Garden Wild: Wildflower Meadows, Prairie-Style Plantings, Rockeries, Ferneries, and other Sustainable Designs Inspired by Nature

by Andre Baranowski, Dorothy Kalins (Foreword)

This book is a survey of 12 breathtakingly beautiful gardens by award-winning photographer Andre Baranowski, whose eye for beauty will embolden readers the world over to embrace their inner instincts and create their own garden wild.

The new movement in contemporary gardening is about going back to the wilderness, creatively landscaping with native plants to enrich their environments and seamlessly merge with their natural surroundings. Politely rejecting traditional manicured, hedged and pruned gardening aesthetics to invite an alternative kind of wildly bursting with indigenous plants, old-growth trees, vibrant patches of wildflowers and perennials, succulents, un-pruned bushes and ornamental grasses. New York City's Highline is a famous example and this landscaping approach is becoming increasingly popular for private homeowners. This book surveys twelve such breathtaking gardens captured by award winning photographer Andre Baranowski. The featured gardens range from small private residencies to large properties, by renowned landscapers such as Oehme van Sweden, Fernando Caruncho, Jorge Sanchez, and Piet Oudolf. The texts detail each project's approach and the hurdles presented by its landscape, providing the reader with an array of instructional ideas from an insider's mindset. Guaranteed to be a boundless source of inspiration and treasured by lovers of gardens worldwide.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

Published March 5, 2019

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Five stars for the incredibly gorgeous pictures of vast grand estates landscaping and gardens. Two stars for the very scanty text. The beautiful photos provoked so many questions and the miminal captions left them unanswered. Wonderful eye candy.tiny enlightenment.

[Natalie Cranberry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book made me sad that I’m not hella rich. On another note, some of these photos were not publication worthy or ready which was disappointing.

[Clare · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you want beautiful pictures of expensive gardens, this is your book! If you want any actual details about the gardens, you're out of luck.

[Leah Markum · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hadn't thought about garden photography as a genre to study and build a portfolio on, but this book among a few others I've found have been stretching my curiosity. This book in particular has very little text and is all photography set in maybe a dozen different gardens.

Baranowski has an affinity for finding the right positions at the right time to catch some golden light in critical areas. Gardens can seem too busy--so many types of plants close together can leave your eye wandering for a focal point. But a strip of light helps with that. He also tends to take low-key (darker) photos.

Overall, I like the mood. It's not as "ritzy" as some styles, but still richer than some rural-nature photography. The lighting also feels very relaxed like an evening on the back porch. But I also see the practicality because it's just enough light to see details and color, but it leaves out glare. Admittedly, it may have been lighter out, but he used a filter to balance the excess contrast. Still, I appreciate that I had so many similarly-styled photos to study and think about how I might try my next garden shoot.

[False · Rating 2 out of 5]

An over-sized Rizzoli book, mainly photographs with "some" text at the beginning of each section. The main sections are: A Waterfront View, A Place to Gather, A Tapestry for the Senses, A Jewel in the Moss, Transcendent Retreat, Ancient Geometries, Careless Rapture, Inspired Nonconformity, A Journey of Discovery, Failing Toward Beauty, Art in Nature, A Miracle Above. The photography is well done and is the landscaping work, but every section screams "loads of land and it took a great deal of blank check money to create this." Also, most of the environments are beyond your average to skilled weekend gardener. A book to dream on, perhaps, but there are better than this. There is a new book just published called About Water, and it means it. The artist has focused her photographs on nothing but rippling waves of the Thames River in different seasons, in different weather, at different times of day. Now that is a dream book.

[Shnnon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful images to inspire, includes names of some plants so you can best pretend you have enough $ to create anything like that