Customer Reviews

A Pattern Garden: The Essential Elements of Garden Making

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

We have been following Ms. Easton's garden writings for years in newspapers, magazines and her other acomplished manuscripts Artists In Their Gardens and Plant Life. We have found her writings to be both informative and entertaining, a hard combination for many authors but critical to the reader. Her newest book, A Pattern Garden, weaves a rich tapestry of information and soulful thinking. The garden is a place of sanctuary and highly personal. Ms.Easton takes the essential 14 "patterns" of our gardens and helps us clarify their role and importance. She offers us tools to both strengthen and personalize an existing garden and lay the foundation to build a new one. In reading this book we felt empowered to try new things and be adventuresome. It also gave us a greater understanding and enjoyment of our own garden.

Besides all the practical information offered, A Pattern Garden is a must read for anyone who wants to have a greater appreciation of their connection with the garden, nature, and the role it plays in their life.

For years, I have enjoyed Valerie Easton's stylish books and weekly articles in the Seattle Times. I am consistently inspired by her gardening and design knowledge and the sensible, easy way she communicates her ideas. Having just received her new book, A Pattern Garden, I am totally wowed by the incredible photographs and gorgeous layout of this showpiece - it is a stunningly beautiful book. Staying true to her straightforward approach, Ms. Easton has taken gardening to a new level of thoughtful interpretation. Keeping her ideas accessible for lay gardeners such as myself, she has successfully described the "feeling" of a great garden, making it something tangible and attainable. This is a must-have book for everyone who tends a garden - a wonderful exploration into the heart and spirit of the gardens we instinctively find attractive and to which we feel emotionally connected. I can't wait to incorporate some of these concepts into my garden. This book is destined to be a garden design classic.

There have been numerous occasions throughout my gardening career- in my garden and while working in others- that I have turned to garden design books for inspiration and guidance. Too often it has been case that these books- many now considered classics- illuminate principles of design that are inapplicable to the average gardener, i.e., the gardener who cannot afford a top end designer. From the moment I opened Val Easton's book, I discovered at last a book which was charged with bursts of creative esprit, an inviting and understandable format and an engaging dialogue between Easton and her readers. In concert with outstanding and well interpreted photography, I believe this book should find its way into every serious gardeners library.

The best book I have EVER read on garden design!!! Ms. Easton deserves high praise for her work!! She explains complex design ideas in a way that is easy to understand and easy to put into practice!! The book emphasizes that these principles can be used in gardens of any size or style or price range. (I was able to implement some of her patterns the same day for under $10.)

Ms. Easton shows you how to make your garden a good-feeling, positive place to be FOR YOU. Far from the preening diletante who wants you to apply ideas from her 10 acre garden to your postage-stamp yard in a cookie cutter manner, Ms. Easton encourages us to customize your space to suit your needs and desires.

This book is one of my top-3 all time favorites!!

Thanks to Val Easton's new book, A Pattern Garden, I'll be happily adding mysterious destinations and some fanciful surprises to my old garden this summer. Fun!

This is such a good book; it's informative, beautiful (inspiring photography), but best of all are it's suggestions and encouragement for gardeners to turn their yard space into intriguing areas where they and their families will love spending outdoor time.

Whether one is an experienced gardener, or new to this world, Valeries's book explores all the nuances of garden design as well as practical information on gardening. All of this is enhanced by the exquisite photographs.

My original review of this book was too harsh. This then is the correction. The book has considerable merit and under a different title, `Garden Elements', for example, it is one I would not have found fault with. I am an author. I know how much work goes into a book and how easy it is to criticize what you have not spilled blood over creating, so it is with considerable hesitation and not a little angst that I write this review. But as I so value the overall concept this book ostensibly addresses, I must.

I too am a devotee (as Ms. Easton says she is) of the deep wisdom contained in the book, "A Pattern Language". In addition, I treasure "The Timeless Way To Build" and "Patterns of Home", by the same architect and group of architects. In those books, quintessential patterns about which we can think, that we can easily understand, that we can use to design by and apply to varied situations and ultimately experience are simply, clearly and thoroughly explored and presented. This book is not related to those enduring works and the concepts expressed here have nothing in common with the archetypical patterns those authors have explored. This is not a book about patterns for garden making. The title, "A Pattern Garden, The Essential Elements of Garden Making", is a an unearned pairing of this book with those previously mentioned, ultimately venerable books. This is what I most criticize.

Ms Easton refers to 'Scale', to 'Water' to 'Garden Rooms' to 'Gates' and so on as quintessential Patterns. These things are garden elements and the author demonstrates their importance and use as elements well, but these are not underlying patterns. And that is important.

In Alexander and company's "A Pattern Language" and "The Timeless Way To Build" distinct patterns are presented that can be applied to many styles and situations and altered to fit a given situation. For example, there is the pattern `Courtyards Which Live', in "The Timeless Way of Building" and the elemental values which go into the making of living courtyards are identified - No such distinctive, archetypical patterns are to be found in Ms. Easton's book and no clear patterns for building gardens emerge. She speaks of courtyards, for example, and presents several very fine ones. But where is the underlying, archetypical pattern which we can comprehend and upon which we can build? I do not find it in this book.

The book has a lot of merit. There is plenty of sound advice, insightful information, many solid design principles are well taken up and exhibited and the book contains lots of beautiful images. But it is not the elevated, illuminating and timeless treatise on fundamental patterns applicable to all manner of gardens. For it to be so called is in my view truly unfortunate.

The book on patterns of garden needs to be written - but let it be by Oheme and van Sweden or Brooks or some other person who can find the archetypical patterns underlying timeless garden design and present them simply and accurately.

If you have been gardening for a while and still do not have the results you want, this might be the book for you. I am a self taught gardener of 17 years and have purchased many gardening and landscaping books. This book is by far the best one I have bought. It is very easy to read, and explained all the gardens elements so simply I couldn't believe it. It helped me figure out (very quickly} exactly what has always bothered me about my garden. The chapter on plant selecting does not specify the zone.

Zen of Watering Your Garden
This is a terrific book. I t helps one tailor their garden or gardens to their circumstance with the goal not really an architectual wonder but a place or places of solitude and sanctuary and pleasantries.

I believe that one does not have to have an elaborate garden but can with even a plant or a few plants obtain the peace that nature can provide. I too have tried to convey this in my book the Zen of Watering Your Garden. Matt Cohen