Landscaping Small Spaces

Rating:
Summary: Pretty photos, but limited information
Review: First, from the title of the book included at the end of the previous review, I wonder whether the reader placed his or her review with the proper books. The reference to before/after photos, in particular, baffled me -- I can't find many (if any) in this Sunset book.

Like others from Sunset, this book contains extensive (though not especially large) and attractive color photos and color drawings. But for me it lacked suggestions about how to think about small spaces, especially the small lots that abound in suburban subdivisions. If you are able to "borrow" a view or the shade of a neighbor's 60 year old maple, well and good. But if, like many of us dispatched to suburbia, looking at a 53 foot by 27 foot deep back lot overlooked by four other lots, this book will offer little help.

Still, you may be able to grab some ideas from the plentiful pictures. And I found instructions about arbor building to be more complete here than in some other (admittedly woefully inadequate) sources.

I'm looking hard, but I have yet to find the book that addresses the realities of new US subdivisions. What I can say, definitively, is that this is not the book.

Rating:
Summary: What a wonderful book
Review: What a wonderful book this is! Before pictures show you what the site was, many beautiful after pictures show how completetely a garden site can be transformed and the text is just so illuminating. There are many different kinds of gardens and different approaches to making them beautiful and useable. If you buy only one book on designing small spaces, Small Spaces Beautiful Gardens should be the one.

Rating:
Summary: What a wonderful book
Review: What a wonderful book this is! Before pictures show you what the site was, many beautiful after pictures show how completetely a garden site can be transformed and the text is just so illuminating. There are many different kinds of gardens and different approaches to making them beautiful and useable. If you buy only one book on designing small spaces, Small Spaces Beautiful Gardens should be the one.