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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Down and dirty – a complete step-by-step guide to making, installing and living with beautiful, all-natural earthen floors Poor heat and moisture management are the enemies of durable, comfortable, and efficient housing, and good building design and construction starts with a solid understanding of good building science. Essential Building Science provides a highly visual and accessible introduction to the fundamentals of building science for residential construction. Part one covers the rationale behind high-performance design and the fundamentals of building physics, including thermal dynamics, moisture transfer, and hygro-thermal dynamics such as vapor drive and condensation. Part two teaches the vital critical thinking skills needed to consider buildings as whole systems and to develop thermal and moisture control strategies regardless of the specifics of the design. Case studies and examples from across North American climatic zones illuminate real-life problems and offer builders, designers, and DIYers the insights and tools required for creating better new buildings and dramatically improving old ones. Good science plus critical thinking equals high performance buildings.
