Courtyard and Terrace Gardens: Inspirational Designs for Outdoor Living - Hardcover

To be viewed more as a source for inspiration than a practical guide, "Courtyard and Terrace Gardens" offers a wealth of ideas for the smaller gardens found today. With gardens shrinking in size, especially in cities to make way for more housing, it has often become a more practical solution to forgo green lawns and herbaceous borders in favour of something more stylish and easier to maintain. But getting a patio to look right can be hard. A style has to be selected - chic, rustic, contemporary or avant-garde; hard-landscaping materials and furniture have to be chosen with care and sympathetic to the surroundings; and what plants to grow to enhance the whole? Joan Clifton gives a comprehensive overview of all these dilemmas and, lavishly illustrated with the photographs of Steven Wooster, offers a selection of options open to personal interpretation and style. She guides the reader through the vast array of current choices, giving clear design advice for even the most ignorant gardener. - Lucy Watson

Joan Clifton celebrates the enclosed garden space, providing ideas for transforming the smallest courtyard, terrace or roof garden into a peaceful haven. Each section looks at a different style, highlighting the most important features, whether this is good-quality hard landscaping and interesting sculpture in "Smart Sanctuaries" or atmospheric lighting and trickling water features in "Entertaining Places". "Family Rooms" looks at integrating features for children with peaceful corners for adults, while "Edible Eden" shows how to grow fresh natural produce in potagers, containers and raised beds. "Contemplative Retreats", are gardens with a spiritual dimension incorporating natural materials and soothing water features. A section on "Contemporary Spaces" covers modern courtyard design. Each section also includes a case study including "A Zen-Style Retreat", with a three-dimensional plan and practical information on how to recreate the looks with a gallery of ideas for different floors and surfaces, walls and fences, and paints and finishes. This is combined with an illustrated "Plant Directory".