Professional Planting Design
I really enjoyed looking through Professional Planting Design by Scott Scarfone. The book gives a detailed overview of how to approach landscape design not only from a design aspect from also from a plant perspective. Too often books look at one view or the other but Scarfone manages to incorporate the best of both worlds.
The book is filled with tons of black & white graphics and lists that illustrate the points Scarfone makes in the text. He also gives tips and guidelines on how to actually carry out the design principles he discusses which is helpful for beginners. For example, in the section on using texture in the garden, Scarfone explains that using a plant with rough texture can make nearby colors seem more intense. Not only that, he also explains how to figure out whether a plant is considered to have fine, medium or coarse texture.
Keep in mind, this is not a book filled with lots of glossy photos of designed gardens or individual plants. It reads more like a textbook (which may explain the hefty price tag for this paperback) which is not an entirely bad thing since this book will make a great addition to any gardener’s reference library. Given the high price and the fact that it may not be exactly the kind of picture-filled book some home gardeners are looking for, my recommendation is to do what I did – get it from your local library. Just be prepared to renew it at least once since there is so much information in Scarfone’s book it’s hard to digest it all at once.
