100 Books Like Lotusland

Our homes' outdoor spaces can and should be as welcoming and carefully considered as our living rooms; when treated as extensions of our homes, these spaces enrich our lives immeasurably. That was the guiding principle when, under the direction of editor in chief Michelle Slatalla (whose New York Times style columns were weekly must-reads for a decade), the team behind Remodelista.com launched sister site Gardenista.com. Like Remodelista, Gardenista caters to an older, more established audience (75 percent of readers are over the age of 35) and is known for its sophisticated, well-edited aesthetic. The book contains lushly photographed tours of… show more.

"Designing with Succulents is inspiring, practical, and complete-a treasure for any gardener who loves these otherworldly beauties." -Kathleen N. Brenzel, Sunset Succulents offer dazzling possibilities and require very little maintenance to remain lush and alluring year-round. No one knows them better than the Queen of Succulents, Debra Lee Baldwin. This new, completely revised edition of her bestselling classic is a design compendium that is as practical as it is inspirational. Designing with Succulents shares design and cultivation basics, hundreds of succulent plant recommendations, and 50 companion plant profiles. Lavishly illustrated with 400 photographs, you'll find everything you need to visualize,… show more.

Pools made private by lush plantings, bedrooms open to the back yard, bar seating by the outdoor oven. California native and exterior architect Scott Shrader is known for creating covetable outdoor rooms for clients including Ellen DeGeneres and Patrick Dempsey. In his first book, he shares the grounds of twelve beautiful properties, all designed to be lived in and enjoyed as extensions of the homes they surround, rich with creature comforts. Shrader shows us how to connect the landscape outside with interior decor; resulting in an exterior environment that flows naturally, stylishly and serenely from this core. He also inspires… show more.

"For those of you-and your numbers are growing-gardening in drought-stricken parts of the country, The Bold Dry Garden will quench your thirst for inspiration." -New York Times Book Review Ruth Bancroft is a dry gardening pioneer. Her lifelong love of plants led to the creation of one of the most acclaimed public gardens, The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, California. The Bold Dry Garden offers unparalleled access to the garden and the extraordinary woman responsible for it. In its stunningly photographed pages, you'll discover the history of the garden and the design principles and plant palette that make it… show more.

Beth Chatto has been among the most influential British gardeners of the second half of the twentieth century. When she started to make her garden on an overgrown area of wasteland in Essex in 1960 she was faced with a range of widely differing conditions, from drought-stricken gravel through woodland to dense, silty bog. Applying the principles of ecological gardening, she set about finding plants that would suit these very different, awkward situations. The gardens she made - the Mediterranean garden on the sunny slopes, the shady woodland garden, the damp garden for water-loving plants, the drier than dry gravel… show more.

'Paradise haunts gardens', writes Derek Jarman, 'and it haunts mine.' Jarman's public image is that of a film-maker of genius, whose work, dwelling on themes of sexuality and violence, became a byword for controversy. But the private man was the creator of his own garden-paradise in an environment that many might think was more of a hell than a heaven - in the flat, bleak, often desolate expanse of shingle that faces the Dungeness nuclear power station. Jarman, a passionate gardener from childhood, combined his painter's eye, his horticultural expertise and his ecological convictions to produce a landscape which combined… show more.

The garden is an oasis, a pocket of nature in our busy modern lives, full of plants, animals, insects - and a fair bit of magic.

Folk Tales from the Garden follows the seasons through a year of stories, garden lore and legends. Explore the changing face of nature just outside your front door, from the tale of the Creator painting her birds and the merits of kissing an old toad, to pixies sleeping in the tulips, and an unusually large turnip.

For too long, garden design has given pride of place to architecture, artifice, and arbitrary principles. The results? Soulless landscapes where plants play subordinate roles.

With passion and eloquence, Scott Ogden and Lauren Springer Ogden argue that only when plants are given the respect they deserve does a garden become emotionally resonant. Plant-Driven Design shows designers how to work more confidently with plants, and gives gardeners more confidence to design. The Ogdens boldly challenge design orthodoxy and current trends by examining how to marry plantsmanship and design without sacrificing one to the other.

Supported by extensive lists of plants adapted… show more.

War-monger, womanizer and autocrat, Louis XIV, Frances's self-styled 'Sun-King', was also history's most fanatical gardener. At Versailles, twelve miles outside Paris he created not only Europe's most lavish palace but the most extensive gardens the Western world has ever seen. The Domaine Nationale de Versailles now covers 2,100 acres (about two and a half times the size of New York's Central Park) but in it's heyday under Louis, the grand parc covered an astounding 16,343 acres. Assisting Louis in all this was a lowly-born gardener, Andre Le Notre, whose character and temperament were as different from those of his sovereign… show more.

Highly successful author and innovative designer Stafford Cliff has visited hundreds of gardens in the course of his travels over the last forty years all over the world, taking photographs and making notes. With his designer's eye and experience, he has created a revelatory work - a unique sourcebook of the very best ideas providing choices and inspiration for every single garden dilemma and possibility, from colour and planting to hard surfaces and features.For every new choice a gardener wishes to make, for every change they wish to introduce, there is a complete wealth of options - the plants, the… show more.