The Garden Source: Inspirational Design Ideas for Gardens and Landscapes

by Andrea Jones (photographer), James Van Sweden

This is a must-have for anyone looking for garden design ideas. Hundreds of full-color images are cleverly arranged to offer thousands of possible design solutions and inspirations for any type of garden. The book includes gardens from all over the world and features projects by the best contemporary designers at work today, including Topher Delaney, James van Sweden, Piet Oudolf, Rick Darke, Sean Hogan, and many others. Alongside never-before-seen private gardens, the book also includes celebrated public spaces such as Manhattan’s High Line—a disused elevated freight track redesigned into innovative, naturalistic plantings—whose ideas can be adapted for the home garden.  

The book is divided into four sections: “Connect” looks at design features that act either as connecting or dividing elements; “Divide” considers elements that can be used to create rooms within gardens; “Space” explores different spatial types; and “Styles” covers every type of garden style throughout history, from cottage gardens to today’s minimalist designs. Rounded out with a series of useful directories on designers, sources, and public gardens, this is the book for garden design ideas. 

Genres: Gardening

320 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2011

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Val Jester]

updated and expanded edition

[Max Latham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous. No text just awesome eye candy and ideas.

[Sharron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fine to borrow from the library but not worth buying.

[Jaime · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exactly as the cover states: inspiration. No instructional how-to; plenty of leading by example. I was inspired and got new ideas. Book mission: accomplished.

[Hayley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of gorgeous pictures to gain inspiration from.

[Ita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pictures, lots of *fabulous* pictures on high quality paper. lots of variety and styles of gardens.

Not much writing, only a line or two with each picture attribution and a page before each section.

Usefully divided into four sections: Connect ( lawns, steps, gates, pergolas, etc), divide ( walls, hedges, seating, sculpture, etc.) space ( urban, rural, roof, small, walled, shaded, etc) and style (water, wooded, dry, gravel, minimal,grass, etc.)

This is a very useful book to get ideas and inspiration.

[Amester · Rating 4 out of 5]

Piles of great photos, well arranged, loads of inspiration. Not a fan of the text - it's inconsistent and not particularly engaging - but the sheer number of ideas in its pages make it worth the while.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's Pinterest in book form, for the gardening set.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful photographs of beautifully designed gardens. So much inspiration and so much garden eye-candy

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lovely pictures. More analysis and explanation would have been useful.