No comments about American Horticultural Society Practical Guides: Arches & Pergolas.

2 comments about Water in the Garden: A Complete Guide to the Design and Installation of Ponds, Fountains, Streams, and Waterfalls.

1. This book is EXACTLY what I was looking for. Perfect condition and rapid delivery. Excellent service.



2. This book is extremely comprehensive and informative. It covers all of the basics and gives great advice about water gardens. James Allison provides a wide varitey of examples for people of all skill levels. I will be building a water garden this summer, and this book has greatly aided me in planning my project.

No comments about Ortho's Plans for Beds & Borders.

No comments about The National Road (The Road and American Culture).

No comments about New Jersey's Great Gardens: A Four-Season Guide to 125 Public Gardens, Parks, and Arboretums.

5 comments about Native Trees Shrubs, and Vines for Urban and Rural America: A Planting Design Manual for Environmental Designers.

1. If you are looking for a native tree or shrub, this book will help you find the right plant by size, shape, and wet or dry conditions. Great illustratiions. Useful for designing special gardens such as rain gardens and wet gardens.



2. This is a very useful book for those living in the appropriate area. The book contains information on native trees and shrubs in Eastern and Central United States. Native trees and shrubs found west of the Rockies are NOT included in this book.



3. Overall, the information contained in the book is excellent. It is well-presented, well-organized, and very thorough. However, I was disappointed to find it is best suited for use by those who live in USDA Hardiness zone 5 or farther north. I live and work in zone 6, which is really the fringe of the area addressed in this book. Species native to the southeast are included only if they are hardy over a wide range. (For example, Southern magnolia is omitted in this book, as are loblolly and slash pines and yaupon holly.)

   I have a degree in landscape architecture and prefer to use native plants in planting design. This book has been helpful, but will never replace my dog-eared copy of Know It and Grow It--a reference far more suited to my region.




4. This book has excellent info on each plant within its text. I am a native plant landscape designer and soil requirements, natural habitats, associate plants (communities), urban tolerance, flower & fruit development are a few of the plant categories I use on a daily basis. The line drawings are also superb for knowing the form the plant will take in the landscape and how the flowers & fruit will appear. This book is used so much, my pages are starting to fall out. I hope they create a new version soon! This book is a 'must' for all landscape designers & architects --- it's a great tool.



5. This comprehensive volume puts all the information needed to choose native plantings in one handy reference source. The book is divided into two parts, Trees, Shrubs, and Vines, with each part further divided into two sections. The first describes different factors normally considered in selecting plantings, classifying over 250 woody plants by these characteristics. Classifications include: Visual characteristics: form, branching, foliage, flower and fruit. ÐEcologicla relationships: most suitable habitats, including flood and shade tolerance. ÐCultural requirements: soil, hardiness, silvical characteristics, urban conditions, similar and associate species.

   The second section is an encyclopedia of native woody plants. Each MASTER PLATE includes the plants scientific and common name, plus all of the plants characteristics as described in the first section. Also included are a map showing the plants native region; a drawing of its twigs, leaves, flowers, and fruit; a photo of its bark, and a photo or line drawing of its crown without leaves.

   Thus, you can find the information you need in one of two ways: you can choose the plant characteristics you want and look them up in the first section to find the plantings that fit your needs. Or you can look up the specific plants in the second section to learn if their characteristics are appropriate for your landscape

   No other book on native plantings provides as much information, as usefully organized, as this one does. Landscape architects, ecologists, park personnel, botanists Ðanyone interested in natural landscapingÐwill find this to be an invaluable reference that greatly assists in choosing and nurturing native trees, shrubs, and vines.

   harlen d. Groe

No comments about Landscape Architecture: Guidelines to Professional Practice.

No comments about Computer Graphics for Landscape Architects: An Introduction.

2 comments about Native Shrubs and Woody Vines of the Southeast: Landscaping Uses and Identification.

1. I bought this hoping that I would be able to easily identify the native shrubs and vines on my property, but it is not very helpful. It is very difficult to use for someone not trained in botany. I should know, as my training is in aquatic biology and zoology. Even with my biology background, I have not found it very useful so the identification part of the title is very misleading. Also, there appears to be no rhyme or reason as to how the plants are categorized. I was hoping this would be more like Taylor's guides to trees, shrubs, etc. with pictures that then refer to a description, but it wasn't.



2. I bought this book because I adore "Gardening with Native Wildflowers" by the same authors. I was a little disappointed because this one is not as reader friendly for beginners such as myself. It does fill an important niche by identifying all native shrubs and woody vines of the southeast, as the title implies, and for this I imagine it would be a must for anyone compiling a serious library and/or study on the subject of native plants. The book is chock full of color photographs, each of which is labeled by the scientific name of the plant. However, I would have liked to see the common name there also (there is a common name index). A beginner who does not need to know about or identify a wide variety of shrubs and vines might be better off starting with a general guide to natural gardening that includes a variety of plant types.

5 comments about The Living Landscape: An Ecological Approach to Landscape Planning.

1. The Living Landscape has made a lasting contribution to ecological planning through its detailed documentation of this planning process and thoughtful comparison of the process's application in case studies. Dr. Steiner demonstrates in his book that ecological planning is just not a static plan-making process, but rather a dynamic process that requires consistent and meaningful input from stakeholders. In addition, he sees plan-making as a process that has implications for different scales of the environment, from the nation to the neighborhood. He stresses that the ecological planning process does not end when the plan is finished, but rather the process continues through the linkage of planning concepts to physical design. Given the strengths of this book, it is an essential volume for the library of any professional or student in the disciplines of the built environment and environmental management.



