Your House, Your Garden: A Foolproof Approach to Garden Design

By Gordon Hayward

Book Overview

Finally, homeowners can tackle new garden designs and fix old ones with the confidence and know-how to succeed. Professional garden designer Gordon Hayward provides the tools by demonstrating the guiding principles behind his own designs: take clues from the style, materials, and proportions of existing features, particularly your house, but also garages and outbuildings, property lines, streets, walls, and walkways. Look closely at these features, and they will suggest good design.

Over sixty color photographs and over one hundred detailed watercolor sketches of Hayward's plans for his clients show how to read the clues and then design gardens that relate to their surroundings and unify entire properties. Many tricks of the trade are given, including how to make inviting, sheltering entry gardens; screen unsightly features and utilities; and reclaim narrow, shady side yards. Surefire methods for designing front, side, and backyard gardens are explained.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393057704
• ISBN13: 9780393057706
• Release Date: June 2003
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 2.11 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 8.8" x 10.7"

Customer Reviews

One of the best

I have a library of gardening books and this is by far one of the best I've seen in years. Good design features; good advice. The only thing I would have enjoyed was a little more detail to the actual planting layouts. You won't regret buying this book.

A Map for a magnificient yard

This book changed the way I look at landscaping. I have an oddly-shaped lot with both sunny and shady areas. This book has you get out your plot plan (something I never thought of!) and mark those areas and take a "whole yard" approach to your landscape. The advice is flawless, the pictures gorgeous. You will definitely want to add this to your library if you garden at all.

This book is so good I am buying a second copy

While I have several book shelves devoted to serious garden design, this is the book I always pull down and loan to my neighbors and friends. When they say " I would really like to do something with my side yard. I have to block out the new neighbors!", or " You know how bad my front walk looks I want to rip it out and redo it. What can I do to convince the kids to use it and not cut across the grass?" I say "Let me lend you a great book that will really get you thinking in the right direction". The advice is practical, logical and perfect for the weekend warrior. My copy of Your House, Your Garden has a waiting list for borrowing so I am buying a second copy!

American Horticultural Society Book Award

This book has just been chosen by The American Horticultural Society as one of the five top garden books for 2004.

A lavishly presented homeowner's guide

Gorgeous full-color photographs illustrate Your House, Your Garden, a practical, problem-solving and lavishly presented homeowner's guide to incorporating gardens between buildings, at the entrance, in a courtyard, and just about anywhere else near one's personal domicile. Common dilemmas, matters of space, sizing, and selecting the proper plants for one's climate and access to sunshine and much more make Your House, Your Garden an excellent resource for anyone contemplating the addition or enhancement of a garden to their home sweet home. Superbly organized and thoroughly "user friendly", Your House, Your Garden by nationally acclaimed garden designer Gordon Hayward would be a welcome addition to any personal or community library Gardening reference collection. Also very highly recommended is Gordon Hayward's earlier work, Stone In The Garden: Inspiring Designs And Practical Projects (0393047792, $39.95).