Field Guide to Outside Style: Design and Plant Your Perfect Outdoor Space

by Ryan McEnaney

Make your outdoor space as comfortable and personal as the inside of your home with garden design and planting guidance from Field Guide to Outside Style .

Maybe you’ve just purchased your first home or you have an existing outdoor space that’s overgrown and old-fashioned, and you want to turn it into a place that blends perfectly with your sense of style and your life . But where should you start? How can you be sure to create a space you can sustain ? Field Guide to Outside Style leads the way. You’ll learn to personalize your outdoor living space with the right plants, furnishings, and other design elements to create a space that reflects YOU perfectly , even if you’ve never sunk a shovel into the soil before.

The word “gardening” can be intimidating if you aren’t used to digging in the dirt, yet you want a gorgeous outdoor living area you feel proud of . Author and outdoor living pro Ryan McEnaney helps you make it happen by meeting you where you are. He cuts out the intimidating stuff, doesn’t use scary terms, and supports you through the entire process.
 
Close the book confident in your ability to select plants and design concepts that work in your region, fit within your abilities, and ultimately match the rest of your life perfectly. And to sweeten the deal, the long-term success of your new outdoor space is supported by information  on seasonality, sticking to a budget, and creating a balanced space to ensure your newly discovered outside style shines for many years to come.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction

208 pages, Hardcover

Published December 6, 2022

Reviews

[Susan Bewley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before I go further into this book, I want to clarify that this is not a typical gardening book. Field Guide to Outside Style: Design & Plant Your Perfect Outside Space is a mix between design and horticulture. While it goes into some basic gardening with recipe cards, the book’s heart is helping you create the perfect space. While some of the plants are a bit expensive, it is for helping people of various budgets pick what works for them. The pictures in the book are gorgeous, and the book itself is packed with design information. I love that it even teaches you how to draw and plan for your space, creating something relativistic with fantastic curb appeal and usability. If you are a homeowner wanting to create the perfect outdoor living space, this is the book for you!

[Alicia Bayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This will be a great book for many people. It was just not a good fit for me. I absolutely love my gardens and I am now loving helping my grown kids design the landscapes of their houses. I love this subject. That said, all of us have three priorities that aren’t well suited to this book.

1. Our family has bought all of our homes debt free for very little money. One daughter’s house was $4,000. We are frugal. This book was written by a man whose family has owned a nursery business for generations. They have lots of money. That’s the audience— people happy to buy specific branded cultivars of recommended garden plants, hire contractors, fully renovate their yards and otherwise spend large amounts of money on designing the perfect outdoor space. I was hoping more for general tips and inspiration with lots of out of the box suggestions.

2. We care deeply about the environment. We garden organically, grow plants that help birds and butterflies and bees (even the occasional opossum is welcome), and design our yards to conserve water, help wildlife, thrive without chemicals and otherwise help nature. That’s just not a priority in this book, which never touches on sustainability, organic gardening, pollinators, birds, xeriscaping or other environmental concerns. One of the three garden styles that he profiles is a naturalist aesthetic but it’s presented as a design style and not an environmental lifestyle. The author mentions native plants only to say that’s your choice either way, without ever going into the reasons so many people recommend them.

3. We don’t want to commit large amounts of time to our landscaping. This book is really for planning overhauls of your whole yard, not sweet ideas to perk up a corner or easy ways to bring in some color. It would be great for folks who just bought a home and have time and a budget to create their dream landscape.

One other note is that the plants don’t have their zones listed, which is frustrating for me as a zone 4 Minnesota gardener. It does list temperature ranges but zones generally make it so much easier to quickly tell if a plant will work in my garden. It also doesn’t profile that many plants with photos, and none of my favorites.

I hope it’s obvious that I consider it a well done book that will be a good resource for many readers. No book will be a good fit for everyone. I gave it three stars, which Goodreads says means “liked it.”

I read a temporary digital arc of this book for review.

[Sharron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loads of practical design advice delivered in a chatty, easy to understand conversational style. This book is not intended for people who just want some colorful flowers in several containers or hanging baskets filled with petunias. Rather it is, as the title indicates, intended for someone who wants to design their yard - front and back and sides. It’s too basic for anyone who has been gardening for ten or more years but it might be a useful refresher if such person had just moved to a new residence.

I believe this book would be an ideal gift for a person or couple moving into their first home. Come to think of it, it make a terrific housewarming present and much more useful than another wine bucket or panini press.

[Louise Foerster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ryan McEnaney's FIELD GUIDE TO OUTSIDE STYLE is a beautiful, inspirational, and authoritative guide to creating the outdoor environment that fits your lifestyle and family. I learned a great deal through photographs of extraordinary spaces and how a deliberate design rather than typical approach can yield an outdoor environment that draws you outside. While I cannot easily label myself into the design sensibilities laid out in McEnaney's approach, I learned from all of them. I received a copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.

[Mary Lynn]

Interesting concept of garden recipes as ways to start a project. This book is great for novice gardeners who are looking for an alternative or a fun addition to a classic “how to” begin landscaping your home book. I liked that the photos featured many modern and contemporary styles which are frequently underrepresented in gardening books.

[Denise]

Good for recharging inspiration. Lots of beautiful photos. You can get ideas about designing for function and aesthetics, but not about ecological design or sustainability. One of the landscape design inspirations is Kelly Norris, but the inspiration is only surface level—aesthetics—when Norris’s work is primarily about ecological value.

[A_s · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting ideas, but ultimately this only focused on a few design styles that may not appeal to everyone. Some good how-to information, but mostly this was a "look book" for design ideas.