It's been some years since I visited David Culp's garden in Pennsylvania's Brandywine Valley; but I treasure the photos I took that day, along with all the notes on his masterful design. I was along on a trip sponsored by Hillwood Museum & Gardens in Washington, DC; it was pouring rain; and that did not detract one iota from anything we saw.
Now, Culp explains how he put the garden together in a new book, The Layered Garden: Design Lessons for Year-Round Beauty from Brandywine Cottage
Culp's vegetable garden was designed as "an exercise in formal geometry" with an eye to color and texture. And his "ruin" garden with old, crumbling stone walls, now shelters tender and drought-tolerant plants. It's visible from the road and is just a hint of what lies beyond. Stunning photographs by Rob Cardillo accompany the text, and they are lesson in themselves about everything Culp wishes to impart.
There's not an avid gardener or a designer out there who would not appreciate this book. Mine, I'm sure, will be dog-eared in no time at all.
Most gardeners would also like another new title from Timber, The Roots of My Obsession: Thirty Great Gardeners Reveal Why They Garden
As a youth, plant explorer Dan Hinkley was bad at sports and had no talent for musical instruments, but yes, he was fascinated by plants, and lucky, too, for all of us.
Rick Darke's garden is his "time machine," and Doug Tallamy gardens because he loves animals.
You'll find many friends here -- Ken Druse and Penelope Hobhouse, Roger Swain and Stepher Orr, Anna Pavord and Amy Stewart, Tony Avent, and many more. It's a book about some of the best garden writers out there ... and these 30 brief little essays are simply the essence of the gardening spirit.
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