In Elements of Garden Design, Joe Eck has created a rhetoric of designing gardens - a series of succinctly expressed and easily grasped definitions of key concepts, useful both to the complete novice and the experienced professional. These essays explore the mysteries of garden design, forming an indispensable primer on the making of a garden. The book is illustrated with thirty-five line drawings by Lisa Brooks that visually support the main concern, which is to address at once the abstract thought that goes into the shaping of a garden as well as its concrete realization. The most theoretical concepts, such as "intention" or "harmony," are discussed and illustrated alongside the most practical - such as decks, fences, gateways, utility areas, vegetable gardens, and places for children to play. The publication of Elements of Garden Design, already acclaimed by important garden writers and designers in America and England, is a significant event in American gardening. It is destined to be a bible for the growing number of serious American gardeners. "The great problem with rules," writes Joe Eck, "is that once they are laid down people tend to obey them." In this slender book of essays about gardening, Eck's goal is less to provide diagrams and formulas about how to build a garden than to share with the more experienced gardener his philosophy of why garden in the first place and what it is that can make a garden so pleasing to the eye and the soul. This volume consists of articles reprinted from Horticulture magazine. Eck, a landscape designer, discusses the basic garden design concepts that people might consider when planning a garden. He also includes chapters on garden elements such as foundation plantings, water features, greenhouses, sculpture, and the like. The book works well as an introduction to design concepts for gardeners who want to take a thoughtful approach in creating a garden that will reflect their individual taste. The lack of an index is a problem, however, for quick location of information. For comprehensive gardening collections or where there is an extensive demand for garden design materials.?Dale Luchsinger, Athens Area Technical Inst., Ga. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. In essays published previously in Horticulture magazine, Eck cogently articulates an aesthetic philosophy of garden design. Precepts such as structure, style, and scale are clarified, with discourse extending further to include ways one might integrate a sculpture or a water feature or create a transition between a wooded area and one's own garden. Eck is a fine writer who educates newcomers on significant issues, at the same time reminding experienced gardeners of often disregarded but commonsense horticultural practices. It is safe to assume that the counsel put forth was arrived at after years of design experience and as one of two partners responsible for tending to the needs of plants in a noteworthy Vermont garden. Readers have much to gain from the expertise in "this book of rules" ; undoubtedly (if silently), they will also debate principles Eck outlines here. Alice Joyce This prose is inspirational for a mature gardener, one who has passed through the stages of necessity, hobby and obsession, and is capable of taking pleasure from the less obvious, and more difficult, components of a garden in its entirety. -- The New York Times Book Review, Dora Galitzki Used Book in Good Condition