No comments about Garden Lover's Guide to the Northeast (Garden Lover's Guide).

2 comments about Exploring Garden Style: Creative Ideas from America's Best Gardeners (Fine Gardening Design Guides) (Fine Gardening Design Guides).

1. Okay, I'm a sucker for gardening stories ... personal experiences of gardener's and their gardens. These are stories of real people and the evolution of their gardens. There are ideas here for everyone with great photos for inspiration and many stories include a layout of the garden. It makes for good browsing to get motivated to get out and work in the dirt to create my own special sanctuary.



2. In this book 20 garden designers share ideas and techniques for creating a beautiful garden in a unique style. The book is divided into three parts - Traditional Gardens, Naturalistic Gardens and Specialty gardens. Each part is composed of short, beautifully-illustrated articles written in a very personal style by a gardener, landscape designer or horticulturist.

   It is the personal nature of each article that contributes most to the appeal of this book. Take the opening of Nani Waddoups article titled "Tropical Garden, Temperate Zone". She writes "The newer parts of our garden look a little out of place..." How can you resist an opening like that? Her article describing her garden - listed in the Smithsonian Registry of Gardens - shows how her Hawaiian background prompted her and helped her to develop a lush pseudo-tropical garden in the Pacific Northwest.

   My favourite section is that on Naturalistic Gardens. Five writers form points as far apart as Connecticut and Texas share with the reader ways in which they used the local climate, geology, soil and plants to create a garden that has given each of them great pleasure and satisfaction.

   Top marks to the Taunton Press for introducing these garden writers first to Fine Gardening magazine and now in book form for those of us who like to sit down and read the whole collection. The editors have put together a book that offers gardeners a diversity of fresh ideas in a most attractive format.

2 comments about Stonescaping: A Guide to Using Stone in Your Garden.

1. We've been looking for the 'recipe' on how to make light weight Rocks and Trough's, This is the only book we've found to do more then mention that it can be done. One of the best all around books for folk who don't have a Daddy Warbucks bank account.



2. I didn't read every word on every page. I have used it more as a reference. Captivating set of color illustrations, well written, obviously edited thoroughly to give a more professional read. If you're drawn towards the rewarding art and science of working with stone, this book is a must.

No comments about Creative Home Landscaping: How to Plan and Beautify Your Yard With a Guide to More Than 400 Landscape Plants.

2 comments about Garden Ornaments: A Stylish Guide to Decorating Your Garden.

1. East Coast-Centric - this is a stylish guide to garden ornamentation. From rooftop terrace gardens overlooking Manhattan's Central Park incorporating bas-relief fountains festooned with putti, designated to help filter noise - to philosophers' busts arranged totem-style in old Philadelphia.
   
   An overly exuberant South Beach garden is a carnival of color and kitsch, and some might say questionable taste. A large statue of Venus ala Bottacelli - Birth of Venus - is embellished with hand painted eyelashes. Similarly, the statue of Neptune's trident has skewered a plastic lobster. Some of this garden's whimsy works more successfully than others do.
   
   South Beach aside, most entries are staid East Coast establishment estates that most likely shop for their trinkets at Barbara Israel. Symmetry is a requisite in the classic tradition, with enough of an occasional incongruity to keep the eye refreshed.
   
   Those of us without architectural elements recovered from 18th Century castles outside Paris, can look and marvel at the beauty, collect a myriad of fresh ideas if we are creative faux artists, and enjoy the exceptional photography. This is now a discount book. I recommend it.



2. This book is a beautiful work of art and informative too. The photographs are lovely and the gardens chosen as material here are to-die-for. I've already used one of the projects included in the text...it was really fun...and it worked! Anyone interested in gardening (or just some wonderful photographs of some incredible places) would love this book...

No comments about A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments (Explorations in Anthropology).

1 comments about A Land Between: Owens Valley, California (Center Books on Space, Place, and Time).

1. Rebecca Fish Ewan's A Land Between is an engaging, informative, scholarly, and highly recommended title which examines the idea of how people's preconceptions of California's Owens Valley influenced their decisions about managing the land. Primary sources, oral histories and research provide a perspective on the land and residents of Owens Valley, examining its natural history, human occupation, and use over the decades. A unique and intriguing study.

No comments about Destructive Turfgrass Insects: Biology, Diagnosis, and Control.

No comments about Garden and Climate.

2 comments about Backyard Mosaics.

1. While it is nice to see the completed projects with full plans, the most important thing we took away from this book is technique. We feel we can pretty much mosaic anything that comes across our path now! As a result, we looked at a particularly ugly cement slab that was under an outside faucet and saw an opportunity. We mosaiced it (that's mom and her 7 year old) and it is now a focal point instead of a eye sore.

   If you're just getting started this is a great way to go. It worked with us!




2. This book is an excellent sequel to Ms. Sheerin's first offering, Mosaics In an Afternoon. If you haven't had the opportunity to peruse either book, you are missing out on the chance of a lifetime to add pizazz to your home!

   Most of the projects offered in this book would make excellent gifts, art pieces for sale, or decorations to grace your own home. Not only will you find the complete instructions for each project, you'll find informative lessons on how to be a mosaic designer yourself!

   Highly recommended book!