Product Description

If you love gardens but don’t think you have enough outdoor space to cultivate one, this book is for you. Written by a 20-year veteran of landscape design, this imaginative guide features 18 hardworking profiles of gorgeous small garden paradises. Through step-by step instructions, before-and-after photos, and detailed plans, landscape architect Keith Davitt offers ingenious tips and techniques for creating the illusion of space through terracing, enlarging through dividing, adding texture and color, and more.

Keith Davitt has been designing, building, photographing, and writing about gardens across the U.S. and abroad for 20 years. He recently won the Herald Award for Excellence in Garden Communication, and his gardens and articles have appeared in numerous gardening magazines. He is also the author of the forthcoming Beyond the Lawn. He lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #103639 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Amazon.com Review
Keith Davitt's Small Spaces, Beautiful Gardens celebrates the possibilities for awkward, undersized garden parcels, demonstrating convincingly that no space is too small to make a big impact. Lacking dimensionality, most small gardens can be taken in visually with one glance. Davitt offers solutions for creating a sense of spaciousness and surprise, even in the most cramped, unlikely location.

A landscape designer, builder, photographer, and writer, Davitt draws on 16 projects from his own portfolio. "Before" and "after" photographs help illustrate both the process and principles of reconfiguring an outdoor space. Who could imagine, for example, that as ugly a duckling as a narrow, shaft-like urban lot surrounded on three sides by cinderblocks, painted brick, and metal piping could be transformed into an enchanting series of multi-leveled wood decks, enlivened with container plantings?

Davitt’s ideas are all the more convincing because he has photographed the gardens between peak bloom periods. Although spaces are lush with plant life, the book's emphasis is more on design than plant selection. Offering neither budget remedies nor step-by-step technical advice, Small Spaces, Beautiful Gardens is, itself, a beautiful book to pore over for inspiration. --Jennifer Wyatt

From Publishers Weekly
A near-architectural design strategy is king in this heartening guide for owners of small plots of land. Mosaic brickwork, a few well-placed tiles, terraces, stone walls, benches tucked into corners and flora, flora, flora. Landscape designer and author Davitt recommends, among other ideas, curves "to elicit a sense of organic motion," texture for added dimension, mixed and matched leaves for lushness, and dividing the garden up to make it seem "larger than the sum of its areas." By designing their own ponds, walkways, arbors, "rooms" and patios, urban and suburban residents can achieve a harmonious privacy in spaces that seem to offer little.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Customer Reviews

A great ideas for small gardens
I found this book to be especially helpful in visualizing small gardens. I wish that he had included some of the plant names used and sample gardening diagrams, but overall it's a great book for ideas.

Small Spaces, Beautiful Gardens
The ideal book for someone who is facing a vacant lot or garden wasteland and is interested in tapping the talent, inspiration and guidance of a gifted garden designer. Kevin Davitt takes the reader through a great number of his real life garden designs, challenging us to listen to the hidden "genius" in your prospective site. Eloquent and thoughtful, his writing is clear and encouraging, helping us to discover and visualize the sanctuary our garden space can become. Filled with beautiful photographs and drawings and side bars highlighting the key ideas in each project, we are gently introduced to the authors philosophy of space and nature. The author shares his years of experience and design wisdom so you can create a space that enhances your home and recharges and inspires your relationship to mother nature. A joy to read, makes you want to get outside and start building. Focuses on small urban and suburban garden designs, but ideas can apply to all garden design processes.

Esthetically engaging and pleasureable
The simplicity with which Keith Davitt has been able to convey complicated design concepts is extraordinary. He has combined this with exquisite illustrations and "before and after" photography. This book will inspire you with the confidence to transform even the most mundane of spaces into a visual and livable joy. It's also a must on our coffee table!