Synopses & Reviews
Bamboo Barriers, a Timbered Lych-Gate, Neat White Pickets and a Pebbled Path
Whether simple as a twig teepee for your 'Blue Lake' beans or grand as a gazebo shingled in weathered cedar, a structural element not only serves a practical purpose but also has the power to define a garden's mood, guide its uses, anchor it in time, and deepen its meaning.
In this generously illustrated book of ideas and plans is all of the help a gardener needs to transform dirt, plants, and dreams in to a unique outdoor home
Featuring:
The Garden's Boundaries - They protect, they frame, they shelter. A rickrack edging in brick. Moon gates. Matching fence styles to house.
The Garden Above - The sky beckons, and we benefit - in roses and berries coaxed forth by the sun, in the dappled shade of an arbor, pergola, or arch.
The Garden Underfoot - Clogs crunching on gravel, boot soles on brick pavers. A sinuous path through the shrubberies—then the terrace.
The Living Garden - Bending the garden to our own design, creating living architecture. Growing the bones with hedges and espaliers, taking root with potting sheds and greenhouses.
Synopsis
Equal parts wish book and how-to, "Garden Structures" marries inspiration with the nitty-gritty of design, materials, and methods to help gardeners transform dirt, plants, and dreams into an outdoor home. Full-color photos throughout.
Synopsis
What separates the special garden from an ordinary one is not only what we plant in it, but also how we shape it. Build a wall with stone. Raise a trellis for the roses. Edge the herb bed with wattling. Be ambitious and erect an arbor for afternoon tea. Each of these is a garden structure-an element that has the power to define a garden's mood, guide its uses, anchor it in time, and deepen its meaning.
Equal parts wish book and how-to, Garden Structures marries inspiration with the nitty-gritty of design, materials, and methods to help every gardener create and carry out plans that will transform dirt, plants, and dreams into an outdoor home. Illustrated with over 200 exquisite color photographs and instructional line drawings, Garden Structures ranges from the simplest to the most involved ways to create a framework on which a garden grows. Here are structures to define boundaries: gates, fences, walls, edgings. Structures that give a garden lift: trellises, arbors, pergolas. Structures, such as paths and walkways, that shape the garden underfoot. And structures for living: patios, decks, terraces, greenhouses. Complementing each section are dozens of sidebars, from "Bamboo Barriers" to "What to Plant Between the Cracks" to "The Osage Orange" and "Paving Particulars."
Synopsis
Marrying inspiration with the nitty-gritty of design, materials and methods.
Garden Structures covers all the different ways to create a framework on which a garden flows. Beginning with the very idea that makes a garden a garden--
enclosure--and its expression as a fence or wall, through the most elaborate of structures, including greenhouses, decks, and pavilions, the ten chapters in this book celebrate the ways that gardening and building are linked. A chinoiserie trellis, herb beds edged in wattling, brick arches dripping with honeysuckle, flagstone walkways--this is how we carve our unique niche in the world's vastness.
Illustrating the book are more than 300 color photographs plus instructional line drawings that shows how structures are integrated into a garden, offer a range of possibilities, and help the gardener carry out the most involved plans.
About the Author
Linda Joan Smith, a contributing editor for Home Garden and Country Garden magazines, is the author of numerous articles on American gardens and gardeners. She has gardened from Arizona to Massachusetts, and Iowa to Pacific Grove, Calfornia.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
The Power of Garden Structure - 1
Part I: The Garden's Boundaries
Boundaries are the garden's beginnings. To define them is to lay claim to a spot of earth, to signal our intent to cultivate and nurture, to circumscribe our labors. Boundaries protect. They frame. They shelter. They embrace the garden, and welcome all who enter.
Chapter One: GATES AND DOORWAYS: On the Threshold - 9
Chapter Two: FENCES: The Garden's Guardians - 31
Chapter Three: WALLS: Shaping a Sanctuary - 59
Chapter Four: EDGINGS: Setting Limits - 87
Part II: The Garden Above
Gardens are rooted in the earth, but the sky beckons. To send plants climbing is to lift up the garden, to elevate it above the sprawl and damp. There, the sun can coax forth the berry and beckon the rose to flower. In the process, we benefit: from an arbor's shade, from a pergola's shelter, from an increase in the garden's bounty.
Chapter Five: TRELLISES: Climbing Lessons - 101
Chapter Six: ARBORS, PERGOLAS, AND ARCHES: Seeking Shelter - 123
Part III: The Garden Underfoot
We connect with the garden through our feet. Toes in the new-clipped grass. Clogs crunching on gravel. Soles on brick pavers. To set our feet upon any one of these is to savor the garden's pleasures, lured by a well-mown path or lulled by a sun-blessed patio. These form the floor of our out-door home, the foundations on which the garden--and the gardener--rests.
Chapter Seven: PATHS AND WALKWAYS: Guides to the Garden - 147
Chapter Eight: PATIOS, DECKS, AND TERRACES: The Middle Ground - 177
Part IV: The Living Garden
The growth of the garden follows our lead. To plant and nurture and prune and tie is to bend the garden to our own designs, to shape it to our bidding. It rewards