Garden Style

By Penelope Hobhouse

Book Overview

The design and planting of fine gardens is an art best learnt by example. In this inspiring and beautiful book, Penelope Hobhouse - gardener, plantswoman, garden writer and historian - uses some of the finest gardens in the world to show how to lay out and plant formal, patterned, natural and flower gardens. Her examples range from the Italianate Blake House garden at Berkeley, California, with its spectacular curving staircase and rectangular pool, to the Jekyll-inspired planting of white foxgloves in the wild garden at Knightshayes, Devon; from the excitement of the summer flower border at Pontrancart, Dieppe, to the simple greenness of a garden room at La Pietra in Tuscany. Each garden has been exquisitely photographed, in many instances especially for the book. But Garden Style is more than a tour of beautiful gardens. Penelope Hobhouse informs, advises and inspires on every aspect of garden design. She explains how to relate a garden to its setting; the importance of establishing a proper structure, whether as an end in itself or as a backdrop for decorative planting; and how to create a successful small garden. These themes are balanced by in-depth portraits of more than 20 gardens, some famous like Great Dixter, Villandry and Giusti, others less known and previously unpublished.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316367508
• ISBN13: 9780316367509
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 2.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 10.3" x 10.3"

Customer Reviews

a beautiful book full of design inspiration

If you are looking for a beautiful book full of ideas for perennial garden design, this is it. The book is full of great color pictures of absolutely gorgeous famous gardens. Although few of us have the space, time or money to have our own gardens of the size and caliber we see in this book, many of the ideas can be applied to the home garden. Not just a juicy coffee table book, both the text and photos offer much for those looking for inspiration about perspective, backdrop, texture, and all the elements of garden design.