Product Description

A ready reference of stimulating garden features from all over the world.

Renowned garden designer Derek Fell has compiled more than 1,000 photographs to create a personal scrapbook of his favorite design features from around the world. Together with his insightful commentary, they provide a wealth of ideas and inspiration for the home gardener.

The book features: - A-Z listing of more than 150 design categories, from balconies and paths to abstract concepts like silhouettes, framing, and whimsy - More than 1,000 fully captioned, full-color photographs of award-winning gardens - Hundreds of practical suggestions for garden planning, planting, and design, and achieving year-round interest.

Valuable tips on plant cultivation mingle with garden history and elegant description as Fell guides readers through famed gardens such as Monet's Clos Normand, Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., and Rome's Villa d'Este, plus private gardens like his own Cedaridge Farm.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #65270 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Review
The definitive guide to garden design with design tips and inspiring gardens from all over the world. (Connie Krochmal BellaOnline 20060325)

Good for beginners, who might be too intimidated to design their own garden. (Frank Ferragine, Citytv Breakfast Televion and CityNews Style at Home 200705)

Illustrates the possibilities of applying the designs of award-winning gardens to readers' own... lives up to its title. (Rachael Green American Reference Books Annual 2007)

A wealth of ideas and inspiration... In short, a ready reference of stimulating garden features from all over the world. (Backyard Solutions 200705)

Enough garden-design ideas to keep your head spinning from here to eternity. (George Weigel Harrisburg Patriot-News 20060302)

An essential reference guide that's true to its title. (Lorraine Flanigan Canadian Gardening 200604)

A really good book for the neophyte who wants to know what all those confusing terms are... incredibly useful. (Marjorie Harris Globe and Mail 20060422)

The landscape design ideas that you have been looking for... excellent examples in every category that are guaranteed to stimulate. (Joel M. Lerner Washington Post 20061020)

A comprehensive tutorial on how to create more than 100 garden features... concise, alphabetized lessons. (Jennifer David House and Home Media 200605)

An inspiring tour... entries range from alleys and boardwalks through vistas and weather vanes. (Jo Calvert Canadian Living 200606)

Dip into this beautiful book with its lavish photos, you'll realize that spectacular gardens are rarely the result of chance. (Marianne Binetti Seattle Post-Intelligencer 20060318)

800 color photos... Insightful commentary on selecting the best design elements, planting, and maintaining year-round interest. (Science News 20060325)

Fun, pretty look at garden design... Get it because: More broad than deep, why you get here are solid-but-general descriptions. (Gardening Life 200605)

By the time you reach the end, the only question will be: Which part of the landscape to tackle first? (Judy Lowe Christian Science Monitor 20060425)

Not only an interesting read, but one of those books that can be included in a coffee table collection. (Ken Smith London Free Press 20060722)

[Fell's] words are just enhancements to the real content ... in this visual encyclopedia. (Mary Fran McQuade Beach Metro Community News 20061128)

An inspiring guide. (Steve Whysall Vancouver Sun 20061208)

Fell's great photographs are the highlight of the book. (HGTV.com 20061205)

The great gardens here, both grand and not so, will have you rushing to revamp your green space. (Jenn Houlihan Style at Home 20060801)

Gardeners are like artists and the garden is their canvas. [Fell's] latest work is a testament to those ideals. (Vena Eaton Toronto Sun 20060722)

Readers will find plenty of stimulation in this collection for creating their own little patch of paradise. (Carolyn Leitch Globe and Mail 20060324)

Explores celebrated public and private gardens...but each example also illustrate the possibilities for...gardeners to apply to their own backyards. (Linda Stilkowki Winnipeg Free Press )

About the Author
Derek Fell is a garden designer, photographer and author of more than 100 gardening books and calendars. His articles are published worldwide and he has a photo-library of more than 150,000 garden images. Fell lives in Pennsylvania at historic Cedaridge Farm, which itself has won several awards for design excellence.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Designing the landscape

Garden writers, landscape architects and garden historians frequently debate what it is that makes a garden great and inspirational. Though opinions are diverse, many experts agree that a great garden must display a sense of artistry, using the sky and soil as a canvas and plants and structures as 'paint' to create a visually exciting space that can be formal or informal in style, large or small in size. Moreover, great gardens can exist in a wide range of settings, from the highly artificial environment of a city to stimulating natural surroundings such as that of a Scottish loch, a Normandy river valley or a Carolina coastal swamp.

