Garden Bible: Designing Your Perfect Outdoor Space (Hardback)

A full-colour, richly illustrated and comprehensive guide on creating your own great garden, with budget-friendly suggestions and ideas. Transforming outdoor space is one of the hottest home trends today. It expands indoor square footage, makes a property more usable, keeps homeowners healthier whether they grow vegetables or swim laps. It also makes a neighbourhood more aesthetically attractive. 'The Garden Bible' can help homeowners understand the challenges of their site and what needs to be done on an ongoing basis for their garden to develop and thrive. Explaining the many options available, this title will show you how to get it right first time. Many garden books explain how to grow specific flowers, care for shrubs, trees and lawn, and plan a pool. But none take a homeowner from the beginning of the process to ask a professional the right questions, know the challenges of a specific site - drainage, erosion, privacy, noise, wind, too much sun or shade, wildlife, and understand what needs to be done on an ongoing basis for the garden to grow, evolve, and look better in years to come, as well as be in sync with its surroundings. Few books also explain all the stylistic options available and cost-saving solutions. This book will do this, and help guide you through the process of designing the perfect garden. With 20 case studies, highlighting the most popular garden trends - how they transformed a site, what challenges were involved, and how the project could have been done with more affordable options - "The Garden Bible" will show you that not only is a great garden beautiful to look at, but it's also great for the soul. AUTHOR: Barbara Ballinger has written about gardens through her design and real estate work for more than 40 years and has a wonderful garden at her home, including a large organic vegetable patch of four raised planters with watering station, gravel floor, herbs surrounding it, and all framed by blue slate low walls. Michael Glassman is an award winning landscape designer and also a serious photographer whose work has been published. He and Barbara currently write the well-read blog, The Bare Root. SELLING POINTS: - A full-colour, richly-illustrated and comprehensive guide on creating your own great garden - Budget-friendly suggestions and ideas - This book focuses on 20 case studies of the most popular garden trends from around the United States, how they transformed a site, demonstrating how various challenges were involved and overcome to create beautiful gardens, and how the project(s) could have been done with more affordable options - Offers information on top regional garden trends with tips from garden professionals based on soil, slope, wind, rain, sun, shade - Provides a wide range of helpful tips on many topics, including themed gardens, tools, urban projects, how to organise a community garden walk, landscape mistakes to avoid, sustainable gardening, creating wildlife sanctuaries, and more - Includes a comprehensive 'Resource' chapter that lists useful websites, noteworthy nurseries, apps, books and catalogues 400 col