Product Description

For any gardener who is unsure of what to grow or how to put plants together in coherent planting schemes, this book provides answers. Many of the garden plans and plantings included are simplified versions of those created by great gardeners such as Vita Sackville-West, Margery Fish, and Piet Oudolf. The author's extensive knowledge of period plants, and how they were put together to look beautiful, has enabled him to re-create historical classics, like the Renaissance parterre or the Monet water garden, from contemporary planting lists and plans. Each garden is given a brief historical context, and its best qualities, seasons, and times of day are explained. Planting plans are given for each scheme, together with a shopping list that can be taken to a nursery. The book includes suggestions for adapting each plan to the limitations of a given space, and how to adapt the shopping list as well. Classic Garden Plans will be invaluable to any gardener who wants to design a garden with powerful historical associations, filled with authentic plants.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #845532 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-15
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 2.13 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

Review
With such vivid inspiration, creating an intimate version of any of these classic gardens falls into the range of possibility.Lili Singer, Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2005 (Los Angeles Times )

Introduces 16 classically-inspired garden plans scaled for smaller home gardens ... Includes historical context, color plans and photos, and a flexible plant shopping list.Reference and Research Book News, August 2005 (Reference and Research Book News )

Stuart's elegant study of historic garden plans balances clear explanation with explicit diagrams listing walkway materials and plants by their Latin names.Mary Ellen Snodgrass, American Reference Books Annual, 2005 (American Reference Books Annual )

About the Author
David Stuart earned his doctorate at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, and went on to a career in horticulture and landscape design. He was curator of Longstock Park Gardens for 14 years, during which period it held the national collection of Buddleja, a plant that he first grew to screen tennis courts. He now works as an independent horticultural consultant. He has judged shows for the Royal Horticultural Society and is a committee member and council member of the National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
This re-creation of the gardens designed for William of Orange, later the joint ruler, with his wife Mary, of Britain, at the woodland hunting palace of the rulers of the Netherlands has become a classic showpiece of the Dutch baroque garden style. The original designs were drawn up by Daniel Marot (16611752) in the early 1680s; documents describe him as a mathematician, which he may have considered himself to be, though he is best known for his designs for gardens and interior decor. Though he worked mostly for aristocratic French patrons, in Holland he adapted to Dutch sensibilities and designed a garden that, though grand and costly, was entirely scaleable the same idiom and the same planting could be used in the backyard of a tiny house in Amsterdam or Haarlem, and looked as good as it did at palace scale. Many pretty examples can still be found. In France, the immense schemes of Andr le Ntre, or even those of Marot for French patrons, worked only at the very grandest scale, and so were of no use to minor gardeners. The charm of these Dutch baroque gardens is that they not only make a showground for interesting plants, but are attractive throughout the year. Their structure lasts almost unchanged through the seasons. They can look as entrancing under snow as they do in highest summer. They are as pleasing from a window as they are to wander through, or to view from a trellis-shaded seat. And for lovers of symmetry and order, they are perfect. They do, though, require work. Dutch gardeners were, and often still are, exceedingly diligent. In the scheme suggested, the planting spaces need clearing and refilling twice a year. The bulbs need drying and sorting, unless you plan to repurchase every autumn. Plants need raising from seed for some of the summer planting. The box hedges need at least one pruning a year to keep them sharp. The gravel needs to be kept clear of weeds and fallen leaves. Trellis, unless you have rot-proofed it, needs maintenance and repair after its first few crisp seasons. The grass, if you leave the pair of topmost sections empty, needs constant cutting and weeding. It is a garden of artifice and effort. Though the garden at Het Loo has some exciting waterworks, the plan shows none. If water is important for you, then narrow canals could be cut running the length of the two central sections, and between the topiary obelisks and globes. The plan also does not commit itself as to the nature of the centrepieces for the lower pair of parterres, or the upper grass plat areas. Princely gardens used statuary, but good garden pieces now cost princely sums. It is hard to find good reproductions at all, and impossible to find anything worth using at most garden centres. Good reproduction urns, in both concrete (even if called reconstituted stone) or fibreglass, are much easier to find. Better still, the larger garden centres sell, or can order, quite good pieces of topiary, often grown in traditional shapes that fit perfectly