The Garden Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Planning and Planting

Comprehensive, practical, and exhaustively illustrated, The Garden Sourcebook is the only book you will need in order to plan, plant, and maintain your garden. The book begins with an overview of all the basic principles of garden planning - whether you're creating a new garden or adapting an existing one - giving expert guidelines on how to assess your garden's potential in terms of climate, soil, and sun. "The Look of the Garden" explores the basic elements that give the garden its character - style, color, shape, and texture - as well as the most popular styles of gardening, from English cottage gardens to Japanese water gardens. Next is a discussion of the hard surfaces of the garden - walls, fences and hedging, paths and steps, and the wealth of surfacing materials, from stone and rock to concrete and gravel. "Garden Features" is a visual catalog of ornamental and architectural features packed with advice on how to choose the most appropriate screen, trellis, arbor, pool, or fountain. Finally, the longest section, "The Plant Selector" is a photographic index of more than 500 plants organized within categories (e.g. hedges, shrubs, borders) not alphabetically, but by characteristic. Let's say you want a border that flowers all year. You look under "border" and find the subcategory "flowering". There you will find a selection of flowering borders, and from the descriptions of their needs (light, soil, moisture) and characteristics (shape of the leaf, duration of the flower, compatible plants), you will be able to select the plant best for your garden. Informing the book are three convictions: that all aspects of the garden must work in harmony, that attention to detail is vitallyimportant, and that only the best plants and materials will ensure success. With more than 1,000 superb photographs and 300 illustrations, The Garden Sourcebook leaves nothing to the imagination except the infinite possibilities it enables you to master.