Garden planners, home gardeners, and landscape designers will be turning to this exceptional book for expert advice from the world's leading garden makers including Beth Chatto, Piet Oudolf, James Van Sweden, and Julie Mois Messervy. In this beautifully illustrated collection, Noël Kingsbury gathers their ideas on the entire design process — from choosing a garden style through planning its layout to maintaining its look over time. Encouraging a fluid approach to creativity, Gardens by Design will assist designers at all levels to understand the mechanics of plant combinations, to seek out cutting-edge and exquisite plants, and to nurture their garden's development, growth, and maintenance over time. Gardeners looking for advice from a who's who of top designers will revel in the insights Kingsbury has collected. Having put together a circle of creative thinkers, Kingsbury draws out from each individual a rich dialogue filled with ideas and concepts that will have readers thinking about exactly what it is they want in a garden. To personalize and give character to a space, either with the help of a hired professional or on your own, one must not only look at practical considerations, but also clarify needs and desires. This guide should help in understanding the relationships between house, grounds, and garden style. The aesthetic notion of a formal approach versus a naturalistic asymmetry is illuminated, and such elements as paths and borders, plant choices, and water features are discussed; and all suggestions are shown in a profusion of color photographs. A great sourcebook that promises to inspire budding green thumbs while stimulating those with experience. Alice Joyce Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "This book will be one you will keep on the shelf and refer to often." Debra Teachout-Teashon, Rainy Side Gardeners, July 19, 2006 Offers tips and ideas from some of the worlds top garden designers such as Beth Chatto, Piet Oudolf, Isabelle Greene, James Van Sweden, John Brookes, and Julie Moir Messervy. Photographs and garden plans will inspire the reader to create their own garden oasis. Noel Kingsbury is a well-known designer, commentator, and writer on plants, gardens, landscape, and the environment. His doctorate in horticultural ecology from the University of Sheffield focused on the selection and management of ornamental perennials and he is still engaged in active research in this field. Noel is interested in combining natives and non-natives in ecological planting schemes and a passionate advocate for sustainable plant combinations that require minimal intervention from the gardener. He trials plants and gardens at his home on the border between England and Wales and travels widely. Town gardens — Sue Berger and Helen Phillips Small urban gardens can be the trickiest kind for designers. You need a clear head and some good guidelines. Sue Berger and Helen Phillips specialize in town gardening and say that "drama and romance" best sum up their approach to design. While they are delighted that many urban dwellers want exuberant flowers and growth, they stress that town gardens need a good design. Being so small with relatively few plants, the ones which they do include must perform over a long period. There isn't room for plants that have one good month and eleven nondescript months. "Aim to make one third of the planting evergreen," is Sue's message. Like many contemporary designers, they begin by trying to persuade their clients to reduce or give up their lawns. "A small lawn has to look immaculate," Sue says, "and it's difficult to keep it looking consistently good, so we suggest alternatives that don't need constant maintenance. But it is always the men who want to keep the grass." The alternatives often involve a formal use of evergreens, such as a central parterre, "which looks good in a city environment, and reduces work as it only needs a clip once a year," says Sue. Box is the most useful plant for such formal plantings, being compact, easy to shape and vigorous if well fed. But while parterres are often thought of as being excessively formal, Sue and Helen use them as a frame for looser-growing, flowering herbaceous plants. They often fill the spaces between the box with just two varieties, one earlier and one later flowering. (Note: in some areas, the disease "box blight" can wreck box hedges or features which use the dwarf variety Buxus sempervirens "Suffruticosa". Use ordinary box instead, or if a really low hedge is wanted, try Buxus microphylla or the Japanese holly relative Ilex crenata .) Evergreens are one of their key elements, especially used to divide up the garden, creating areas or rooms. "Small children particularly enjoy this aspect," Sue adds, "as it gives them places to hide and provides places for imaginative play ... and the rooms make the garden look longer and bigger. It is important that you never see the whole garden