The Undaunted Garden: Planting for Weather-Resilient Beauty

by Lauren Springer Ogden

Offers advice on planning a garden that is attractive during all four seasons, and recommends a variety of plants that offer beauty and resilience in a variety of conditions

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction, Reference, Horticulture, Nature

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

"

Reviews

[Camille · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite gardening books! Not only are the pictures beautiful and inspiring, but the information is realistic! So many gardening books are written for people with loamy acidic soil and mild to non-existent winters. This book is for those of us who love to garden and live in a more harsh environment. I especially love all of the lists - plants that bloom for more than a month, plants that attract butterflies and hummingbirds, roses for realists, plants that provide winter interest, etc. The pictures also include detailed captions so you know what you are looking at. This is a fantastic resource for anyone gardening in the west.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book for Colorado gardening - high and dry!

[Jeanette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Describes the art and science of growing a beautiful year-round garden in difficult weather conditions, showing how to choose plants that will be resilient in North America's climatic extremes.
She covers plants from many aspects: Hail resilient, drought tolerant, shade tolerant, and E/W/S/N tolerant/preferences.

[Carmen · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent resource for planting, especially for Colorado and similiar weather states. Colors. Seasons. Annuals. Perennials. Hail resistant. Great suggestions. But also an homage to flower gardening. Joy. Delight. Perseverance. Loved it.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good reference

[Pam Penick · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1994, the same year I moved to Austin and started learning to garden here, Lauren Springer Ogden published her groundbreaking book about gardening in the equally harsh climate of the interior West: The Undaunted Garden: Planting for Weather-Resilient Beauty. Like me, she was a transplanted East Coaster (though an experienced gardener) who’d moved to a challenging region — northern Colorado — where she learned through trial and error how to create a garden with the chutzpah to survive dry, alkaline soil, regular hailstorms, gully-washer rainstorms, and other weather extremes. She recognized that gardeners in the interior U.S., as opposed to those blessed with mild maritime climates, face unique challenges and needed a new model of gardening than what was widely available at the time.

Writing about her own Colorado gardens in intimate, season-long detail, she provided a model of the undaunted garden: a garden with a sense of place, filled with plants both native and exotic that are well-suited to their locale, which thrives and brings joy, rather than frustration, to the gardener who tends it (and tending is required, she reminds us, expressing dissatisfaction with the concept of the low-maintenance garden).

With The Undaunted Garden, Springer Ogden helped introduce gardeners to a new palette of plants, many of which were not widely available at the time but which today are staples in the Western garden. In 2010, she revised and updated what is now considered by many gardeners to be a classic and published a 2nd edition of The Undaunted Garden, which I recently purchased on a whim, drawn in by the beautiful new cover photo. The new edition contains portraits of 100 new “indispensably undaunted” plants that have thrived in her Colorado gardens; color photos and descriptions of her third personal garden, in addition to her first two; and additional information on deer-resistant, drought-tolerant, and hail-resistant plants.

Springer Ogden is a vividly descriptive writer. Reading her book is akin to being led through a jam-packed garden, blindfolded, by the poetic owner who is deeply in love with her plants and their seasonal changes. In the chapter “Through the Seasons in the Shaded Garden,” she describes autumn’s approach: “Pink or white, musk mallow blooms in great masses in spite of a lack of water. As cooler, longer shadows encase more of the garden, lulling it into early slumber, patches of pink cyclamen rise like tiny naked fairies at the base of tree trunks.” Far from being strictly descriptive, however, The Undaunted Garden is almost picture-book-worthy thanks to the author’s colorful, beautifully composed photographs of her various gardens.

While the gardens described here are all in northern Colorado and her plant selections are particularly suited to that region, the book has resonance for gardeners anywhere who enjoy reading an intimate account of another’s garden and who want to create undaunted gardens of their own.

[Caro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any time you have a gardening failure because you tried to grow delphiniums in hot, humid Virginia, or otherwise find yourself fighting the site, turn to this book. Although her alkaline mountain environment is totally different from mine, her general advice is excellent. I particularly appreciated her constant suggestions for plant combinations. She suggests planting together those plants that bloom at the same time, so that you have bursts of color rather than blobs here and there. Except she said it much better than I did... I'm making a copy of her lists of roses and their companions and am eyeing some rugosas for their hardiness and beauty based on her recommendations.

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is primarily about the author's experience gardening in Colorado. Most of the information provided deals with plants and planting conditions rather then garden design. Thus gardeners in other places will find relevant information to be sparse. Some plants will translate to other climates but Ogden does not include zone information or tolerance for wet conditions and the like.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a rare treat in the world of gardening books. Lauren Springer's sense of irony and humor spill out in her writing. Most gardening books are full of things I would never try. This book was full of practical suggestions for plantings that might actually take hold. It is the only sane discussion of planting in dry shade that I have ever read.

[Julie Fischer · Rating 5 out of 5]

After listening to Lauren speak at The Chicago Botanic Garden I had to buy her book. She has taught me where and how to plant in different micro-climates. I enjoyed listening to her lecture and have referred often to her book when helping other people with their gardens.

[Kaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for all mountain gardeners.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are feeling frustrated about gardening in difficult climates, this will restore your enthusiasm and give you practical tips for success.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent reference and inspiration book, particularly as the author works in a climate similar to mine, nearby in the Rocky Mountains.

[Nadine in NY Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Lauren Springer, wish she wrote more books

[Nancy]

loved it

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

We may not all have hailstorms, droughts and steep slopes, but every gardener can benefit from her experience and the gorgeous pictures.

[Marjorie Elwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was daunted by the book. Although the photos are luscious, the list-like verbiage left me nodding off every time I picked it up.

[Melissa James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really helpful resource for gardening in the area that I live in. Ms. Ogden owned a home not far from me and her insights for gardening in my same conditions were very welcome to me.