Design in the Plant Collector's Garden: From Chaos to Beauty [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

Roger Turner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 23, 2005

All gardeners love plants but if you love them too much the chances are you will end up with a plant collection rather than a garden. Help is at hand from confirmed plantaholic and architect Roger Turner, who describes how to indulge a passion for collecting plants without forfeiting the joys of a coherent, well-designed garden. Happily, the book prescribes little need to curb the excesses of plant addiction but simply recommends ways of focusing it to the advantage of all who share or visit your garden. Good collections need to be displayed well so that you can see them properly. The first part of the book looks at the structure of the garden as a whole, the balance of 'empty space' to 'planted space', the use of framing devices, and the value of paths in providing routes around the garden. At the heart of the book is a large section on plants that proposes ideas and solutions for making gardens with different types of plant collections. Here you will find schemes for displaying collections of trees from small groups to full-scale arboreta; recommendations for single-genus collections that look well planted together in one bed; and the ideal 'space-holder' plants that cover bare earth before prize bulbs emerge. Over 200 eye-catching and informative photographs highlight successful planting methods and illustrate the rewards to be gained from finding the perfect setting for a treasured plant. Plant enthusiasts, collectors and gardeners everywhere will unite in their enthusiasm for this practical book that provides the key to making beautiful gardens while keeping the spotlight on the plants.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Every garden-design manual devotes some space to the problem of collectors bent upon having at least one specimen of every trendy plant that comes along. Architect and landscape designer Turner has both a trained eye and voracious regard for exceptional flora and, thus, is perfectly suited to instructing gardeners on how to create a highly satisfying layout that incorporates a vivifying plant palette. From gatherings of species in a single genus to diverse collections, Turner points out the challenges involved in bringing together a jumble of plants to form a coherent garden vision. Guiding readers in how to achieve maximum impact, Turner discusses the characteristics and structure of perennials and climbers, shrubs and bulbs, and grasses and ferns. Design strategies, advice on tree selection, and a sophisticated overview taking in various types of flower borders should give much food for thought. And the beautiful illustrations promise endless inspiration. Alice Joyce
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Emphasizing compatibility and successful relationships, Turner aims to let gardeners have both their ferns and euphorbia (and alpines, bulbs, viburnums, too). -- Valerie Easton Seattle Times 20050320 It's one of the best inspirations to look through before heading out to your next collecting spree. -- Jean Starr Munster (IN) Times 20050407 This book shows how to indulge a passion for collecting plants without forfeiting the joys of a coherent, well-designed garden. Publishing News 20050225 Turner understands the collector's psyche. This book is one of the best inspirations to look through before heading out to your next collecting spree. -- Jean Starr Munster (IN) Times 20050407 I always pick up new garden books at the library but never read them. ... Turner's humor hooked me into reading the entire book. His writing is excellent and his suggestions practical. -- Cheval Force Opp Washington Gardener 20060301 Plant enthusiasts, collectors and gardeners everywhere will unite in their enthusiasm for this practical book that provides the key to making beautiful gardens while keeping the spotlight on the plants. Rainy Side Gardeners 20060508 Good advice from a plantaholic on how to create a well-designed garden. -- Lorraine Flanigan Canadian Gardening 20060401

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Timber Press (February 23, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0881926906
• ISBN-13: 978-0881926903
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #379,527 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More a general overview of garden design, January 11, 2006

By 

David W. Pittelli (Adams MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Design in the Plant Collector's Garden: From Chaos to Beauty (Hardcover)

Despite its title, this is in large part a general overview of garden design and types, with focused info for plant collectors rather limited. Also, the type of plant collectors he's thinking of are primarily those who comprehensively acquire plants within a single genus, not the far more common problem of the gardener who gets one of any type of plant he likes because he reads about it or sees it in the nursery.

The book does include examples of some genuses which might make a pretty good garden, and others which would not, and why. Varied genuses like Euphorbia are of course better than relatively uniform ones like Dianthus. Naturally, even in the former case, the garden should have some other plants for contrast of texture, color and/or season.

