Gardens to Go: Creating and Designing a Container Garden [Hardcover]

Sydney Eddison (Author), Steve Silk (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2005

Easy-to-maintain container gardens are ideal for today's on-the-go-gardeners in the city, suburbs, and country. This book offers guidance on designer container gardens, including how to coordinate plants for color and texture and how to mix and match flora. 200 color photos. 10 line drawings. Map.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Sydney Eddison is the author of five gardening books, including The Self-Taught Gardener (Viking, 1997) and The Gardener's Palette: Exploring Color in the Garden (Contemporary, 2002). She is a regular lecturer at flower shows, including the Philadelphia Flower Show, as well as at conferences and horticultural societies. She teaches at the New York Botanical Gardens. Her articles appear regularly in Martha Stewart Living, Country Living Gardener, and Fine Gardening.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Bulfinch (April 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821257153
• ISBN-13: 978-0821257159
• Product Dimensions: 11.4 x 8.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #912,530 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

For her work as a writer, gardener, and lecturer, Sydney Eddison received the Connecticut Horticultural Society's Gustav A. L. Melquist Award in 2002; the New England Wild Flower Society's Kathryn S. Taylor Award in 2005; The Federated Garden Clubs of Connecticut's Bronze Medal in 2006; and in 2010, the National Garden Clubs Award of Excellence. Her garden has been featured in magazines and on television. A former scene designer and drama teacher, Eddison lectures widely and continues to teach a course on color at the New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good ideas for placing containers in the garden...., December 11, 2005

By 

Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Gardens to Go: Creating and Designing a Container Garden (Hardcover)

GARDENS TO GO, is a lovely new book on container gardening, by Sydney Eddison with plenty of colorful photos, but for experienced hands the book has little new to offer on potting and growing various plants in containers. The beginner would probably do better with McGee and Stucky's BOUNTIFUL CONTAINER (much advice based on experience of two doughty dames each of whom reminds me a bit of Mrs Thyme), however, don't forget David Joyce's lovely CONTAINER GARDENS (plenty of useful information on the containers themselves) as well as HERBS IN POTS by Proctor and Macke. I prefer to grow herbs in pots myself, so the latter is a favorite of mine. However, I learned some new techniques for growing vegetables in pots from McGee and Stucky.

Eddison shows how one, using building blocks and an organized theme, can use pots to produce a "scene" in spring, summer, and fall and whisk the pots away when cold winter rears its head. Although she shows some scenes from smaller places in the big city (rooftops, narrow back yards and patios), she also includes filling up a few acres in one chapter. Some of the "country" scenes are beautiful, particularly shots from a terraces and up-close collections around a water feature.

I like the idea of using pots to complement a garden, and Eddison's approach is quite useful. It's all well and good to know how to make a container, create a beautiful mix of plants and encourage them to thrive. It's quite another to think about your creation a part of a larger design. To the extent Eddison concentrates on the latter, this book is a welcome addition to my collection.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply Supurb, January 5, 2007

By 

Keith Davitt - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gardens to Go: Creating and Designing a Container Garden (Hardcover)

I cannot imagine a more informative, better written or more gorgeous book on container gardens than this remarkable achievement of Sidney Eddison and Steve Silk. The warm, friendly writing from the erudite Ms. Eddison combined with the beautiful photography of Mr. Silk make this a captivating, satisfying and thoroughly desirable book that will be a compliment to every garden library.

Drawing upon their own extensive experience as well as that of many other garden professionals and enthusiasts they offer nearly 200 pages of container garden wisdom. But what I most appreciate about the book is that the beautiful images on every page are whole lessons in themselves on the art of combining plants. Just paging through the book is downright exciting.

I would like to say something disparaging about the book to give a more balanced review--but I can't. The layout, the quality of the pages, the printing and ever other aspect is first class quality. I design landscapes and I teach landscape design, both on-line and in my home studio and because of the many valuable lessons this book contains--for garden design generally, this is one of the books I recommend to my students.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gorgeous set of guidelines for producing show-stopping displays, August 7, 2005

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gardens to Go: Creating and Designing a Container Garden (Hardcover)

It's not just urban gardeners who wish to garden by container: it's anyone who seeks portability, defenses against gophers and underground varmints, and the possibility of having a garden in manmade environments. Gardens To Go: Creating And Designing A Container Garden holds gorgeous photos by Steve Silk as it reviews a range of container garden ideas, from choosing decorative planting containers which are functional to using rooftops, patios, and more as spaces to hold them. A gorgeous set of guidelines for producing show-stopping displays.