When painters seek artistic development and inspiration they visit great art collections, like those in the Louvre, Paris, the Tate Gallery, London, and the Getty Museum, Los Angeles. When gardeners seek inspiration there is no one place to find a wide selection of styles and designs, hence the reason for this book. Though it may reflect a personal appreciation of garden designs, it is a convenient collection of stimulating garden features from all over the world, aimed at presenting a gallery of useful ideas in an encyclopedic listing for ready reference.

Gardens of inspiration

The great French Impressionist painter, Claude Monet, considered his garden at Giverny, north of Paris, his greatest work of art, and as many as a hundred special design ideas can be gleaned from visiting the restored garden today. In his Clos Normand flower garden, these include visually exciting color harmonies such as his hot-color borders, using mostly yellow, orange and red flowers. Another Monet innovation is the floral tunnel, his Grande Allée. He used climbing roses on arches to create the roof and perennials, such as asters, to form the sides. Nasturtiums planted to creep across the path completed the tunnel effect.

In Monet's water garden, a Japanese-style arched bridge with a canopy of blue and white wisteria is probably the most familiar garden structure ever made, and the inspiration for many bridges like it worldwide.

Since artistry is so important to a garden's success, many of the design ideas for this book are from the restored gardens of Monet and his painter friends, Renoir and Cezanne. Other images have been selected from inspirational gardens all over the world, not only public gardens in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Australasia, but also little-known private gardens.

A study of Paul Cezanne's half-acre restored garden at Aix-en-Provence, and Auguste Renoir's five-acre restored garden near Nice reveals startling design innovation quite different from that of Monet. Though all three artists were friends and identified with the Impressionist movement, their gardens are as different as their painting styles. While Monet created a labor-intensive design using mostly flowers to 'paint' his outdoors sanctuary, and taking color high on trellises and arches, Cezanne planted a labor-saving garden using less ephemeral elements of nature. His restored garden is essentially a shade garden, terraced with quarry stones and filled with trees and shrubs that paint a tapestry of foliage colors, their trunks pruned to create eerie sinuous lines.

Renoir purchased an old olive orchard to save it from development and created a retreat where he could pose nudes as though they were sitting in shadowy woodland on the upper slope of his property. He also seated models on a sun-drenched wildflower meadow at the lower part. Like Monet, who built a boat so he could paint his water garden from the middle of his pond, Renoir constructed a rustic shelter with floor-to-ceiling windows so he could paint the main tree-lined vista during inclement weather, his nude model seated outside in dappled light.

Even the well-respected Victorian garden designer, Gertrude Jekyll, gleaned ideas for her plantings from studying the work of the great French Impressionist painters.

Many of the ideas featured in this book are from my own garden, historic Cedaridge Farm, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They have been realized from studying gardens worldwide, never slavishly copied, but adapted to the environment of an historic farm dating back to 1791, and similar to the historic farm Renoir purchased as his home in Provence. At Cedaridge Farm there are no power lines visible, and like Renoir we try to maintain an old-fashioned appearance, making repairs with rusty hinges and nails, and never minding if shutters show peeling paint. Spring and autumn are cool, summers are hot and humid, and winters invariably bring snow and cold that will freeze the ground solid to the depth of a spade. As a consequence of creating twenty theme areas connected by a stroll path, the garden has received several awards for design excellence, including 'Best Interpretation of an Impressionist Garden'.

Informal versus formal design

The years between 1600 and 1900 saw formal garden design hugely popular, particularly in Europe and North America. In recent years formality has experienced a decline, perhaps because people today see enough formality in their daily lives and yearn for more intimacy with nature. Also, informal gardens generally are less costly than formal ones, which often require expensive stonework and regular pruning of hedges to keep the design sharply defined. Therefore, the first design decision when contemplating the creation of a garden is to determine whether it should be formal or informal, or a combination of the two disciplines.

Popular examples of formal gardens are those created in Italy during the Renaissance, such as the Villa Lante and Villa d'Este, which in turn inspired the great French gardens of Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles, and the California garden of Hearst Castle, weekend retreat of newspaper magnate the late Randolph Hearst. Japanese and Chinese gardens, with their emphasis on stone, water and evergreen trees, are also considered formal because the dynamics of both garden styles rely heavily on exaggeration through pruning and mounding, and the precise placement of stone and water features, even though the end result is not as formal as the Italian model.

Informal gardens have always existed around country cottages of Europe, particularly in Normandy and England, but it was the publisher William Robinson, and one of his contributors, Gertrude Jekyll, who rebelled against the formality of Victorian carpet bedding to advocate informal garden designs for estates, inspiring the planting of meadow gardens, rock gardens and woodland gardens, using flowering plants generously and naturalistically.

