Product Description

Container gardening is one of the hottest trends today. Why? Because the recent availability of plants with great genetics makes container gardening a sure thing for everyone. Then there's the market--it's full of containers that are low cost and low maintenance but have high visual appeal. And finally there are the container gardens themselves, which are easier to maintain than in-ground gardens, especially during drought years.

Window Boxes offers dozens of inventive, innovative ideas for window box gardens. Once thought possible during only the warm spring and summer months, the art of creating (and the pleasure of admiring) window boxes can now be enjoyed every month of the year. Moving season by season, Cramer and Johnson show you how to use interesting indoor and outdoor containers and bold plant mixes that will keep your home colorful and visually stimulating all year round. Every gardener will appreciate the authors' inspired ideas and hard-working advice, as well as the dazzling full-color photographs in these pages. Window Boxes is a one-of-a-kind handbook that combines container gardening with flower arranging so that you can create glorious mini-gardens for outside and inside your home.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #111066 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Amazon.com Review
Window boxes no longer must be the sister of the white picket fence. Calling such diverse receptacles as pumpkins, gourds, hats, a broken earthen pot, and even eggshells to service, authors James Cramer and Dean Johnson, in Window Boxes: Indoors and Out, redefine the concept of windowbox, and generate a lot of beautiful ideas in the process.

Window boxes can serve many purposes, from homes for a kitchen herb garden to grand, overspilling fountains of trailing plants and flowers. And when there's a paucity of garden real estate, lack of time to tend a full-size garden plot, or an off-season hankering to simply grow something, window boxes provide creative outlets and solutions. Watching a forced amaryllis gracefully bloom in an antique planter in January or starting seedlings in a copper box inside a sunny window in early spring can quell the gardening jones of many a hibernating green thumb and help get a jump on the growing season.

Along with ideas for window-box plantings for every season and many holidays, from May Day boxes popping with pansies and lilies to Christmas boxes fragrant with tiny pine trees and demure snowdrops, Cramer and Johnson also detail how to make and decorate many boxes (although beginners may need more detailed instructions than the brief ones given here), including a copper box, a Victorian box, a terrarium box, harvest boxes, and many more. With this helpful, evocatively photographed handbook and an open mind, creating window boxes will become part of the gardener's and the interior designer's repertoire all year round. --Stefanie Durbin

From the Inside Flap
When design magazines want new and fresh ideas, they turn to James Cramer and Dean Johnson. In Window Boxes, Indoors and Out, these two gardeners, designers, artists, and stylists bring a wealth of talent and the freshest eye to the close-up pleasures of window boxes. The book spans a year of invention and innovation at Seven Gates Farm, the authors' nineteenth-century homestead and studio. The results are inspired ideas, hard-working advice, and more than 150 dazzling photographs of these delightful still lifes.

Given four seasons in which to flourish, this once spring/summer-only pleasure goes well beyond traditional garden planters and herb baskets. Found objects are given new life as containers for these beautiful tableaux, and everything from wreaths and swags to simple rustic groupings becomes design elements outdoors and in. A full source guide for locating containers, plants, seeds, bulbs, and flowers rounds out this exceptional volume.

About the Author
James Cramer is internationally recognized for his art and garden designs. His work has been featured in lifestyle and gardening magazines, books, and newspapers, and his home and gardens in Maryland have been seen on network and cable television. He is a co-author of Seasons at Seven Gates Farm.

Dean Johnson is internationally recognized for his art and garden designs. His work has been featured in lifestyle and gardening magazines, books, and newspapers, and his home and gardens in Maryland have been seen on network and cable television. He is a co-author of Seasons at Seven Gates Farm.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful window boxes
I received this as a gift and plan to give it to friends. Not only are the writers, clear and concise, but the photographers captured the essence and beauty of every arrangement. Each window box was a delight and no season was forgotten. This is truly a favored coffee table book. book.

Splendid- absolutely breathtaking
Mary Sears did a stunning job writing this quaint charmer about window boxes. A lover of window boxes myself for many years, I found this book both helpful and inspiring. Truly worth every cent.

A Book For All Seasons
I own a number of books on container gardening, and this has become one of my favorites. This book gives container planting ideas for each of the four seasons. The pictures are coffee-table-quality, but what I really like about this book is that it gives clear instructions for the planting and care of container gardens, making it a great book for beginners. More experienced gardeners will also find some inspirational ideas. Ther are clever ideas for using containers,as well as instructions for building some of your own. The plant combinations are not only beautiful, but are well within reach of easily putting together, unlike other books that show over-the-top arrangements. It also gives some soil recipes as well as a recipe for making gardener's tea. Drawing from a number of years of experience, this book is a great guide to the world of container gardening. The authors have a number of other good books out, though sadly, Dean Johnson as since passed on.