The Spirited Garden: Creative Private Retreats

A private view of intensely creative residential gardens, lovingly designed and tended by the plant-obsessed owners themselves. Hundreds of inspiring photographs show home gardeners how to successfully inject elements of their own personality—as well as plants in unique combinations—into their own yards.

A mix of high plant/horticultural knowledge and a love of artistically repurposed everyday materials creating unique features will strike a chord with all those who dream of perking up their own gardens. Doreen sought out the most original gardens to feature those that use cleverly repurposed industrial and found materials: handmade archways of gnarled branches or hand-welded fences, mixed with unique sculptures and structures. Text and deep captions full of plant IDs highlight unusual or remarkable collections of flora and foliage that will inspire readers to re-create or come up with their own planting designs and combinations.

Doreen Wynja has been photographing plants and gardens for over thirty years and has been the principal photographer for Monrovia Nursery since 2004. Her work has been published in numerous books including The Tapestry Garden (Timber Press, 2018), Succulents (TI Inc. Books, 2017), and the recent The Healthy Garden (Abrams Books, 2021), and in magazines like Garden Design, Fine Gardening, Landscape Architecture, the American Gardener, and Marin Magazine. She makes her home in Oregon’s wine country.

Lorene Edwards Forkner has been the weekly gardening columnist for the Seattle Times for nearly fifteen years and is the author of several gardening books including Color In and Out of the Garden (Abrams, 2022), The Beginner’s Guide to Growing Great Vegetables (Timber Press, 2021), and Now Is the Time for Trees (with the Arbor Day Foundation, 2022). She also contributes regularly to the popular gardening blog GardenRant. She lives and gardens in West Seattle.