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The Inward Garden: Creating a Place of Beauty and Meaning (Hardcover)

~ Messervy (Author), Sam Abell (Photographer) "I WILL NEVER FORGET my feelings the day I started building my first garden-a half-acre Japanese-style landscape for a client' summer home high on a..." (more)
Key Phrases: stroll journey, inward garden, outward site, New England, Lake Como, Fletcher Steele (more...)

4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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Hardcover $23.10 In Stock. Published May 24, 2007	Hardcover, May 24, 2007	$23.10	$21.40	$11.96
Hardcover Available from these sellers. Published March 20, 1995	Hardcover, March 20, 1995	--	$29.32	$3.85
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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Describing a new movement in landscape design, the author invites readers to look within themselves, use their imaginations, and create an original garden that is beautiful and personally meaningful--a garden that reflects the soul. 10,000 first printing.

About the Author

Julie Moir Messervy is an award-winning author and hugely successful garden designer. Her work includes a three-acre Music Garden in Toronto designed in collaboration with Yo Yo Ma. Sam Abell is photographer-in-residence for National Geographic magazine. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown; 1st edition (March 20, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316567922
ISBN-13: 978-0316567923
Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 10.1 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds

Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #832,558 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

› Visit Amazon's Julie Moir Messervy Page

Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
I WILL NEVER FORGET my feelings the day I started building my first garden-a half-acre Japanese-style landscape for a client' summer home high on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
stroll journey, inward garden, outward site, daydreaming places, outward garden, archetypal places, backyard landscape, garden master, mind journey, flowery mead, garden space, cosmic tree, perennial border

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New England, Lake Como, Fletcher Steele, New Hampshire, New York, Gertrude Jekyll, Knightshayes Court, Villa Melzi, Kokoro Pond, Leo Tolstoy, Northeast Harbor, Professor Kinsaku Nakane, Professor Nakane, Thomas Jefferson

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 63 books:

English Cottage Gardening: For American Gardeners, Revised Edition by Margaret Hensel on page 193, and Back Matter
Feeling and Form by Susanne K. Langer on page 203, and Back Matter
The Making of the English Landscape (Penguin History) by W. G. Hoskins in Back Matter
The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett on page 109
Creativity: The Magic Synthesis by Silvano Arieti in Back Matter

See all 63 books this book cites

3 books cite this book:

Apprentice to a Garden by Evelyn J. Hadden on page 125
Gardening for the Birds by Dr. Thomas G. Barnes on page 66
Meditation-The Complete Guide by Patricia Monaghan on page 277

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	62% buy the item featured on this page: The Inward Garden: Creating a Place of Beauty and Meaning 4.5 out of 5 stars (6)
	23% buy Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love 5.0 out of 5 stars (4) $19.80
	6% buy Outside the Not So Big House: Creating the Landscape of Home (Susanka) 3.3 out of 5 stars (19) $14.93
	5% buy Landscape as Spirit: Creating a Contemplative Garden 4.9 out of 5 stars (7) $26.40

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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews

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4.5 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Putting Foundations Under your Dream Garden, July 17, 1998

By A Customer

Messervy has found a way to codify something that seemed vague to me: the "feel" of a landscape, or how a person reacts to a space. She breaks landscape forms down into 7 "archetypes," lists the features of each, then suggests ways to use this new understanding in designing your own yard or garden. I suddenly realized, for example, that the narrow, paved alleys coming off my tiny city backyard weren't necessarily the problem and disappointment I had always considered them, but were features I could play up and turn to advantage. (They had always tempted me to walk to the end -- now I just have to make that journey worthwhile.) I was just bursting with ideas after reading this book, able to look at my tiny space with new eyes. The archetypal business isn't just pleasantly mystical but is also practical, backed up with sophisticated but down-to-earth ideas. It's a different kind of garden design book that gets you to think of the overall "f! eel" (not look) you want first (the step missing from most gardening books), and then figure out how to actually construct it -- a satisfying blend of mythic/artistic with practical and well-organized. (And as a bonus, the photos are drop-dead gorgeous!)

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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Learn a new way to think about designing your garden, November 18, 1997

By A Customer

This is garden design from the heart, not the head. Garden design books usually offer us a formula, templates, and lists of plants. "The Inward Garden" instead tries to stimulate a new way of thinking about our landscapes. Messervy tries to create gardens that resonate with fond memories of the places where we felt most secure and most free as children. You might think that you want an elaborate perennial border, but after reading this book realize that you'd really rather gaze at a little bit of prairie, or a woodland or listen to a tinkling stream. If you are going to spend all that time, money and effort, wouldn't it be wonderful to have a garden that makes you feel good, instead of one that merely consumes resources and becomes a millstone? This is not the book that will help you calculate how many bags of mulch you need, or how to build a retaining wall. What it will do is help you identify what you really want from your landscape, instead of what you think you're supposed to want, or what all your neighbors have.

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26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The One Book That Belongs In Any Gardener's Library, July 5, 1998

By A Customer

Julie Moir Messervy has written what undoubtedly will become a classic of garden writing and design. Deeply literate and beautifully written, The Inward Garden gives the reader a process for designing one's "dream garden". Based on garden archtypes: the sea, the cave, the harbor, the promitory, the island, the mountain, and the sky, this book provides a structure for imagining the garden of one's desires and a practical process for designing this deeply felt garden. The author describes in detail each of these archytical gardens. Each archtype is illustrated with outstanding garden photographs. The Inner Garden gently asks the reader to think and feel deeply about the garden of his or her dreams and to have the couage to begin creating that garden.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing
This is an amazing book with stunning photos. The author shows us the most beautiful gardens around the world and inspires us to recreate those places which has deep meanings to... Read more

Published on May 6, 2007 by a reader

2.0 out of 5 stars Heartily disappointed.
I have no problems with the premise of the book -- that is why I am read it. I have always believed strongly in an intuitive approach to garden design. Read more

Published on December 19, 2004 by IronBelly

5.0 out of 5 stars A book on the psychology of gardesn
Unlike most garden books that focus on individual design elements of gardening, this one focuses on how to identify the atmosphere and mood of the garden you want to create. Read more

Published on November 11, 1998

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