Elements of Garden Design does what few gardening books do--it addresses the process of conceiving a whole garden, as opposed to a single element like color or a particular class of plant. Joe Eck explores the idea of a garden, and offers a practical approach to translating concepts such as "intention" and "harmony" into the solid forms of hedges and terraces, paths and rooms. Novice and experienced professional alike will find both food for thought and down-on-the-ground advice on such matters as creating child- and pet-friendly designs. “This book charts a deliberate and negotiable course through the mysteries of creating a garden. Articulate and thought provoking, the strength of Eck's writing comes from its basis in practice, for in actually creating a designed landscape that works, Eck has no equal in America.” ― Daniel J. Hinkley, author of The Explorer's Garden and founder of Heronswood Nursery “Garden design is notoriously difficult to write about well, but in this gem of a book, Joe Eck succeeds in communicating the essentials of this elusive subject with clarity, grace, and authority. There is no other work on design that I would so unhesitatingly recommend to novice and experienced gardeners alike.” ― Tom Fischer, editor of Horticulture magazine “The are a handful of garden communicators who take on American garden design. Among them, one voice dependably gets to the heart of the matter. Rather than presenting 101 landscape plans, Joe Eck truly identifies and examines elements--not just the "what should be," but "what could be." He helps readers visualize the possiblilites and identify ideas that match their garden's spirit.” ― Ken Druse, author of The Passion of Gardening “What a pleasure to have Joe Eck's Elements of Garden Design at hand, for it is full of precise, beautifully written wisdom. I particularly love his thoughts on achieving repose with the "flat and quiet plane," or "the use of a large gesture" in the garden; and, in his essay on time, reminding us of the realities of an aging garden--more shade, yes, but also a restraint imposed, a natural process of editing, "and if one is wise, one will recognize that less is, paradoxically, more.” ― Page Dickey, author of Breaking Ground: Portraits of Ten Garden Designers Joe Eck's Elements of Garden Design is unprecedented in its treatment of the idea of a garden, showing how the envisioning of one as a conceptual whole can be translated into the solid forms of hedges and terraces, paths and rooms. Joe Eck, along with Wayne Winterrowd, is the co-author of The Year at North Hill: Four Seasons in a Vermont Garden and Living Seasonally: The Kitchen and the Table at North Hill . They are co-founders of the garden design firm North Hill, and live in Vermont. Elements of Garden Design By Joe Eck North Point Press Copyright © 2005 Joe Eck All right reserved. ISBN: 9780865477100 Elements of Garden Design Part I Theory     Intention L ike all the arts, gardening must be guided by an intention. For many, that intention will be to recreate some other garden, one that seems, from childhood memory or adult experience, ideally beautiful. For others, nature will be the model, and the garden, on a smaller scale, will exist to remind them of a natural landscape--an alpine meadow, a field of wildflowers, or a shady woodland walk. But many of us, in making our gardens, are guided less by examples in the mind than by a simple passion for plants. And although all gardeners love plants, they love them for very different reasons, and so make their gardens from very different impulses.Some gardeners want to be collectors; they are addicts given to the pleasure that comes from owning simply all of something--every variety in the species, every species in the genus, every genus in the family. Others are lovers of color, of rich masses of it crushed together in great romantic sweeps or shifting from shade to shade in subtle adumbration (yellow to yellow-ivory to rich cream to milk-white to chalk to ...). Still others love plants for their perfume, endlessly varied and susceptible to minute discrimination, one from another. ("The smell of nutmeg," a greatnose once told me, "is really twelve distinct fragrances. Three of them are not pleasant.") And then there are botanists, whose interest lies in the infinite articulation of nature's order. ("It's a homely plant, to be sure, but it is the only member of its genus that is circumpolar.") Each of these intentions--and a thousand others--can result in the making of a beautiful garden, but only by acknowledging both the problems each poses and the solutions, successful or not, that other gardeners have attempted.The problem posed by the collector's garden is one of sameness. Gardens composed chiefly of roses or lilacs, irises or daylilies or rhododendrons can fatigue even those who share the gardener's passion, for they are really but the vast multiplication of a single idea. Even the most