Shortcuts to Great Gardens

By Nigel Colborn

Book Overview

A realistic how-to book on achieving an integrated, well-established garden look almost instantly--with a minimum of effort and maintenance. Colborn's lively book is accompanied by photographs and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316150525
• ISBN13: 9780316150521
• Release Date: April 1993
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 8.6" x 11.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Book - even if you don't want to take shortcuts

This book is a great book for planning your landscape garden (even if it's already well established). We bought the hardback version when we lived in England, when it was first published.As a rule, the English prefer a garden that looks as though it has been there for years, and Nigel tells how to achieve that very quickly, giving it that established, comfortable, lush feel, as opposed to the stark bareness of most new landscape designs. But beyond just the first year or two, he tells how to plan succession plantings so your garden develops and matures through the years.The photos and drawings provide LOTS of inspiration, food for thought, concepts that you can 'steal' for your plot. They are classically English but adaptable almost anywhere. Most of them are designed for the average householder, not the grand formal gardens that require acres of land. If you can't visit England, photos are the next best thing. Maybe I'm predjudiced after living there, but the English do know how to garden, and this book shares a lot of their knowledge.

This book is both visually and textually wonderful.

In this book, Mr. Colborn has certainly given me my money's worth. I am fond of the fact that he has backed up his text with beautifully done photos, and many of them too! It is wonderfully inspiring and I have taken some of his ideas and implemented them into my garden and they look great!