In Harmony with Nature: Lessons from the Arts and Crafts Garden

Anyone who is interested in the art of gardening and the form, texture, and shape of plants (and what gardener isn't?) will enjoy this book just for the sheer beauty of its photography. The dramatic design, with flowing masses of herbaceous plantings playing off Arts & Crafts structures (birdbaths, sundials, and arbors), is captured in numerous full-page color photographs. The Arts & Crafts ideal of the unity of house and garden shows in the interplay of plants and garden structures: roses climbing old stone walls, rows of fluffy lavender shaded by the heavy crosspieces of pergolas, branching tree limbs captured in stained glass.

The skill of the craftsperson and the gardener in unifying house and garden shines through in the details of the stone and woodwork and the lushness of the planting. These design ideas, developed in the mid-18th century in reaction to a perceived threat of mechanization, are as aesthetically pleasing today as they were 150 years ago. And the juxtaposition of the sturdy, hand-hewn quality of the craftsmanship with the free-flowing plantings is no doubt needed even more today in our world of faxes, computers, and cell phones.

Reading Rick Darke's love poem of a book to Arts & Crafts gardens is like going on a tour of North America and Britain's best gardens, accompanied by a most knowledgeable and enthusiastic tour guide. You are invited into the back gardens of all those really cool bungalows; your stroll through the gardens is enhanced by informed discourse on their history and the techniques used to create them. Many of the design ideas translate well to today's smaller gardens: dividing space into garden "rooms," and using urns or fountains as focal points and screens to create a sense of enclosure within the garden. Darke, an ornamental grass expert from Pennsylvania, has written the definitive--and the most beautiful--book on Arts & Crafts gardens. --Valerie Easton