The Creative Shrub Garden: Eye-Catching Combinations for Year-Round Interest

by Andy McIndoe

In The Creative Shrub Garden, author Andy McIndoe calls on his years of horticultural design experience to shine light on all of the innovative ways to stylishly work shrubs into your landscape. This is a new approach to planning your garden—by mood and style. Whether it’s an urban contemporary look, a cottage garden feel, or an uplifting an environment, The Creative Shrub Garden has a wealth of eye-catching combinations that bring new life to this classic plant. 

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction

248 pages, Hardcover

First published July 14, 2014

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 2 out of 5]

To American Librarians,
Please stop and think before you order another gardening book by an English author. Are your clients gardening in a climate that is similar to England? For most of us in the US the answer is "NO". This is a gorgeous book and has many positive traits as the author Andy McIndoe provides excellent advice on how to create an interesting shrub border. Unfortunately the specific plants he mentions are not hardy in my area, and he does not include zone information on the plants discussed.

To American publishers,
Please stop publishing gardening books by English authors for American readers!

I have chosen to rate this book based on its usefulness to American readers and admit it does not represent the quality of the book.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhat helpful but not for United States zoning, growing conditions. An amateur US gardener might look at this and get totally confused because it’s not applicable to the area. Still, it’s nice to see other beautiful gardens in a picture book, albeit the photos are rather small, but I’ll give it that.

[Debra Daniels-Zeller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate so sound picky but I'd expected more of this book when I'd ordered it from the library. The photos are so tiny, I couldn't help but think, if this were an interior decorating book it would get a zero. When a book says "Eye-Catching," I expect the photos to be larger than quarters. It does have some good tips on planting and caring for shrubs in the last chapter but when I really want inspiration, and larger photos that take in more of the actual gardening spaces and less photos randomly scattered across pages.

[outdoortype · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent resource if planning or redoing your garden. What style of garden do you want? Finding the shrubs (and some perennials) that meet your style. It also asks what mood do you want which didn’t speak to me. It goes through size and position of garden, too, and has a resource of recommended plants and basic shrub care. I learned that some shrubs are short lived but most importantly I found some shrubs to add to my garden.

[Missy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great resource

[Online Eccentric Librarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

More reviews (and no fluff) on the blog http://surrealtalvi.wordpress.com/

The Creative Shrug Garden is a friendly, warm, informative guide to all types of shrubs and how to make the best use of them. Photograph heavy and broken down into useful sections, the book is a great gardening resource for all soil and weather conditions. The focus is on design and mood - creating a look or feel with the right selection of shrubs.

The book breaks down as follows: Introduction to shrubs; Choosing the right shrubs; Creating planting effects; Moods (cool, calming, indulgent, mellow, glowing, reflective, warm, relaxing uplifting); Styles (coastal, cottage, country, exotic, mediterranean, Japanese, tropical, urban contemporary and traditional); plant directory; planting and caring for shrubs.

The book has photographs for nearly every plant in the directory and all the garden styles. If I had one request, it would be that there was more than just one 'overview image' for each of the moods and styles gardens. One photograph (and most tended to be close ups of certain plants together and not the garden as a whole) made it difficult to envision the big picture on nearly all the gardens. As well, there aren't plans for the garden ideas. Just one photograph of a general view and some close ups of some of the shrubs to choose for that type of garden.

Comprehensively, I greatly appreciated the sheer number of photographs of individual plants. In both the moods and styles sections, the key plants always had a photograph. That's quite a luxury for most books of this type and the best I've seen in its class. As well, the book concept and layout are very much about design and putting things all together. So I also greatly appreciated how the book was laid out.

The text is useful and very informative. The author has a wonderful way of presenting the topics and was very friendly and encouraging. It was like having a next door neighbor professional gardener giving you advice as you do your own yard.

