FLOWER GARDENS leads with Marco Polo Stufano and his no-nonsense secrets for success from the celebrated Wave Hill Flower Garden. Penelope Hobhouse shares her insights from her own flower garden in Dorset, and visits Wendy Perry in her hot colored shade and cool-hued flower borders at Bosvigo House in Cornwall.
PLANTING THE BONES OF A GARDEN covers avenues and allees, plant repetition and rhythms, as Hobhouse presents the defining ingredients of every garden, for every style – the bones or living architecture of the garden. With Rick Darke at Longwood Gardens, Hobhouse explores two illustrative examples: the all-green topiary garden and the flower walk in its full spring glory.
COLOR IN THE GARDEN serves up color theory basics and the art of applying it in the garden with superb, clear examples: from Helen Dillon and her celebrated blue, red and yellow color borders, to the gentle hues of Winterthur's Azalea woods, and Lynden B. Miller in the perennial flower gardens at The New York Botanical Garden.
THE USEFUL GARDEN presents both time-honored and contemporary interpretations that combine the useful with the ornamental: with garden writer Anna Pavord in the restored, centuries old walled kitchen garden at Forde Abbey; Rosemary Verey in her French-style potager at Barnsley House, and Hobhouse in her front compost and cutting garden at Bettiscombe.
THE SMALLER GARDEN features renowned American landscape architect James Van Sweden in a small private town garden he created in Washington, D.C., and Hobhouse with London Times garden editor, Stephen Anderton in the exceptional series of small garden rooms at England's Wollerton Old Hall. Also featured: the Hobhouse designed Herb Garden at The New York Botanical Garden.
THE COUNTRY GARDEN illumines how country garden principles can well apply to an urban or suburban setting, featuring John Brookes from his Denmans Garden in West Sussex, and Hobhouse with Irish garden designer Jim Reynolds in his enchanting Butterstream Garden.
DESIGN BASICS highlights what Penelope Hobhouse believes to be the most important, helpful aspects to consider in good garden design. She illustrates, in her visit to Athelhampton in Dorset, how grand public gardens offer a wealth of design and horticultural examples that can be applied to the smallest garden.