The Natural Shade Garden

by Ken Druse

Quarto, PP.280, A Comprehensive Guide To Creating And Maintaining Beautiful Natural Gardens In The Shade

Genres: Gardening, Plants, Reference, Horticulture, How To, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published February 18, 1992

Reviews

[Terry Cottiers]

The most valuable book in my gardening library! My property is 75% shade and it was tough trying to create a pleasing scenario with shade plants. With the help of this beautiful book, I've learned how!
I don't ever want to live in a sunny clime again!

[Julia]

I stole this book from my mother, who is also very partial to it. I find it a little too oriented to East Coast gardening, which is also arguably fair, given Druse's location, but it does limit its applicability to me to some degree. On the other hand, he's very knowledgeable about North American native plants generally, and the specific details on plants is quite good. The book also gives fairly good detail on what's in the gorgeous photos, but there are one or two gardens photographed here without as much description in their details as I would like. So...very beautiful, definitely glad to have read it, but depending on your practical needs, not a 5-star experience for everyone.

[Rita]

This book is a classic (written in 1992). It is surprisingly informative for basically a coffee table appearing book. The first two chapters are great with the why as well as the how of garden design. He lists the levels of shade in the garden. The chapters on planning were my least favorites so far—he mentions variegated plants, non-natives, and even some invasives/exotics in certain places. I am mostly a native-plant gardener so this section was not all that useful. Still, it is a good book and amazing that Druse foresaw 25 years ago the need for more shade around homes.

[J.M.]

The Natural Shade Garden provides a great overview to plants that do well in shade and make a shade garden look good. It does not provide a list of plants, like many other books, but rather discusses the plants in categories - ground covers, ferns, perennials, hostas, vines, and son on. The book is also, of course, full of gorgeous photos of shade gardens that provide a lot of good ideas for a natural shade garden. At the end, there's a list of mail order nurseries, gardens to visit in each state, and sample garden designs.

[Linda Ingersoll]

Reread this one this year as I am renovating a woodland garden. It is one of my top 5 favorite gardening books.

[Kristen Rose]

An absolute treasure trove of information. Just a few more weeks until I can dive into gardening without the fear of frost!

[Ron Mohring]

So good I sought out a copy for my own library.

[Whitt]

A classic of the natural gardening movement, but dated. Shows how far we’ve come in short time.

[Lauren Therriault]

A book about planting stuff. I am officially an 80 year old woman. I even asked about joining the garden club in town when I checked this book out. The woman said "oh they need young members like you" so I asked when the meetings were. Tuesday mornings at 10am. How do they expect any young people to join if the meetings are in the middle of the work day?


SorrY about the target. This book had a lot of information, and good pictures so you know what plants look like.