Library Book - A Review

Oh. My. Goodness. The book, Understanding Garden Design, The Complete Handbook for Aspiring Designers by Vanessa Gardner Nagel, APLD, Timber Press, Portland-London, 2010, is a KEEPER!!!

I have added it to my Amazon’s wish list. It will be added to my physical bookshelf someday soon! When I say it’s a KEEPER, she provides so much information worth utilizing long after the design and planning is over... to incorporate in all aspects of living.

When I started reading it, I quickly decided to take notes, as if I were preparing for an exam. After the first few days of note taking, I woke up the next morning and couldn’t use my right thumb for two days! I can’t do that anymore.

It is by-far a study book on deciding “Who’s on first?” how to assess and record, measuring and documenting, making the hard decisions between need/desire, the microclimates, working with Mother Nature, providing double (triple) duty, and drawing different diagrams.

The basic design elements (really of everything/anything)...

Color (hue, value, and intensity) in using the color wheel/harmonies taught me so much I’ve never considered before.

Line, Shape, Form, and Space... goodness gracious... it all makes sense how she explains things.

Have you ever thought about -

proportion and scale, mass, focal point or emphasis, repetition and rhythm, movement, sequence or transition, texture, variety, contrast, balance, unity, and time.  

She explains them all very nicely!

And then she points out even more aspects that affect garden design...

Function    *    Fragrance     *     Serendipity

I found the “Plants: A Structural Perspective” chapter particularly informative. I need to move on past - plant one type of thing and move on to another area to plant one singular other plant - mode of thinking and plant more group style, mass planting. Although she writes about the concept “thrillers, spillers, and fillers” not being a new concept, I’ve never heard of it until reading her book! Basically they are...
  
   Thrillers - bold plants that are focal points
   Spillers - plants that creeps, falls, and overflows
   Fillers - less defined plants that are frothy and airy

But of course, she describes them in much more detail - with PICTURES! Good deal! Exactly what I need!

Another. Oh. My. Goodness.

Who would have thought... using plants as punctuation! See, this is a prime example why I want this book in my hands (off the bookshelf) for future reference! She talks about them all (and gives examples)!

Periods - Commas - Exclamation Points - Question Marks - Semicolons - Colons - Parentheses
It makes perfectly totally sense!

I appreciate her chapter on plant and leaf shapes. I know I need to learn what would go with and complement one another. It’s in her section on “The Planting Plan” she continues her hypothetical garden design plan and incorporates the punctuation concept. That might not have made any sense, but I’ll know exactly where to go once I have the actual book in my hands!

Then there is a lot of valuable information about lights in the garden. Maybe someday we’ll have garden lighting but I feel certain it will be by the way of solar (or wind) energy rather than electricity. Although I tried, I just couldn’t skim through this chapter covering all the different aspects to consider - the reasons, various types and styles, and the effect lighting placement will bring. Oh, and when I saw the gabion wall, that led me to doing further research how to construct such a wall! We have the rock, that’s for sure!

Because I AM the contractor - not to mention the laborer doing the actual work - I did skip most of the chapter “Working with Contractors” but it may be just what another reader needs to know. It did give me a bit of 'what comes first' organizing.

And, a great way to end this lovely book, this gold mine of information, her last chapter gives great ideas for having people out and about in the garden... either via an open garden or a garden party!

For me, it will be a grand day in the garden - when I can share it with others...