Designing with Plants

Piet Oudolf's gardens excite the senses and stir emotion with an approach to gardening that emphasizes form, texture, light, movement, and color. Designing with Plants is both inspirational and instructive — an informative and visually breathtaking study that shows readers how to create the same effects in their gardens. This paperback reprint includes four main parts. "Planting Palettes" shows the range of plant choice available in form, texture, and color. "Designing Schemes" shows how to combine these elements to create stunning and sculptural gardens. Through stunning photography, "Planting Moods" shows how to create a particular atmosphere. And "Year-Round Planting" emphasizes the importance of choosing plants that have value throughout the seasons.

Media reviews of this book:

"Stretches your imagination to see plants not just for their flowers but also for their shape, form, color, size, and texture in all seasons."

—Maggie Oster, National Gardener, October 2003

"(Piet Outdolf's) views about which perennials look best in fall and winter, along with inspiring photographs of late-season gardens he has created, can be found in Designing with Plants, written with Noel Kingsbury."

—Horticulture, September 2003

"Piet Oudolf [has] ... an uncanny eye for plant combinations."

—Anne Raver, New York Times, March 2, 2003

"No-nonsense gardeners who disdain the gloss of coffee-table books might be tempted to pass up Designing with Plants, but that would be a mistake. Oudolf is a major figure in contemporary garden design, and this book shows why. Read it, ponder it, then go tear out that mildewed rose bush, and plant some grasses."

—Thomas Fischer, Horticulture, May 2000

"This book is very user-friendly for anyone interested in all that's green and flowery. If, as a rule, April showers bring May flowers, why not try and orchestrate the blooms?"

—Miriam Drennan, BookPage, April 2000

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Customer reviews of this book:

"I was so delighted to hear Piet Oudolf on NPR this morning that I bought his book on the way to work. The work is an education in design and provides all the information I need to design my urban garden. I found many similarities between his landscapes and those of both my grandfathers Arthur Botkin and William Stewart who were nieghbors, the works range from rugged garden which convey a sense of untamed nature, to gardens reflecting elaborate Japanese attention to scale.The book is one of the few on this subject with elements more sophisticated than the news stand magazine information. I am delighted to have discovered a volume of enduring beauty."

—kathryn Stewart-McDonald from Washington, D.C., January 16, 2003

An excerpt from this book:

Mysticism in the garden depends almost entirely on circumstances which are beyond your control, when the power of the elements combines with nature — in the early morning, in fog, or at dusk, for instance — to make you feel quite alone. You cannot plant to create mysticism, but certain plants will work best in mystical circumstances; they almost become people in your imagination, taking on human characteristics and attributes. You can imagine that they are looking at you or coming towards you. Mysticism may be a strange word to use with regard to a garden. It is best defined as a spiritual experience where one feels at one with the whole of creation, and hence at one with the divinity itself ...

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