Small Buildings, Small Gardens: Creating Gardens Around Structures

Sitting in a vine-covered gazebo framing a lakeside view, walking under a pergola connecting an orchard and pool garden, having lunch in a summerhouse with lavender blooms in the foreground while roses scramble over the roof-variety is what engages visitors to a garden, and once you understand that garden design gathers around making places for people, then you begin to find just the right places for plants that will engage those people.
Built structures in a garden provide anchors, centers and starting places for good garden design. Features such as garden sheds, arbors, pergolas, gazeboes, trellises, fences, gates, bridges, decks, arches and small buildings-playhouses, summerhouses and pool houses-provide valuable clues as to how to develop gardens around them, and how using a variety of these structures can solve many design problems.
In Small Buildings Small Gardens, author Gordon Hayward teaches you his design process, which will help answer many questions about how to develop a design for your new or existing garden:
. Where should I put a new bed?
. How big should it be?
. What shape should it be?
. How does it relate to existing beds?
. How should I plant this new garden so it fits in with those that already exist yet adds to the overall experience of my garden?
Packed with case studies of private gardens from around the world, Small Buildings Small Gardens offers practical, essential advice on siting built structures to help you gain the confidence in designing your own garden masterpieces.
Gordon Hayward is the author of several books, including The Welcoming Garden, The Intimate Garden: Twenty Years and Four Seasons in Our Garden, Garden Paths: Inspiring Designs and Practical Projects, and Your House, Your Garden: A Foolproof Approach to Garden Design, as well as a variety of articles for Horticulture Magazine. He lives in Westminster West, Vermont.