Fashion can take on many forms, but it often involves color, texture, shapes. So it's no wonder that a former fashion designer can make the transfer to garden design.
In Your Outdoor Room, How to Design a Garden You Can Live In, (Frances Lincoln, 2024), designer Manoj Malde showcases his vibrant style and love of color ... and demonstrates how to create unique, sustainable, beautiful gardens that transition beautifully from inside to outside.
As he says in the introduction, "...this book will not only help you to overcome your fears, but offer guidance and give you the skills to turn your garden into a beautiful, healthy, thriving, outdoor living space that will bring you joy for years to come."
The book is essentially a guide to design, and Malde walks you through the entire process, from considerations about how you want to use the space, garden themes that reflect the owner's personality, where to find inspiration, how to plan social spaces, the plantings, the materials, and much more.
In a section on designing steps, he says, "A level change in a flat space can add depth and character while making a small garden feel bigger. A step up can lead to a private seating area made cozy with beautiful metal screens or planting. A step down could lead you to sunken, secluded garden."
He outlines ways to use screening in garden to make the garden feel bigger, to hide unwanted views, to create seating and garden hideaways. He covers the full vocabulary used by professional designers and brings their ideas down to a homeowner's level. Finally, Malde makes creative suggestions for planting, for using pots and other containers, and how to bring the garden to life.
It's an indispensable book for anyone who's a garden novice, or anyone who wants to transform their outdoor space with verve and harmony into a sanctuary for years to come.
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