprehensive
Review: Having looked at many, many landscaping books, I can honestly say this one is among the best. The pictures are beautiful yet practical and feasible. Lots of practical suggestions help modify for your own yard.

Rating:
Summary: Stimulate Your Design Ideas
Review: The Ultimate Garden Designer is one of the best books I've read on the subject. I've been gardening for about twenty years and have read and done much in landscape and garden design. If your looking for a book about concepts, not specific plants this is the best one I've come across. It will NOT make you into a garden designer if you don't already have a working knowledge of basic design concepts. [To further clarify it does not go into long discussions on UNIVERSAL principles of garden design, it does however give great design perspective insight into each specific plan and feature.] What it will do is stimulate your design ideas based on your potential applications of a given design theme.

The book has many colorful three dimensional renderings and two dimensional plans. They are categorized into complete gardens and garden features.

The complete gardens are based on theme's such as cottage, kitchen, family, plant enthusiast, disabled, water, Japanese, etc. Each plan has renderings and a plan, a short "design philosophy" discussion, a plant selection thought process, unique features identified, and design variations. The design variations are great for stimulating ideas on ways to adapt a given style of garden to different lot constraints (ie. long and narrow, corner, or triangle lot). The garden features section walks you through the styles, materials, and techniques for things such as water features, rock gardens, pergolas, walls, steps, herb gardens, etc. There are great color photo examples, different design sketches, and a discussion of design considerations.

The book also includes a plant directory of the most common plants in the included plans. Some will be familiar and some won't since this book was written in the U.K. But the plants list is not the main attraction here.

I highly recommend this book to everyone who is enthusiastic about designing their gardens as a whole and not just a mish-mash of disparate plants. A must for every serious garden library.

Rating:
Summary: Stimulate Your Design Ideas
Review: The Ultimate Garden Designer is one of the best books I've read on the subject. I've been gardening for about twenty years and have read and done much in landscape and garden design. If your looking for a book about concepts, not specific plants this is the best one I've come across. It will NOT make you into a garden designer if you don't already have a working knowledge of basic design concepts. [To further clarify it does not go into long discussions on UNIVERSAL principles of garden design, it does however give great design perspective insight into each specific plan and feature.] What it will do is stimulate your design ideas based on your potential applications of a given design theme.

The book has many colorful three dimensional renderings and two dimensional plans. They are categorized into complete gardens and garden features.

The complete gardens are based on theme's such as cottage, kitchen, family, plant enthusiast, disabled, water, Japanese, etc. Each plan has renderings and a plan, a short "design philosophy" discussion, a plant selection thought process, unique features identified, and design variations. The design variations are great for stimulating ideas on ways to adapt a given style of garden to different lot constraints (ie. long and narrow, corner, or triangle lot). The garden features section walks you through the styles, materials, and techniques for things such as water features, rock gardens, pergolas, walls, steps, herb gardens, etc. There are great color photo examples, different design sketches, and a discussion of design considerations.

The book also includes a plant directory of the most common plants in the included plans. Some will be familiar and some won't since this book was written in the U.K. But the plants list is not the main attraction here.

I highly recommend this book to everyone who is enthusiastic about designing their gardens as a whole and not just a mish-mash of disparate plants. A must for every serious garden library.