Reader's Digest Garden Design: How to Be Your Own Landscape Architect

by Robin Williams

Covers all the basics needed to create an attractive, easy-to-maintain garden with discussions of such areas as choosing a site, setting up various types of gardens, and establishing a distinctive style. 30,000 first printing.

Genres: Nonfiction

208 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1995

About the author

Garden designer

Reviews

[Pam]

While this book covers all the individual components of a good garden design, it fails to teach the reader how to see the existing attributes of a piece of property and how to properly design and size a pleasing and coherent overall design. On the other hand it does a good job presenting the components like fence styles, masonry and stone walls, paving materials and steps. Especially valuable, and often neglected by other garden design books, was the "Water Problems" section and its associated drainage solutions which does an excellent job presenting dry well design. Some readers may be disappointed that this is not a book full of gorgeous photographs. I especially disliked that this book was written for Reader's Digest, but presented decidedly British gardens and plantings, which is not a surprise given that the author Robin Williams is English. Unfortunately the British climate is not similar to very many American climates so some of what is portrayed will not work for American gardeners. Unless the reader is looking for assistance in choosing specific components, I think they could be better served by choosing to read a book by the garden designer and author John Brookes.

[Deborah Makarios]

There are lots of different approaches in garden design books. Some focus on planting, some focus on spatial planning, and some focus on materials - choices of paving, fencing, pergolas etc. This is one of the latter.

[Anna]

Love the diagrams in this book...a great resource when dreaming about projects and landscapes and how everything will all come together.

[Susan]

love it. Another Keynote book

[B]

Lots of ideas. Good for my backyard imagination