Softscape versus hardscape components

Though many garden spaces, such as meadow gardens, can be made entirely by using plants ('softscape' to use the term preferred by landscape architects), it is often the use of structural elements (or 'hardscape') which produces the strongest sense of design. These hardscape elements can be highly functional (like bridges and paths) or strictly ornamental (like sculpture and fountains).

It should be realized that the more hardscape used for a garden, the less labor-intensive it is likely to be. Woody plants generally do not need the upkeep of herbaceous plants like annuals and perennials, which explains the liking among many modern designers to create minimalist gardens, where a potted plant with a strong sculptural quality, like a candelabra euphorbia (Euphorbia candelabrum), may be the only embellishment to a courtyard.

Seasonal considerations

It is sometimes difficult to keep a garden picture-perfect through all four seasons, and so it may be desirable to go for a big boost of color during a favorite season. Spring is an obvious first choice because it is a welcome respite from winter's bleakness, and more floral color can be concentrated into spring than any other time. Rainfall is usually plentiful, while summer months can bring drought. However, meadow gardens can look their best in mid to late summer, and the same can be true of water gardens, for waterlilies flower more profusely during summer months.

Gardens that rely on trees and shrubs for visual excitement can look sensational in autumn. Although winter is a season of dormancy for many plants, it is a good time to study gardens because essential design elements such as bridges, gazebos, benches, paths and pools can best be appreciated without the distraction of flowering plants and dense foliage cover. Outlined and defined with a dusting of frost or snow, strong design elements can be accentuated.

A definition of terms

When a new garden is contemplated, there are several kinds of professional help that can be considered, and this can lead to confusion. While even large gardens can be accomplished as a do-it-yourself project, with no professional help, many people today will consider employing the services of a landscape architect, a landscape designer (also called a garden designer), and a landscape contractor.

It was Frederick Law Olmsted (the person responsible for landscaping New York City's Central Park) who is credited with coining the term 'landscape architect' to describe a person who professionally performs the function of altering and planting the land. Legally and conceptually there are differences between a landscape architect and a landscape designer (or garden designer).

Landscape architects must take several years of training, and pass a test to be licensed in most countries. On the other hand, a landscape designer, or garden designer, can have no formal training, and can be anyone who designs outdoor spaces, using primarily plants and rudimentary hardscape elements, such as decks and patios. Though both a landscape architect and a landscape designer may be capable of producing a site plan, it is the landscape contractor who takes the approved drawings and uses construction equipment like bulldozers and backhoes to move earth and lay stone.

Early inspiration

A lot of great gar...

Customer Reviews

EXCELLENT reference!!!
Wow! I just cannot say enough good things about this book! When it arrived, before opening it I expected to just see another book with black and white sketches telling me things I already knew. But from cover to cover, I found tons of beautiful, inspiring photos of actual gardens and landscaping which has given me many good ideas to incorporate into my own plans. The text is also easy to follow and understand (even for a beginner), the detailed captions are very helpful, and the overall layout of this book, with its various sections broken down, is to be commended. I would give it 10 stars!

A great visual encyclopedia and a source of inspiration and ideas for your garden design
"When painters seek artistic development and inspiration they visit great art collections, like those in the Louvre, Paris, the Tate Gallery, London, and the Getty Museum, Los Angeles. When gardeners seek inspiration there is no one place to find a wide selection of styles and designs, hence the reason for this book..." Derek Fell wrote in "Encyclopedia of Garden Design and Structure: Ideas and Inspiration for Your Garden."

He continued to discuss designing the landscape, and gardens of inspiration (the influences of great painters, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Paul Cezanne on garden design), informal versus formal design, softscape versus hardscape components, etc. He also listed and explained the garden design terms in alphabetic order, each term is briefly discussed and demonstrated with color photos.

On Derek's discussion of formal and informal gardens, I have a different opinion and I think while Chinese and Japanese traditional buildings tend to be formal and symmetric with extensive and powerful uses of grids and axes, Chinese and Japanese gardens should be considered informal gardens with their overall naturalistic layout. See my book, "Planting Design Illustrated" for related in-depth discussion.

"Encyclopedia of Garden Design and Structure: Ideas and Inspiration for Your Garden" has 224 pages and over 1,000 color photos and over 100 garden features. Overall, it is a great visual encyclopedia and a source of inspiration and ideas for your garden design.

Gang Chen, Author of "LEED AP Exam Guide" & "Planting Design Illustrated." LEED AP, AIA

great ideas
Most of this is beyond the average gardener, but it is well done and fun to look at. Don't pay full price, but discounted, it's a nice addition to your gardening library. Fun to browse.