2. It is a rare planning book that outlines a detailed process for guiding landscape change in a deliberate and ecologically sound manner. The Living Landscape accomplishes this in a robust, clear and convincing way. The second edition improves on the first by including more landscape design information, updating case studies, and deepening the planning method (for instance, by including more on the use of Geographic Information Systems). The liberal use of cases is a strong asset of the book; each step in the ecological planning process is illustrated and explained by way of 'stories' from real places around North America. The Living Landscape is useful reading for students and practitioners in landscape architecture, architecture, environmental planning and natural resource management.



3. The second edition of The Living Landscape has came out nine years after the first. The first, in fact, was published in 1991, it received an ASLA Merit Award for Communications in 1993, and then it was translated into Italian in 1994, where it was very well received among scholars and students of planning as well as in the schools of architecture throughout the country.
   The very first difference between the two editions is the publishing series. The first did not form part of a series while the second is now in the McGraw-Hill "Professional Architecture" series. The Professional Architecture series is devoted to giving helpful tools to practitioners who are on the field and The Living Landscape provides a very wide set of how-to and why-to-do-it instructions, where-to-keep information, and best practices examples to learn from, organized around an eleven-step Ecological Planning Model. I consider The Living Landscape a refined, high-level professional handbook devoted to enhance the toolbox of any present or future planning practitioners.
   The Living Landscape II edition, as was the first, is built around a scheme of eleven steps called "Ecological Planning Method" briefly presented in the first chapter and used as a step-by-step pattern to guide readers into the organization of a planning process. The "Ecological Planning Method" is a framework for presenting information to decision-makers, and to display "a common language, a common method among all those concerned about social equity and ecological parity" (p. 9). The approach to planning presented by Steiner is innovative for two reasons. The first is the incorporation of ecology in planning - briefly "the use of biophysical and sociocultural information to suggest opportunities and constraints for decision making about the use of the landscape" (pp. 9-10). The second reason is the author's stress on the citizen's involvement in almost every step of his method. These two issues, even if they are the prime themes of the book, are prudently embedded into the body of the full text. Ecology and citizen involvement are the leitmotif of the entire book which is composed of a precise combination of techniques and tools presentation, useful references to literature, light - but effective - revocations of the theoretical frameworks on the issues, and application examples deriving from real plans or projects.
   The eleven-step Ecological Planning Model goes from the identification of problems and opportunities (step 1) and the establishment of goals (2) to inventories and analysis at regional (3) and local level (4). It proceeds with the realization of detailed studies (5) and the definition of planning concepts (6). The landscape plan (7) follows and it is directly assessed and criticized by citizens (8), who are involved and educated along the whole process-phasing. Design exploration (9) comes next and the study of the implementation of the plan and projects (10) precedes the administration (11) that is the last step of the model. The Ecological Planning Model is linear in its descriptions (the book chapters - excluding the introduction and the conclusion - are devoted to deepen every single step, with some minor exceptions), but the steps are strongly interactive. In the graphic scheme of the model (p. 11), solid and dashed arrows between the steps emphasize the necessity and the opportunity of feedback and retroactions in order to monitor the previous results.
   Citizen involvement is the center of the model. Almost every step is addressed to inhabitants and a systematic educational and citizen involvement effort occurs throughout the process. The model, between the last step - administration - and the first - problem and/or opportunity identification -, presents a dashed arrow in order to accent that problems and opportunities facing the region and the goals addressed that may be altered by time, occurrences and circumstances.
   Compared to the first edition, the structure of the Ecological Planning Model and of the book contents remains unchanged in the second, but the book has some 120 more pages. Graphic design of tables and figures has been enhanced - a four-color page section was added to present the GIS maps of the Desert View Tri-Villages Area (Arizona) and of the Camp Pendleton study area (California), two of the many new examples used along the entire book. New photographs, mostly authored by Steiner, follow the entire text. Sources and references have been updated including recent books and articles on the matters. New examples, as said before, have been included in this edition to present more recent application of techniques and tools explained and illustrated along the text. The final glossary, one of the many useful tools of the book, has been enlarged with 46 new entries bringing the total to 350.



4. I am a graduate student in landscape ecological planning. I would recommend Dr. Steiner's book for students, professionals and the lay leaders interested in making a difference in their community. The idea of planning is sometimes hard to grasp by communities that are ruled by economics and development,not ecology. Dr. Steiner shows us step by step how to include ecology into communities and how that may give us other alternatives that we may not have considered.

   The use of case studies in this book enhances the practical application of ecological planning in real world situations.

   I would recommend this book for anyone interested in ecology, planning or being part of your community's future.




5. I picked up a copy of "the living landscape" at the local library thinking I was on to something interesting. Instead, I found the book to be a rehash of old, simple ideas under the cloak of a "sexy", progressive title. I am a practicing environmental planner and must admit that I was even fooled by the picture on the cover--How in the world is a linear mono-cultural hedgerow of trees that line an walkway even remotely a just symbol of "ecological planning"? The picture seems to satisfy the landscape architect's need to have order-- Ecology is anything but linear or orderly.

   I must be fair. The book is well writen and offers students in environmental planning a good introduction to landscape planning with some environmenatl emphasis. However, in my opinion, I don't believe that the book does justice or furthers the progressive concept of "ecological" planning, as defined by the likes of the late Ian McHarg.