Customer Reviews

World of Garden Design: Inspiring Ideas from Around the Globe to Your Backyard

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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Take a meadow's worth of gorgeous photos, throw in more than a potful of great gardening tips, and finish with an abundance of historic and artistic context and you get "World of Garden Design," from the creators of Garden Design Magazine. Enticing images and stellar ideas notwithstanding, I most valued the latter component. Through a thorough tour of history's major gardening styles-- including Italian, English, French, Caribbean and Asian-- and an examination of their signature elements, "World" nicely gathers a number of my passions-- art, design, gardens, history-- into one bountiful eyeful and one great read. Its focus on design, though, is what stands out-- a refreshing antidote to the dozens of gardening books that emphasize the practical at the expense of the magical.

This wonderful book takes you on a tour of some of the world's most beautiful gardens and shows you how to bring ideas from them home to your own space. It is divided into geographic areas including Italy, Britain, France, Japan and the tropics. In each section the unique style and methods of the area are explored in detail with page after page of vibrant color photos.

The adaptation of the garden ideas to the American scene is presented in the "Bringing it Home" section that is part of each regional overview. Here we see how the classical principles of each world region have been applied to a number of noteworthy American gardens. There is also a more in depth look at one special garden, including a complete garden plan in the "Garden Tour" part of each "Bringing it Home" section.

I like the organization of this book, the history, and the personal touch of the many gardeners and designers that it provides. The book is of excellent quality with outstanding photography. I recommend it to anyone interested in an overview of the fine gardens of the world or in finding exciting ideas for their own garden.

I am a recent subscriber to the magazine, so I was drawn to the book by it's truly AMAZING photos. The garden definitions at the beginning of each section were a nice addition, too. I do wish, however, it had just a BIT more content. It is inspiring to leaf through, and dream!

I knew I had toget this book when I saw who contributed to it. If you get gardening design magazines and love to study garden design, this book is very good and thorough, defining the most prevalent garden design 'types' in the world and showing examples of each and how they can be scaled down to 'real life'. For the first 10 years I gardened using what I liked to plant, but as I get older I m starting to see how to put it all together for a pleasing aesthetic.

This book is very beautifully put together. The pictures are bright and clear. The writings are interesting. Very helpful to to give you ideas for your own garden.