Basically, the book argues against most such focused gardens, which seems beside the point. ("You shouldn't have an overly focused garden" is rather like the advice to "eat healthy vegetables and eliminate fats" -- we already know it; what we really want is some trick to eat what we want, or recipes to really enjoy that are healthy.)

The book also explains when and how cottage gardens and meadows 'work' visually, which can help the eclectic gardener. But I think it would have benefited by some detailed examples of eclectic gardens that don't work, and how they were (or might be) fixed, by dividing, moving and reorganizing the plants that are already there.

Perhaps most useful are a few of the author's plant lists, notably the "yielding carpeters" -- species and cultivars that fill a space with low growth, and are easy to propagate, yet also easy to remove, and easily pushed aside by other, taller plants. But other such lists are readily found elsewhere (e.g., gray-leaved plants which like gravel). Arguably the book deserves 4 stars -- it should be useful for many people who haven't already read books on garden design -- but I rate it a 3 because it doesn't really follow through on its title's promise.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a complete horticultural course, but very helpful., December 12, 2006

By 

D. Wheatley (Meridian, Mississippi) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Design in the Plant Collector's Garden: From Chaos to Beauty (Hardcover)

I have been gardening for more than twenty years. I have never taken a horticulture course or attended a master gardeners class. Basically, I garden all summer and read about gardening all winter. I definitely fall into the category of "Ooooo, that's lovely! Let me buy one!". It's true. I am a plant junkie, but it's the learning and experimenting that has given me so much pleasure over the years, and my gardens have greatly improved since reading this book.

Yes, Mr. Turner does talk directly to those who collect a single group of plants: for instance, euphorbias (his own obsession), daylilies, roses, etc. However, his book was very helpful to me even though I am of the "one of everything school of collecting".

For starters, though I have read many books and magazine articles on garden design, his book was the first that finally helped me to understand what the "bones" or "structure" of a garden are, and why they are so important.

And he gives many examples in his book of how to take a collection of a single type of plant, say Heliopsis, and mix it into a variety of other plants, so that the collection is no longer like a coin collection, all lined up in rows for viewing, but an integral part of a beautiful whole. I think he did a fine job of teaching this concept. I just had to think in terms of plants that are similar to one another, rather than being of one species,(ie. Shastas, Rudbeckias, heliopsis, heleniums, chrysanthemums, etc.)and apply his same design principles to them.

This being said, his book is not the one, complete, answer to all my questions on the subject of garden design. I can recommend several others that are excellent (beginning with anything by Pamela Harper, for example), but cannot say that I have yet run across that one "read it and you've got it" book.

I have decided that garden design is probably a natural gift for the lucky artistic few, and a skill that must (but can) be learned, practiced, refined, and experienced over a period of time for the rest of us.

To me, a good gardening book gives me a new, better, or expanded understanding of the knowledge that I may have acquired from another book, article, or speaker. So, I thought this was a very good book. I learned a great deal from it. I recommend it as one good piece of an enthustiastic, amateur gardener's education.

P.S. If you want to be able to read books on gardening that go beyond the Sunset Series, you simply must learn latin names for plants. I have found that one good reference book that gives an exhaustive list for plants that grow and thrive in my climate (which, for me is the Southern Living Garden Book)is a critical companion to have available when I read other gardening books. I see the latin names of plants in the book, look them up in my reference, and then have a better idea of my chances of growing it successfully. The more I work this process, the more Latin names I know.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Limited Design, March 12, 2006

By 

Vivian Katz "Native Viv" (Lafayette, LA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Design in the Plant Collector's Garden: From Chaos to Beauty (Hardcover)

If you are a homeowner looking for good advice on how to make your hodgepodge plant junkie garden look good this is not the best book for you. The author was very knowledgeable about plants, especially those that grow in his part of England. He was also very predjudiced toward certain plants and used them repeatedly in his advice. Most of the plants he cited do not grow in my area, and the fact that he mainly used latin names, which I know for the plants that grow near me, but not for others, made a lot of extra work on my part looking up their growth characteristics to compare them to the plants that grow here in South Louisiana. I did not find this book very useful at all.