The Jewel Box Garden

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could describe your garden as a jewel box full of beautiful plant treasures? In this sequel to the bestselling "Shocking Beauty," garden impresario Thomas Hobbs shows you how. "The Jewel Box Garden" is a luscious, full-color book that features 160 new and startling photos by renowned garden photographer David McDonald. Hobbs explains his philosophy of gardening and life, or as he puts it, "Life As We Dream It Could Be." In his own provocative and highly original way, he encourages gardeners to tap into their creativity and invest their heart and soul in creating oases of beauty -- intimate spaces where they can escape the pressures of modern life.

“Big ideas for your small garden.” —Garden Design When it comes to gardens, bigger isn’t always better, and The Less Is More Garden shows you how to take advantage of every square foot of space. Designer Susan Morrison offers savvy tips to match your landscape to your lifestyle, draws on years of experience to recommend smart plants with seasonal interest, and suggests hardscape materials to personalize your space. Inspiring photographs highlight a variety of inspiring small-space designs from around the country. With The Less Is More Garden, you’ll see how limited space can mean unlimited opportunities for gorgeous garden design.

'TRULY INSPIRING' Mail on Sunday Now familiar to millions of Gardeners' World fans as Longmeadow (the home of Nigel & Nellie), this is the story of Monty & Sarah Don's early days there. THE JEWEL GARDEN is the story of the garden that bloomed from the muddy fields around the Dons' Tudor farmhouse, a perfect metaphor for the Monty and Sarah's own rise from the ashes of a spectacular commercial failure in the late '80s . At the same time THE JEWEL GARDEN is the story of a creative partnership that has weathered the greatest storm, and a testament to the healing powers of the soil. Monty Don has always been candid about the garden's role in helping him to pull back from the abyss of depression; THE JEWEL GARDEN elaborates on this much further. Written in an optimistic, autobiographical vein, Monty and Sarah's story is truly an exploration of what it means to be a gardener.

“Gardenmaking, in its finest form, is a celebration of life and of love. David and his book epitomize this.” —Lauren Springer Ogden Brandywine Cottage is David Culp's beloved two-acre Pennsylvania garden where he mastered the design technique of layering—interplanting many different species in the same area so that as one plant passes its peak, another takes over. The result is a nonstop parade of color that begins with a tapestry of heirloom daffodils and hellebores in spring and ends with a jewel-like blend of Asian wildflowers at the onset of winter. The Layered Garden shows you how to recreate Culp's majestic display. It starts with a basic lesson in layering—how to choose the correct plants by understanding how they grow and change throughout the seasons, how to design a layered garden, and how to maintain it. To illustrate how layering works, Culp takes you on a personal tour through each part of his celebrated garden: the woodland garden, the perennial border, the kitchen garden, the shrubbery, and the walled garden. The book culminates with a chapter dedicated to signature plants for all four seasons.

A plastic box with a lightbulb attached may seem like an odd birthday present. But for ecologist Tim Blackburn, a moth trap is a captivating window into the world beyond the roof of his London flat. With names like the Dingy Footman, Jersey Tiger, Pale Mottled Willow, and Uncertain, and at least 140,000 identified species, moths are fascinating in their own right. But no moth is an island--they are vital links in the web of life. In The Jewel Box, Blackburn introduces a landscape of unseen connections, showing us how contents of one small box can illuminate the workings of all nature.

“Jewelry isn’t ordinarily a tool of political persuasion, but in this beautiful book, Madeleine Albright, American ambassador to the United Nations and then the nation’s first female secretary of state, tells the compelling story of how these small objects became part of her ‘personal diplomatic arsenal.’” — The Chicago Tribune From New York Times bestselling author and former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, Read My Pins is a story and celebration of how one woman’s jewelry collection was used to make diplomatic history. Part illustrated memoir, part social history, Read My Pins provides an intimate look at Albright's life through the brooches she wore. Her collection is both international and democratic—dime-store pins share pride of place with designer creations and family heirlooms. Included are the antique eagle purchased to celebrate Albright's appointment as secretary of state, the zebra pin she wore when meeting Nelson Mandela, and the Valentine's Day heart forged by Albright's five-year-old daughter. Read My Pins features more than 200 photographs, along with compelling and often humorous stories about jewelry, global politics, and the life of one of America's most accomplished and fascinating diplomats.

The Garden Conservancy is celebrating its 25th anniversary with this beautifully illustrated book that documents a selection of the outstanding public and private gardens it has worked with since its founding in 1989. The book showcases eight gardens the conservancy has helped preserve and 43 of the more than 3,000 private gardens across the country that have been opened to the public through its Open Days Program. The private gardens cover a wide variety of regions, habitats, designs, and plants, from early spring through autumn. Featured private gardens include Panayoti Kelaidis’s rock garden in Denver, Colorado; Deborah Whigham and Gary Ratway’s collection of native and Mediterranean plants and earth walls in Albion, California; and James David’s imaginative mix of heat-tolerant plants, rills, and pools in Austin, Texas.

Designing a garden is a complex task. Where do you start? What kind of skills do you need? What are the logical steps in creating a design? How do you communicate your ideas to a client, and how do you accommodate a client’s requests while maintaining the integrity of the project? The answers to these questions, and many more, can all be found in Understanding Garden Design. Most books on garden design focus on only one or a few aspects of garden design—choosing plants or creating a hardscape, for example. This comprehensive, accessible book lays out the entire process from start to finish in clear, precise language that avoids the pitfalls of “designspeak.” In fact, garden owners and clients of garden designers who want to understand more about the designer’s craft will be able to profit from the book’s lessons. Among the many topics covered are how to document a site, how to determine what a client needs and wants from the garden, how to take architectural features into consideration, how to think about circulation and lay out paths, how to use basic design principles, how to work with plants, and how to create a final design. Practical aspects are clearly laid out, including working with contractors and staying on top of the various phases of construction. This thorough handbook is profusely illustrated with helpful photographs and diagrams. A particularly interesting tool is the hypothetical garden plan that appears in each chapter to show how to apply the topics at hand. A practical, logical approach to the planning, design, and installation of a garden, this volume will be an invaluable resource for students, landscape professionals, and garden designers.