The Abundant Garden: A Celebration of Color, Texture, and Blooms

Rare is the gardening book where I actually read the text instead of just gazing at the photos. This highly readable resource first caught my eye in the bookstore just by its title - I am a student of the "say yes to abundance" way of spirituality and I am grateful I said "yes" to this book! Its tone is not a bit hoity-toity like some of its ilk, and it offers a very approachable, manageable, yet dramatic method of banishing any signs of visible dirt from your flower gardens. Although I have been gardening for 20+ years, when I moved into a newly constructed house with unconstructed garden space two years ago, I made the mistake of buying hundreds of plants in a frenzy just to fill the spaces. Currently I am left with a haphazard melee of my own design (or lack of design) and now I need to put some fundamental order into the chaos. This book is going to be a close companion for me this summer. And the photographs - wow, I made myself take two days just to look at them all when the book arrived because I simply did not want the experience to end. There are chapters on gardens for cut flowers and romantic cottage venues. Other chapters provide ideas on how to use architecture, water features, and garden-related implements in the plantings. Each chapter visits a specific garden and gives insight into each owner's personality as manifested in their creations. And the captions of each photo are actually useful; they identify plants while at the same time explaining methods involved to create the look. I highly recommend this book for any flower gardener. It's already a favorite for me!