Home Landscaping: Ideas, Styles, and Designs for Creative Outdoor Spaces

Less about how to do it than about the concepts underlying it, this landscaping guide provides a full complement of suggestions and photographs on ways one may conjure up scenes in nature fit for social occasions; create privacy and keep its boundaries; make the most of a view (your own, or one ``borrowed'' from a neighbor); or see to it that an entrance beckons persuasively. In a single chapter, the authors triumphantly summarize what entire books have been devoted to: display gardens (covering plant collections, single color gardens and theme gardens, Shakespearean to Persian). Their chapter on movement as an element of design is simple and direct, explaining the form and function of curving paths, steps and water (counsel here is firmly hands-on, including specifications for ramps, stairs and rails). While lushly inviting, the gardens depicted are also palpably real, equally good to dream about and count on. Fell is director of the Garden Writers Association of America; Murray is manager of the San Francisco Landscape Garden Show. Garden Book Club main selection. (Jan.)