Customer Reviews

The Townhouse Gardener: Distinctive Landscape Designs for Small Gardens in the Mid-Atlantic Region

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

 

 

A pretty decent book on gardening in confined spaces. There are a lot of useful tips and ideas that are presented throughout. However, the book in my opinion is poorly illustrated, which is somewhat strange for a gardening book. The illustrations are sketches with no color, doesn't give you that feel I think one looks for in a gardening book.

This is unequivocally the best garden book I own. After extensive research into "colonial" plants, Pennsylvania native plants, cold zones, planting zones, what does well in sun, shade, coordinating colors within a plantscape, what plants are the right size for my needs, etc. all I did was come up with confirmation that the best plan was already whole, complete, and in this book. I could have saved myself much time and trouble if I had just followed Miss Mitchell's plans. I am on my second copy, and would give this as a gift to any of my friends interested in gardening in the city. Hint: you can find almost everything you need on "Monrovia.com".

This book is the single most inspirational garden book I have ever read. I have a single family house with much more ground than a townhouse and the ideas in this book are easily to translated to to larger sites. The author covers design, implementation and maintence basics quite well. The best part of the book are garden plans and container garden combinations, an excellent source of plant combinations for the mid-atlantic region. If you only own one garden book this is the one.

Finally, someone has written a landscaping book on the terrors of landscaping a small townhouse back and front yard. Sherry Mitchell's book is clearly laid out, and along with detailed black and white renderings of the proposed yards, she includes a detailed plant list for each and every area...TO include, I might add, the ever-dreaded area "under-the-deck" where usually you can only grow moss and mushrooms. Most designs include small fountains or ponds as well. I have waited a LONG time for something to show me the way to something other than grass and fence. Thanks, Sherry!

The plans in this book are more suitable for the yards of single family homes than the yards of townhouses, imo. The proposed garden designs do not show dimensions (length x width), or the expected mature sizes of the proposed trees and shrubs. So you have to do extra research and calculations just to see how well a plan will work for your yard. Adding up the space requirements of all of the proposed plants/trees/shrubs as well as fountains/sheds/patios/paths, etc., these gardens are not all that small. For most of the backyard gardens, it looks like at least 30'-40' in one direction, if not both, would be needed. It would be easy to use these plans for yards twice that size.

Also the plans don't have anything other than the occasional AC unit as a design challenge (and sometimes the AC unit is right next to a flowering plant like an azalea or hollyhock, which in my experience would completely fry the blooms if not the plant). The one plan for a "tiny townhouse garden" has no AC, no utility meters, no back gate to get to, or any other challenges.

I purchased this book some years ago when I was a beginning gardener and found it rather frustrating. I looked through the book again recently and found it more helpful. Photographs of real townhouse gardens, plus plans with dimensions, would make this a great book. If you have a large mental encyclopedia of plant images, it is possible to imagine what the plans will look like in reality. I do think the gardens would be very nice. And the text of the book is good for beginning gardeners, with lots of useful tips and suggestions. So, if you have enough space and would like to be told what to plant, this book will work well for you. If you enjoy gardening and the creative process of designing a garden, or if you have a really small yard, I would also recommend The Perennial Garden Primer by Stephanie Cohen and Nancy Ondra; Really Small Gardens: A Practical Guide to Gardening in a Truly Small Space by Jill Billington; Truly Tiny Gardens" by Thomasina Tarling; and/or "Small Spaces Beautiful Gardens" by Keith Davitt.

This is unequivocally the best garden book I own. After extensive research into "colonial" plants, Pennsylvania native plants, cold zones, planting zones, what does well in sun, shade, coordinating colors within a plantscape, what plants are the right size for my needs, etc. all I did was come up with confirmation that the best plan was already whole, complete, and in this book. I could have saved myself much time and trouble if I had just followed Miss Mitchell's plans. I am on my second copy, and would give this as a gift to any of my friends interested in gardening in the city. Hint: you can find almost everything you need on "Monrovia.com".