1 comments about The Spaces between Buildings (Center Books on Space, Place, and Time).

1. This is really a nice book. It reads very well and gives a good introduction over major landscape elements in urban and suburban. It also includes background information about the historical development of these landscape elements. That makes it quite easy to understand the urban and suburban landscape in the U.S.. It is one of these books that you read and think "aah, that's why...". A good and cheap present for landscape architects and students (nice paper, layout and format, too).

No comments about Urban Landscape Perspectives (Urban and Landscape Perspectives) (Urban and Landscape Perspectives).

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

1 comments about English Formal Garden: Five Centuries of Design.

1. There have been many books that I have picked up and began reading only to discover the book didn't answer all my questions. With books that give a history, I like a complete story, not a book that assumes you already know a great deal about the subject. This book provides a very satisfying history of the English Formal Garden and a lot of inspirational subject matter. A great book for any garden lover or lover of the English Landscape.

2 comments about Planting Design: A Manual of Theory and Practice.

1. I'm landscape design teacher. I've been looking for the books about planting design for my students. There were few i had found. This one is golden. Very useful both for me and my students



2. I like this book.
   Its strength is in the design aspect of planting design. Nelson discusses seasonal effects of plants, lines, form, texture, color, scale and angle of vision. He also explores some basic design principles: repetition, variety, balance, emphasis, sequence and scale.

No comments about Design for Nature in Dementia Care (Bradford Dementia Group Good Practice Guides).

No comments about Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory (Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture).

2 comments about Dynamic Landscape: Design, Ecology and Management of Naturalistic Urban Planting.

1. A good collection of articles by various authors. They recognized the fact that people cannot have 100% control of the end result of a planting design, and tried to guide instead of taming the plants. A good exploration on ecology.



2. This is definitely an academic book, but you'll find rare subject matter on current and past European research in planting design techniques available virtually no where else in the English language. Much this book has to offer is presented more attractively, and in much better prose, in Noel Kingsbury's and Piet Oudolf's Planting Design: Gardening in Time and Space, but the latter book has a much narrower focus on perennials and their horticultural use (I also recommend it highly).
   
   There are treasures here. One example is Hein Koningen's stimulating article on maintenance of the naturalistic parks, called "heemparks," that have been thriving in Amstelveen, a small city in The Netherlands, since the 1930s. The city, through highly knowledgeable park management and a locally trained staff of residents - many teenagers - has established a series of gardens, all planted appropriately to varying local ecologies, throughout the city. They are allowed to change over time, according to natural forces, unlike most "designed" gardens, where the plants are intended to stay put. But the heemparks are also managed, though infrequently and very carefully, by knowledgeable staff, who attempt to guide development, not make it fit a preconceived design.
   
   Another is Anna Jorgensen's chapter on the social and cultural context of ecological plantings, which reports on research into how different people respond to nature and to various types of park design, how different cultures and nationalities view nature, and how these views have changed over time. She quotes Daniel Defoe's description of the Yorkshire Dales as "having a kind of an unhospitable Terror in them ... all barren and wild, of no use or advantage either to man or beast," and contrasts his view with "the fact that many millions of people now visit the Yorkshire Dales National Park for pleasure and recreation, attracted by the same landscape that Defoe found so repugnant." Her piece is about where and how we draw the line between pretty and ugly, safe and threatening, designed and totally wild landscapes, and how that line moves over time and culture.
   
   This book focuses on public gardens and plantings, and is the result of many years of research carried out at the University of Sheffield to develop low maintenance gardening and land management techniques for parks and other public places, with attention even to waste places, traffic islands, and roadsides. While much of the results of this research is applicable primarily in England and continental climates--because the local grasses and weeds are different from those in North America--and competition among plants can have different results in the differing locations--much of it is relevant to our growing conditions, climate, and native plant stock. Dunnett's and Hitchmough's research certainly provides stimulus to those of use willing to experiment with "naturalistic" planting.
   
   For those of you who don't live in a city, don't be put off by the word "urban" in the subtitle. This book still offers much of interest. I garden in the woods in New Jersey, on a slope above a frequently raging creek a short distance before it plunges to the Delaware River. Dunnett's and Hitchmough's book contains a tremendous amount of information on naturalistic planting techniques and landscape management that I find of great use in my struggle with a wild landscape. I hope it will help me manage, not tame, my landscape. I recommend it as a book to read again and again, over several years.

1 comments about The Secret Gardens of Georgetown: Behind the Walls of Washington's Most Historic Neighborhood.

1. This has the wonderful photos we've come to expect from big, glossy garden books. But it also has an unusually literate text (from Brit-born Higgins, who writes regularly on gardens for the Washington Post) that makes the book of interest to out-of-Washington gardeners as well as those interested in Georgetown backyards. Higgins is also unusual in giving credit to the gardeners who do the upkeep on these gardens as well as the landscape architects who got big bucks for designing and installing them. One interesting note: one of the gardens belongs to Christopher Ogden, another to Pamela Harriman. Ogden, a Time magazine Washington correspondent, wrote a biography of the late Mrs. Harriman which she didn't much like. Higgins is soon to publish a guide to gardening in the Washington area which ought to be good.

No comments about Landscaping Makes Cents: Smart Investments that Increase Your Property Value.