From the esteemed Royal Horticultural Society comes the definitive step-by-step guide to selecting and building a wide range of garden structures. It provides all the key information needed for planning the design and constructing a garden, including a look at the available materials and selecting the sizes, typical quantities, and optimal qualities needed. Best of all, the detailed instructions and illustrations make even quite complex projects straightforward and easy to accomplish. In addition, there’s invaluable coverage of design principles, garden styles, and water and ornamental features.
The Essential Garden Design Workbook guides the reader through every stage of planning a garden — how to survey a site, how to choose landscaping materials, and how to develop planting schemes. This fully revised and updated second edition features new U.S. case studies and new photographs. Valuable tips on green gardening are new to this edition, and include how to harvest rainwater, how to design a green roof, tips on sustainable planting, and a guide to composting. Tailor-made for hands-on gardeners, the workbook approach is accessible, practical, and can be used to create a garden from scratch and to redesign an existing garden. Gardeners will find easy ways to measure large spaces, estimate the height of a tree, and find the right proportions for a deck. They'll also find tips on space, light, and color. Includes hundreds of easy-to-follow line drawings and diagrams.
Designing a garden is a complex task. Where do you start? What kind of skills do you need? What are the logical steps in creating a design? How do you communicate your ideas to a client, and how do you accommodate a client’s requests while maintaining the integrity of the project? The answers to these questions, and many more, can all be found in Understanding Garden Design. Most books on garden design focus on only one or a few aspects of garden design—choosing plants or creating a hardscape, for example. This comprehensive, accessible book lays out the entire process from start to finish in clear, precise language that avoids the pitfalls of “designspeak.” In fact, garden owners and clients of garden designers who want to understand more about the designer’s craft will be able to profit from the book’s lessons. Among the many topics covered are how to document a site, how to determine what a client needs and wants from the garden, how to take architectural features into consideration, how to think about circulation and lay out paths, how to use basic design principles, how to work with plants, and how to create a final design. Practical aspects are clearly laid out, including working with contractors and staying on top of the various phases of construction. This thorough handbook is profusely illustrated with helpful photographs and diagrams. A particularly interesting tool is the hypothetical garden plan that appears in each chapter to show how to apply the topics at hand. A practical, logical approach to the planning, design, and installation of a garden, this volume will be an invaluable resource for students, landscape professionals, and garden designers.
Be inspired to imagine the garden of your dreams with this guide that will help you plan, build, and plant your perfect outdoor space. Whether you're aiming for a total redesign or targeting a specific area, Encyclopedia of Landscape Design offers fresh and achievable ideas for every gardener: grasp the fundamentals of landscape and garden design, find a style that's right for you, and create the structures and planting plans to bring your ideas to life. Produced by a team of award-winning horticultural experts, Encyclopedia of Landscape Design offers extensive design inspiration backed up with solid practical content, including step-by-step landscape structures and planting techniques.
Designs for gardens and landscapes need to contain accurate information to ensure that both the designer’s intent is clear and to enable the highest quality constructions. This book contains the elements most often used when detailing surfaces, with key information on standards, guidance and construction that the practitioner must be aware of. Alongside the text are 2D and 3D images with suggestions of measurements, design considerations and materials. Key topics covered in this book are: Vehicular paving Pedestrian paving and patios Steps and ramps Margins, edges and kerbs Drainage channels To be used in conjunction with the book is an innovative online library of freely downloadable CAD (SketchUp format) details which link directly to those in the book. These details are available for the reader to edit, adapt and use in their own designs - and make the task of detailing for projects that little bit easier.
Few gardens can transport visitors to wild and rugged landscapes as well as rock gardens. Eye-catching rock gardens are among the most challenging—and satisfying—expressions of the gardener's craft. A true rock garden is a specialized habitat that allows the gardener to grow plants that do not flourish anywhere else. This book offers the first comprehensive treatment of building rock gardens in all parts of North America. Topics covered include rock placement, materials, and planting and maintenance. Variations on the rock garden theme, from planting troughs to creating water features are also discussed. The book presents regional styles and techniques and profiles a dozen public rock gardens from Oregon to Newfoundland. This book is only available through print on demand. All interior art is black and white.
A bestselling classic completely revised and updated The third edition of The Essential Garden Design Workbook is fully updated with new color photograph and illustrations, garden plans, and growing information for the top fifty plants no designer should be without. You’ll also find updated information on designing with computer-aided design (CAD), details on sustainability ad biodiversity, and important advice on working with contractors.
The intimate Monk's Garden at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston embodies the design principles that inform the work of noted landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh. In Designing a Garden, Van Valkenburgh presents the design of the Monk's Garden at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, an intimate, walled garden that Laurie Olin has described as "a masterpiece, and not a minor one." The book documents the evolution of the garden's design, which is based on the concept of meandering paths through a dreamlike woodland to create a contemplative space. Sketches and models show how the idea was worked out, and lush photographs reveal the completed garden through the seasons. Van Valkenburgh's text explores the origins of his love of landscape and plants in his family farm in Upstate New York and how this has influenced his intuitions as a designer. He shares the full background story of the Monk's Garden, focusing on the experimental nature of design work as well as the challenges and satisfactions of the small scale and the historic and cultural context. Designing a Garden provides a unique first-person account of the design process from the most prominent landscape architects in the country.
