Home Gardener's Small Gardens: Designing, creating, planting, improving and maintaining small gardens (Specialist Guide) - Softcover

Home Gardener's Small Gardens is the essential guide to improving a small garden and turning the most modest-sized space into a stunning outdoor area. It offers lushly illustrated strategies for making the most of a confined space--whether backyard, terrace or courtyard. Get started with an informative discussion of small garden types, appropriate plants, problems and opportunities, design, and planning. The excitement truly begins with a look at the wide variety of stylistic options. The gardens range from Mediterranean to wildflower, secluded to low-maintenance, container to balcony. And a plant directory covers it all: summer-flowering annuals, herbaceous perennials, shrubs, small trees, climbers, water plants, bamboos, culinary herbs, fruits, vegetables, and even more. For a finishing touch, there's practical information on garden construction, with step-by-step instructions for making paths, patios and other garden structures.

David Squire has worked for many years as a gardening writer and editor. He has contributed to numerous gardening magazines and is the author (or co-author) of more than 80 gardening and plant-related books. His books include four titles in the new Home Gardener's Specialist Guide series (Fox Chapel Publishing) plus The Scented Garden (Orion) which won the "Quill and Trowel Award" of the Garden Writers of America. David trained as a horticulturist at the Hertfordshire College of Agriculture and at the Royal Horticultural Society, where he was awarded the Wisley Diploma in Horticulture. He was awarded an N.K. Gould Memorial Prize for his collection of herbarium specimens of native British plants. In 2005, this collection of plants was accepted by the Booth Museum of Natural History to become library and museum exhibits. He has a passionate interest in the uses of native plants, whether for eating and survival, or for their historical roles in medicine, folklore and customs.