Create a harmonious garden style all the year round with innovative use of colour and pattern. Experience the soothing sounds of birdsong, the hum of insects, the rustle of leaves and the gentle trickle of water in the garden. Tempt your palate with sweet and edible flowers, plump summer fruits, delicious gourmet vegetables and fragrant herbs. Incorporate soft, velvety-textured plants and shrubs that cry out to be touched, and tactile floor surfaces that invite bare feet. Plant heady-scented roses, fragrant climbers and aromatic bulbs, annuals, herbs and shrubs to make your own pleasure garden. This beautiful book will show you how to add sensory elements into the garden, whether planting a fragrant honeysuckle near a window, adding a gently flowing water feature to attract wildlife, or planning beautiful borders to create romantic atmosphere or glorious year-round colour. Imagine the captivating scent of herbs and flowers, feast your eyes on a sunny summer border, hear the busy hum of bees, brush past soft foliage and taste sweet fruit freshly picked. A garden can incorporate all these elements whatever its aspect or size. With practical planting suggestions and delightful, evocative photographs of achievable garden schemes, "Creating a Garden of the Senses" will inspire you to make your garden a sensory paradise.

Garden of Your Dreams is an inspirational and practical guide to complete outdoor transformations - from the smallest urban courtyard to a rural paradise. Let award-winning garden designer and landscape expert from Better Homes & Gardens Charlie Albone walk you through the process of turning your outdoor space into your own personal oasis. Start by identifying your dream design style, then learn how to make a plan that works for your site, budget and aspirations. Create an entertaining space you are proud of, prepare the soil and then the real fun begins - planting! Packed full of ideas and inspirational how-to as well as Charlie's personal plant guide, Garden of Your Dreams is the ideal first step to dreaming up your own outdoor transformation.

This award-winning book by a Harvard landscape architect proves how important it is to understand the natural settings of cities--their air, water, geology, plant, and animal life--to create better, more habitable urban environments.

Inspired by the idea of doing something positive for their local environment, Yvette Verner and her husband Mike bought a small field close to their home in the south of England. With the bountiful assistance of nature they created a flower meadow which attracts a rich variety of wildlife, including badgers, deer and a multitude of birds and butterflies. In this book Yvette tells the story of their meadow: how they designed the layout, selected and planted wild flowers, trees and hedges and spent many absorbing hours wildlife-watching. Meadows such as theirs support large populations of plants, insects, birds and other animals, and are extremely important in maintaining the ecological diversity of our countryside. Many meadow species that farmers and gardeners consider to be weeds are host to other forms of wildlife: the modest oxeye daisy alone supports over twenty species of insect! "The meadow is still flourishing and each year is delightful and different. It is particularly wonderful to see our four grandchildren enjoying it so much." - Mike Verner, Yvette's husband

Gardens take many forms, and have a variety of functions. They can serve as spaces of peace and tranquilty, a way to cultivate wildlife, or as places to develop agricultural resources. Globally, gardens have inspired, comforted, and sustained people from all walks of life, and since the Garden of Eden many iconic gardens have inspired great artists, poets, musicians, and writers. In this Very Short Introduction, Gordon Campbell embraces gardens in all their splendour, from parks, and fruit and vegetable gardens to ornamental gardens, and takes the reader on a globe-trotting historical journey through iconic and cultural signposts of gardens from different regions and traditions. Ranging from the gardens of ancient Persia to modern day allotments, he concludes by looking to the future of the garden in the age of global warming, and the adaptive spirit of human innovation. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

A showcase of Britain's most extraordinary gardens and landscapes from the twentieth century to present day. 100 20th-Century Gardens and Landscapes highlights the evolution of gardens and landscapes over the past century, tracing how these distinctive creations complemented buildings of their period. Entries in this book are grouped in chronological periods, documenting changing styles and techniques in a visual timeline. The examples chosen take the story from the Arts and Crafts garden and the garden city, through the landscapes created for mid-century housing and the new towns, to the low-maintenance gardens of the 1980s and contemporary trends for community and wildlife gardens. Designed landscapes were often integral to the conception of twentieth-century developments; the inclusion of a handful of particularly successful landscapes for memorial gardens, offices, industry, transport and parks demonstrate a changing attitude to public green space during the century and its increasing importance as private gardens have become ever smaller. Designers and architects such as Piet Oudolf, Charles Jencks, Frederick Gibberd, Geoffrey Jellicoe, Vita Sackville-West and Gertrude Jekyll are all featured, alongside more detailed essays on the history of gardens, planting styles, the importance of modern landscapes, and the career of Geoffrey Jellicoe. The text is written by architectural, landscape and garden historians including Elain Harwood, Barbara Simms and Alan Powers. Beautifully illustrated throughout with photography, illustrations and garden plans, this book is ideal for gardeners and landscape lovers alike.