The Well-Planned Garden: A Practical Guide to Planning and Planting

This British import, a selection from the Wayside Gardens Collection series, will likely leave all but the most devoted Anglophiles turning to other pages. The abundant photos rely heavily on gravel drives, clipped boxes, yew hedges, topiaries and the nearly ubiquitous enclosed gardens with mellow stone walls. All of this is very pretty, but, for the most part, it's a style quite removed from the daily experience--and aspiration--of a great many American gardeners. Golby, a noted British horticulturist, is well-informed and emphatically thorough, covering every possible aspect of garden design from focal points and boundaries to siting a terrace, selecting paving materials and pleaching trees. His prose, however, is without humor or spark and has a droning tone that makes paying attention hard work. Despite its valuable sections of information (a short section on ornamental and structural embellishments and the concluding chapter on multipurpose ""Key Plants for the Well-Planned Garden"") and idea-inspiring photos and planting plans, this is not a volume that invites repeated browsing. (July)