Designing with Conifers: The Best Choices for Year-Round Interest in your Garden
By Richard L. Bitner; Timber Press, $34.95
I already own Bitner's conifer encyclopedia, so I was not surprised to find that this title is equally good. It is well-worth searching out if you are looking for ways to add winter interest to your garden or to make it more low-maintennce. Filled with information and tons of pictures of conifers of every color, size and genus. I have lots of conifers in my garden already, but looking at Bitner's book made me realize I have room for more. I was especially taken with tall, narrow forms. They make dramatic exclamation points in the garden and they are easy to squeeze in because they don't take up too much room.
I think for most of us the biggest issue to using conifers is finding varieties that are beyond the usual. Klehm's Song Sparrow is a good source that I've used and also Rich's Fox Willow. The older I get, however, the more willing I am to pay for larger specimens so I don't have to wait forever for them to make an impact. Finding what I want in those bigger sizes, I suspect, will be the real challange.
One of the real benefits of Bitner's book is his chapter where he looks in depth at the garden of Cassandra and Bryan Barrett, which is a conifer lover's heaven. The couple are hand-on landscape designers and Cassandra talks about how to use conifers in the garden, gives her design tips and then shows us in photos (with the plants all numbered and named) how to add conifers to the under, mid and upper story of the garden.
Bitner and the Barretts have me chomping at the bit to get ordering and to get working outdoors.
This is the garden of Cassandra and Bryan Barrett which is dissected in Richard Bitner's wonderful new book: Designing with Conifers.
The Gardens of Venice and the Veneto
By Jenny Condie with photographs by Alex Ramsay; Frances Lincoln Publishers, $60.00
What's not to like about a coffee table book about Venetian gardens, especially if you are reading it during a cold, snowy Midwestern winter? This is just as beautiful as you might imagine. It's filled with images of old brick and stucco buildings surrrounding courtyards of potted citrus, some of whose pots are 500 years old. It's a joyful paen to age, patina, meadows, vistas, and water, water everywhere.
What I did not expect to find, however, was modernity. There it was in an outstanding example: the extraordinary garden of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Designed by Carlo Scarpa in the early 1960s, the garden flows out of a formerly-private estate that now encompases a public library and art gallery. Scarpa is a name that is new to me but I will be searching out more of his work, based on the views below.
Both books are available through Wisconsin's South Central Library System.
Ooooo I like the conifer book. I bet it is loaded with inspiration. I will look for it.
Posted by: Lisa at Greenbow | Wednesday, February 26, 2014 at 07:11 AM