Modern Garden Makers Book

Sally Court is one of the bright new British garden designers, and in The Modern Garden Makers she explores the wide variety of gardening ideas and trends coming out of English gardens and flower shows. This oversized book is filled with color photographs; some focus on the familiar brick walls, formal ponds, and mixed herbaceous borders we think of in connection with British gardeners, but there is nothing quaint or traditional about most of these images. Showcased is the work of a dozen avant-garde designers, from tiny courtyard gardens in London to huge estates with naturalistic streams and ponds, stucco walls, and jungle plantings. The unusual images in The Modern Garden Makers bring to mind a story, perhaps apocryphal, about British gardening's grande dame, Penelope Hobhouse, who reputedly suggested that in the future, gardens will be devoid of plants. Gardeners will be relieved to see that this book proves there is a middle ground between traditional uses of plants and no plants at all. Flowery meadows coexist with huge metal sculptures, ponds are bridged by cobalt blue decking accenting the yellow-striped blades of Iris pseudacorus 'Variegata,' and mellow brick walls are reflected in smooth watercourses ringed in grasses. Perhaps only in England, with its long traditions of garden making, could there be such a mix of the new and the old, the familiar and the unexpected. --Valerie EastonRead More