Inspiration and practical advice for a fantastic garden. Kim Smith’s passion is her garden, a small and densely-packed quarter acre beside her family’s seaside home in Gloucester, brimming with every species imaginable and some (including apricots) a few might consider unimaginable. Here she has created a living tapestry of fragrance, foliage, flower and fruit. She is sensitive to the plant’s forms, hues, and horticultural demands, and has, by design, established a succession of blooms and a selection of plant materials that reduce the needs for pesticides and herbicides. Any gardener wrestling with the challenges of blight, bugs, poor soil, limited light, and the vagaries of weather will find in these pages both sound advice and practical solutions. But this is intended as more than another how-to book. The author is especially interested in the intangibles a garden provides: the moods and ambiance, the butterflies attracted, the harmonious patterns of color, light, and texture. Her advice is as much about how to visualize a garden, as about particular trees, shrubs, vines, perennials, and annuals.

Illustrated in full color with the author’s own exquisite drawings, containing twenty-two chapters that illuminate every aspect of garden planning and planting, this book is for gardeners seeking both sensible guidance and extraordinary design ideas.