The Garden Design Book (ISBN 006039207X)

Amazon.com Review:
Cheryl Merser and the editors of Garden Design magazine have produced a zaftig beauty of a garden book. The emphasis here is on "new gardening," with a nod to the traditional elements of garden design. New gardening combines a sophisticated treatment of the five senses and a natural style with a no-fuss approach to garden care. The book is marvelously organized, with rich sections that consider design elements such as boundaries, structures, pathways, and water, and a separate "Plants as Design Tools" section that considers plant color, texture, and form. Anyone designing a garden of any size from scratch will want to consult this book to clarify the planning steps, but also just to revel in its sheer gloriousness. With its exuberant, light-filled photos, this is the best possible coffee-table reading for rainy days; on sunny days, use it as a textbook in the garden.

A coffee table book worth browsing:
Definitely worth looking at but maybe not as compelling as a "reading book" if you don't have much interest in Ms. Merser's own garden dilemmas and adventures. Massive and clean photographs bring a variety of styles and landscape features to life. For it's ease in thumbing through and printed excellence, it qualifies as an amazingly well designed book; it meets and exceeds the challenge for a book based on the subject of design. The content structure, illustrative artwork and captions are outstanding, too. If a subsequent publishing were to be printed, I might suggest a little less base editorial and more photographic and illustrative artwork, with each given more insight and history in the caption. Hardly a criticism though, this book certainly could excite even the casual gardener. This is a very worthy book to either borrow or own.

Subscribers of the mag. Garden Design will be disappointed.:
Unfortunately, too many of the photos in this book are from the magazine issues over the last year or 2. That was a disappointment because I was really hoping for hundreds of new stuff.

Pretty pictures but not very helpful:
I was disappointed with this book because I was hoping to get information that I could apply to my own garden. The author shared her enthusiam for gardening and much of the book seemed to encourage us to be creative and follow our heart. I was hoping for some practical information about garden design.

Nicely organized with alot of vaiety and food for thought:
I liked this book very much. It had gorgeous pictures and an interesting way to look at gardening. It showed me things about my own style of gardening that I was doing but not really aware of what exactly or why exactly I was doing it. It was inspiring and motivating.

Cover very nice BUT:
This $50.00 book has a beautiful cover--but when you try to look inside--the images are purposefully hidden--are you ashamed of them?? I would NOT spend $50.00 on a book that I could not preview! VT