Gardens to Go: Creating and Designing a Container Garden
March 31, 2010 by The Gardener
Filed under Books
Product Description
Beautiful photographs and insightful advice on how to create portable gardens for your deck, patio, or yard. In this unique book on container gardening, accomplished gardening author and expert Sydney Eddison tells readers how to plant and grow a lush garden on any deck, terrace, balcony, or in the backyard. Container gardens are easy to maintain and require a minimum of physical effort, which makes them ideal for today’s on-the-go gardeners whether they live in the… More >>
Gardens to Go: Creating and Designing a Container Garden
GARDENS TO GO, is a lovely new book on container gardening, by Sydney Eddison with plenty of colorful photos, but for experienced hands the book has little new to offer on potting and growing various plants in containers. The beginner would probably do better with McGee and Stucky’s BOUNTIFUL CONTAINER (much advice based on experience of two doughty dames each of whom reminds me a bit of Mrs Thyme), however, don’t forget David Joyce’s lovely CONTAINER GARDENS (plenty of useful information on the containers themselves) as well as HERBS IN POTS by Proctor and Macke. I prefer to grow herbs in pots myself, so the latter is a favorite of mine. However, I learned some new techniques for growing vegetables in pots from McGee and Stucky.
Eddison shows how one, using building blocks and an organized theme, can use pots to produce a “scene” in spring, summer, and fall and whisk the pots away when cold winter rears its head. Although she shows some scenes from smaller places in the big city (rooftops, narrow back yards and patios), she also includes filling up a few acres in one chapter. Some of the “country” scenes are beautiful, particularly shots from a terraces and up-close collections around a water feature.
I like the idea of using pots to complement a garden, and Eddison’s approach is quite useful. It’s all well and good to know how to make a container, create a beautiful mix of plants and encourage them to thrive. It’s quite another to think about your creation a part of a larger design. To the extent Eddison concentrates on the latter, this book is a welcome addition to my collection.
Rating: 4 / 5
I cannot imagine a more informative, better written or more gorgeous book on container gardens than this remarkable achievement of Sidney Eddison and Steve Silk. The warm, friendly writing from the erudite Ms. Eddison combined with the beautiful photography of Mr. Silk make this a captivating, satisfying and thoroughly desirable book that will be a compliment to every garden library.
Drawing upon their own extensive experience as well as that of many other garden professionals and enthusiasts they offer nearly 200 pages of container garden wisdom. But what I most appreciate about the book is that the beautiful images on every page are whole lessons in themselves on the art of combining plants. Just paging through the book is downright exciting.
I would like to say something disparaging about the book to give a more balanced review–but I can’t. The layout, the quality of the pages, the printing and ever other aspect is first class quality. I design landscapes and I teach landscape design, both on-line and in my home studio and because of the many valuable lessons this book contains–for garden design generally, this is one of the books I recommend to my students.
Rating: 5 / 5
It’s not just urban gardeners who wish to garden by container: it’s anyone who seeks portability, defenses against gophers and underground varmints, and the possibility of having a garden in manmade environments. Gardens To Go: Creating And Designing A Container Garden holds gorgeous photos by Steve Silk as it reviews a range of container garden ideas, from choosing decorative planting containers which are functional to using rooftops, patios, and more as spaces to hold them. A gorgeous set of guidelines for producing show-stopping displays.
Rating: 5 / 5
This is a beautiful book,full of great ideas.I am giving several as Christmas gifts.Thay will brighten the winter days.
Rating: 5 / 5