In Vigilance Is No Orchard, Hazel White records her haunting romance with the Valentine Garden, created by landscape architect Isabelle Greene in the foothills of Santa Barbara, California. Jealous of its maker's power to affect a dynamic experience of space, White tries to make language play faithfully in the game coursing between the body and Greene's fiercely stirring landscape. Both the poems and the constructed landscape they describe are complex and explorative, never simplified. Instead their interests are survival, forage and repair, the act of making, accumulation and overflow that results in flowering and eventually gives way to loss. Praise for Hazel White: "I set this book down and wept...It is the most beautiful piece of writing I have read in many years."-Bhanu Kapil

Gardeners wanted; no experience necessary Chronicle Books is pleased to introduce an exciting and unique new how-to series, "Garden Design" books. Beginning with "Water Gardens" and "Paths and Walkways, Garden Design" books present beautiful photographs of enchanting garden elements and then offer complete step-by-step directions for building the projects pictured. Featuring ideas from award-winning gardens created by renowned landscape architects, the elements include classic garden structures as well as whimsical contemporary designs. Easy-to-follow directions explain exactly what to do and how to do it, what it will cost, and how long it will take. With projects suited to both small and large spaces, the "Garden Design" series is more than a new collection of lovely picture books -- it is a valuable tool that enables readers to actually create their own outdoor havens. "Paths and Walkways "covers brick, gravel, stone, grass, wood, and concrete, and features easy "recipes" for such projects as a beach trail with poppies of Rhodes, a stepping stone bridge across a meadow, fieldstones with irises, and Mediterranean crazy paving, not to mention a complete plan for the Path of Righteousness.