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Recent and Readable: A Terrific Design Duo

Author: Georgene A. Bramlage
Published on: Oct 21, 2004

Classic Garden Plans by David Stuart is the perfect book with which to curl up and dream. Stuart takes us on a word and photograph trip around the garden world in time and geography. We visit some well-known gardens such as the early 20th century Sissinghurst Castle Gardens of Vita Sackville-West (Kent, England) and some like the strikingly modern private garden of international garden designer Piet Oudolf ((Netherlands).

Stuart, originally trained as a botanist, has also worked as a nurseryman and journalist. Now, living in Scotland, he brings all his practical experiences together to write full time about plants and gardens. It is essential to read Stuart's introduction to Classic Garden Plans to understand his raison d'être for its organization and choice of gardens.

Why does Stuart consider each of his choices to be a classic garden? They all resonate on both the physical and emotional levels for their maker as well as for today's visitors. Each has a strong plan that sets up a skeleton on which to site plantings as well as move humans hospitably through the space. Moreover, each garden expresses in different fashion the maker's dreams of an ideal space.

What makes Stuart's book so different from the numerous garden art books currently available is his translation of these classic gardens to realistic renderings for today's gardeners. He includes colored diagrams scaled to fit into today's relatively flat and moderately small, 35 to 40-feet-wide by 60-feet-long, garden spaces.

Stuart explains the rationale behind his adaptations and gives us some ideas on what is worth trying for particular climates and surroundings. He includes pointers on building the gardens' frameworks like walls, steps, and viewing structures, but wisely puts forward no explicit instructions for these large built elements. He advocates consulting a construction manual or hiring expert workers to put together permanent structures.

This is a book to be kept nearby and thoughtfully examined and rexamined. We can modify and replicate one of Stuart's plans as a sort of souvenir of an admired or loved garden. Conversely, we can extract bits and pieces of Stuart's design ideas to incorporate into our vision of an ideal garden.

Another recent book to keep close at hand is Rosemary Alexander's The Essential Garden Design Workbook. Here, Alexander, founder and principal of The English Gardening School, Chelsea Physic Garden, London, picks up where Stuart's book leaves off.

Perhaps the first thing one becomes aware of on picking up the book is its heft and the feel of its Flexi binding. Slightly smaller than 8 ½-by-11 inches, the book can easily fit into a backpack, book bag or rest easily on a desktop. The spine and binding allow it to lay open for working on a flat surface.

Here we have a book valuable and functional to design students and professionals as well as serious gardeners wanting distinctive home landscapes. The contents, grounded by traditional design principles, are ingrained with abundant and fruitful how-to-do-it information presented in systematic formats. For example, Alexander presents several pages of comprehensive diagrams and ten steps to demonstrate Drawing up the Final Garden Layout Plan.

We also find up-to-the-minute examples of modern garden problems and suggestions for their solution. Alexander declares that in the United States, water in the landscape has become a cultural phenomenon. In areas of high summer temperatures, it is common to have a swimming pool, hot tub, and lap pool, or any combination of the three, naturalized by adding waterfalls or streambeds. The result is water features that take up large portions of garden space and pose many design challenges.

Ten pages are devoted to the challenges of water in the landscape. The text is emphatic and easy to understand; the diagrams are instructive and helpful and they present several design features in mix and match scenarios. Farther into the book are sections of colored photographs that illustrate some of the principles and solutions developed in the text.

The first chapter, Research, Preparation and Design Appraisal, is a necessary read before pushing a single spade into the ground. Here, Alexander assembles and consolidates all the basic information.

She closes the chapter with these admonitions: "If the many issues that have been covered in this chapter are taken into account at the planning stage, the work will progress more speedily and smoothly later. The site survey, site analysis and site appraisal are vital stages in developing a design." These points hold true no matter how large or small the design, or whether it is a professional, volunteer, or personal project.