Veronica Fowler's comprehensive step-by-step manual shows you not only how to install your water garden, but maintain it entirely on your own."Backyard Water Gardens" teaches you how to install liners, pre-formed shapes, containers, and aboveground pools and fountains. From there, it helps you choose plants, add them to your garden, fertilize, prune, divide, and ward off pests and diseases. But Fowler's book goes far beyond the basics, covering all the maintenance and troubleshooting of water feature hardscapes--from a rip in a liner, to a damaged pool, to maintaining equipment and filters (including seasonal maintenance for winter care). Veronica Fowler's "Backyard Water Gardens" allows you to fully enjoy the convenience and versatility of water gardening, all while maintaining it with ease for years to come."Backyard Water Gardens" is truly an all-inclusive manual, encompassing every style, type, and size of water feature imaginable. No matter the "feel" you wish to convey in your garden--casual, formal, or whimsical--Fowler's book enables you to create it with confidence. Your range of hardscape options is incredibly vast, from small, container-sized fountains that complement any space with added sound and movement, to large in-ground or aboveground ponds and streams. Larger installations not only provide soothing, rejuvenating sights and sounds; they can also house fish and plants and passively attract natural wildlife to your backyard.

In this companion volume to the bestselling The Midwestern Native Garden: Native Alternatives to Nonnative Flowers and Plants, Charlotte Adelman and Bernard L. Schwartz offer another indispensible guide to replacing nonnative plants with native alternatives. This time, their subject is the native woody species that are the backbone of our gardens and landscapes. Among other ecological benefits, native shrubs and trees provide birds and butterflies with vital food and reproductive sites that nonnative species cannot offer. And they tend to be hardier and easier to maintain. The authors provide a comprehensive selection of native woody alternatives that, season by season, provide effects similar to those of nonnative shrubs and trees used for ornamental purposes and shade. These plants are suitable for all garden styles, provide blooms and fall color, and have the same cultivation requirements as their nonnative counterparts. Nature notes alert readers to the native species' unique ecological roles. Unlike other gardening guides, Midwestern Native Shrubs and Trees goes beyond mere suggestion to provide gardeners with the tools they need to make informed, thoughtful choices. Knowing which native species to plant for desired effects empowers landscapers and gardeners to take on a greater role in protecting our midwestern environment.

A superlative analysis of contemporary gardens as well as a fascinating collection of landscapes around the world, "Making the Modern Garden" is a definitive study of the philosophy and practice of garden design at the outset of the twenty-first century. Author Christopher Bradley-Hole, himself a landscape designer of note, discusses the process of garden design in a presentation of modern landscapes at all sizes and locations. Among the designers in the book are Fernando Caruncho, Peter Walker, Kathryn Gustafson, and Vladamir Sitta; different types of gardens include roof gardens, courtyards, urban and country gardens, and dramatic landscapes.
Bradley-Hole also reviews the ever-changing palette of plants used in the modernist garden as well as materials and landscape features. A point of reference throughout is the modern art, design, and landscape architecture of the twentieth century, represented by artists and architects including Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Roberto Burle Marx.

Russell Page, one of the legendary gardeners and landscapers of the twentieth century, designed gardens great and small for clients throughout the world. His memoirs, born of a lifetime of sketching, designing, and working on site, are a mixture of engaging personal reminiscence, keen critical intelligence, and practical know-how. They are not only essential reading for today's gardeners, but a master's compelling reflection on the deep sources and informing principles of his art.
"The Education of a Gardene"r offers charming, sometimes pointed anecdotes about patrons, colleagues, and, of course, gardens, together with lucid advice for the gardener. Page discusses how to plan a garden that draws on the energies of the surrounding landscape, determine which plants will do best in which setting, plant for the seasons, handle color, and combine trees, shrubs, and water features to rich and enduring effect. To read The Education of a Gardener is to wander happily through a variety of gardens in the company of a wise, witty, and knowledgeable friend. It will provide pleasure and insight not only to the dedicated gardener, but to anyone with an interest in abiding questions of design and aesthetics, or who simply enjoys an unusually well-written and thoughtful book.

Food plants have their own ornamental value, adding harmony to existing landscapes without creating a separate vegetable garden. They also provide a fresh, healthy alternative to the tasteless and woody fruits and vegetables bred for long-distance transportation and shipped to our grocery stores from all over the world. In this book, we show how, with just a little effort, you can augment your landscape with edibles of every description in an environmentally sustainable manner: * Veggie favorites: tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, beans and onions * Berries: blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries * The superhealthy: flax, broccoli, kale and garlic * The oddly beautiful: Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, asparagus and artichokes * The ancient and exotic: quinoa, fennel and hardy kiwi * Plus starting, maintaining and harvesting an edible garden, propagation and winter care, and solutions to common garden problems.

Whatever the size of your garden or outdoor space, raised beds can work for you. With Simon Akeroyd's Raised-Bed Gardening: How to Grow More in Less Space, home gardeners will find the perfect bed to suit their needs and objectives. Greater yields and less watering are the keys to using and maintaining raised garden beds. The heart of the book comprises step-by-step instructions for building and maintaining 15 types of raised beds - from the conventional to the innovative "keyhole garden," which is particularly effective in hot and dry climates, to rooftop. The book also offers plans for raised-bed dining areas and designs to be used by children. Illustrated with 250 images, Raised-Bed Gardening answers numerous questions, including how big and high to make a bed, using reclaimed and recycled materials, extending the season, tackling pests, watering and water conservation, and maintenance. Herb, vegetable and ornamental gardens are explained in detail as well as: building a bed with center pond rotating crops creating fruit cages dealing with compost Also included are suggestions for building projects and planting schemes to inspire you to create your own unique raised-bed garden.