The reason for 4 instead of 5 stars is that nearly all the images are small and several to a page. Great for the individual plant descriptions but frustrating when trying to envision the big picture of how that plant will be used in the grand scheme. The lack of plans rather exacerbated that issue. The garden designs are more of a fait accompli rather than how the garden looked upon first planting and waiting for things to grow in. I would have loved to see images of a garden over a period of time or being set up/put together.

Reviewed from an ARC.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Creative Shrub Garden contains a wealth of information for gardeners looking to enhance their existing landscape or to create a new space. The experienced gardener will be able to jump right in and browse through the sections on how to combine shrubs to create different moods or styles. Color combinations can be bold or relaxing, and styles range from country garden to contemporary or exotic. Each page is filled with gorgeous color photos. Whether the space is large or small, there is something for every garden.

New gardeners will benefit from the introductory chapters which explain the role of shrubs and how to make them fit in to the available landscape, plus how to choose the right shrub for the garden. There is an important chapter at the end on planting and caring for the new shrubs. Early in my gardening years I learned the hard way that the proper care during the first few years was critical for the survival of a new, and often expensive, shrub.

When I decided to add a few areas of wildflowers to my garden, I also assessed my overall landscape and realized that I only had a few shrubs. Shrubs add structure to a landscape. They are a good focal point and many have foliage, flowers or berries that add interest and change with the seasons; some are even a food source for wildlife.

The Creative Shrub Garden also contains a plant directory including the scientific and common names of each shrub, expected size at maturity and a brief description. Each is accompanied by a color photo. This is the section I was most interested in. I already knew what I wanted to accomplish, but I didn’t know which shrubs would be the best ones for my yard and I wanted to see what they looked like.

For anyone looking for ideas, or that wants to know more about the care and maintenance of shrubs, this is a good place to begin.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a gardening book about creating eye catching combinations in the garden and to make the often taken for granted shrub into the star of the garden.

Home gardeners should know the key elements to garden design - perennials bloom year after year, annuals add bursts of colour and bulbs guarantee flowers. Hardy shrubs can play a role in your garden too and this book puts the shrub front and centre in garden design. It shows how combining shrubs with other plants can create layers and interest in the garden.

There are ideas for literally hundreds of different shrub combinations that work in many different garden designs - from coastal, cottage, Mediterranean, tropical, to urban and more.

The only thing I found hard about this book was because I didn't have a hard copy of the book, and because of the images I couldn't download it to my Kindle eReader so I had to read it off the computer which I found difficult. A hard copy version of this book would be a great reference guide to use when I'm gardening at home.

I recommend this book to garden lovers who want to use tried and tested gardening advice and want to have a creative shrub garden.

[Teri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This gorgeous book made me completely re-think my garden plans. I love the lush, layered look that the combination of shrubs and perennials gives, and with the help of The Creative Shrub Garden I now know just what to do! We live in an area that has heavy clay soil, very cold, harsh winters, and not all of the plants and shrubs that I love will work for us. The Creative Shrub Garden gave me plenty of alternatives that WILL work beautifully to create a gorgeous combination of flowering shrubs and greenery that will give color year round! I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking to improve their yard inexpensively! You get a lot of bang for your buck with shrubs!

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Creative Shrub Garden is a brilliant book for those keen to do more in the garden without necessarily being flower based. Don't get me wrong, I love flowers, I just love the maintenance-free nature of shrubs more. I am not the most proficient flower deadheader, it's true.

I appreciate the insight into layering and colour matching/contrasting this book offers. The plant directory is terrific as shrubs are often over looked with guides on trees and flowers easy to source.

All in all, this book ticked all the boxes for me and will be a valuable reference book in future.

[Candy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted some basic principles of shrub choice and arrangement. This book helped. I want to translate what I learned and use native shrubs.

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 3.5 of 5

Lots of color photos. Loved the "Moods" and "Styles" sections.

[Bree · Rating 3 out of 5]

Notes:
super pretty but with no Zone info on anything -- what's a gardening book without Zones?

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love all the great information; however, plant directory has no mention of zones.