This is an illlustrated guide to some of the great designers -- past and present -- and what we can learn from them today. In Lessons from the Great Gardeners: Forty Gardening Icons and What They Teach Us
(University of Chicago Press, 2016), author Matthew Biggs offers brief bios of each gardener or designer, their most important projects, and some of their secrets to success. For example, Piet Oudolf recommends planting schemes composed of clump-forming perennials because they don't seed around or root aggressively and therefore keep their form as distinct blocks, such as heleniums, molinias, sanguisorbas.
Roberto Burle Marx is quoted as saying: "There are no straight lines in nature." Need we say more?
And Madame Ganna Walska of Lotusland in California created "mood boards" before designing and planting.
From China's Wang Xianchen (b. 1500's) -- to Thomas Jefferson, PIerre S. Dupont, Beatrix Farrand, Beth Chatto and many others, the designers in this book, as the author puts it, are "talented, artistic, unconventional, freethinking, sometimes eccentric, and have revolutionary ideas that are ahead of their time." Lovely photos and illustrations accompany each entry, and it's a fascinating read for any designer today.
I'm not handy around the house, but many more women are these days, and probably many more have husbands with workshops of one kind or another. Now, handywoman Katie Jackson, in Hand-Built Outdoor Furniture: 20 Step-by-Step Projects Anyone Can Build
(Timber Press, 2016) shows you how to build outdoor furniture and garden accoutrements that would look great in almost any garden. The projects are very stylish -- chairs, tables, benches and more -- but best of all, photographs take you through the construction process step by step. You may want to try your hand.
Local food is all the rage today, and many seed companies are bringing back some of the old, favored cultivars of vegetables and flowers, which are more popular than ever. In Heritage Gardens, Heirloom Seeds: Melded Cultures with a Pennsylvania German Accent
(Schiffer Publishing, 2016), authors Michael Emery and Irwin Richman take you through the history of heirloom plants, along with those responsible for their cultivation. In the second half of the book, the authors profile sites and landscapes -- mostly in Pennsylvania, but also in North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland -- where you can visit existing heirloom gardens. Some of them, like Monticello and the Mt. Cuba Center will be familiar, but many others are not, and are probably worth a visit. If you're angling for a long weekend (or longer) in the mid-Atlantic, you may want to take along this guide.
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