A ready reference of stimulating garden features from all over the world.Renowned garden designer Derek Fell has compiled more than 800 photographs to create a personal scrapbook of his favorite design features from around the world. Together with his insightful commentary, they provide a wealth of ideas and inspiration for the home gardener.The book features: A-Z listing of more than 100 design categories, from balconies and paths to abstract concepts like silhouettes, framing, and whimsy More than 800 fully captioned, full-color photographs of award-winning gardens Hundreds of practical suggestions for garden planning, planting, and design, and achieving year-round interest.Valuable tips on plant cultivation mingle with garden history and elegant description as Fell guides readers through famed gardens such as Monet's Clos Normand, Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., and Rome's Villa d'Este, plus private gardens like his own Cedaridge Farm.

Introduction Designing the landscape Garden writers, landscape architects and garden historians frequently debate what it is that makes a garden great and inspirational. Though opinions are diverse, many experts agree that a great garden must display a sense of artistry, using the sky and soil as a canvas and plants and structures as 'paint' to create a visually exciting space that can be formal or informal in style, large or small in size. Moreover, great gardens can exist in a wide range of settings, from the highly artificial environment of a city to stimulating natural surroundings such as that of a Scottish loch, a Normandy river valley or a Carolina coastal swamp. When painters seek artistic development and inspiration they visit great art collections, like those in the Louvre, Paris, the Tate Gallery, London, and the Getty Museum, Los Angeles. When gardeners seek inspiration there is no one place to find a wide selection of styles and designs, hence the reason for this book. Though it may reflect a personal appreciation of garden designs, it is a convenient collection of stimulating garden features from all over the world, aimed at presenting a gallery of useful ideas in an encyclopedic listing for ready reference. Gardens of inspiration The great French Impressionist painter, Claude Monet, considered his garden at Giverny, north of Paris, his greatest work of art, and as many as a hundred special design ideas can be gleaned from visiting the restored garden today. In his Clos Normand flower garden, these include visually exciting color harmonies such as his hot-color borders, using mostly yellow, orange and red flowers. Another Monet innovation is the floral tunnel, his Grande Allee. He used climbing roses on arches to create the roof and perennials, such as asters, to form the sides. Nasturtiums planted to creep across the path completed the tunnel effect. In Monet's water garden, a Japanese-style arched bridge with a canopy of blue and white wisteria is probably the most familiar garden structure ever made, and the inspiration for many bridges like it worldwide. Since artistry is so important to a garden's success, many of the design ideas for this book are from the restored gardens of Monet and his painter friends, Renoir and Cezanne. Other images have been selected from inspirational gardens all over the world, not only public gardens in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Australasia, but also little-known private gardens. A study of Paul Cezanne's half-acre restored garden at Aix-en-Provence, and Auguste Renoir's five-acre restored garden near Nice reveals startling design innovation quite different from that of Monet. Though all three artists were friends and identified with the Impressionist movement, their gardens are as different as their painting styles. While Monet created a labor-intensive design using mostly flowers to 'paint' his outdoors sanctuary, and taking color high on trellises and arches, Cezanne planted a labor-saving garden using less ephemeral elements of nature. His restored garden is essentially a shade garden, terraced with quarry stones and filled with trees and shrubs that paint a tapestry of foliage colors, their trunks pruned to create eerie sinuous lines. Renoir purchased an old olive orchard to save it from development and created a retreat where he could pose nudes as though they were sitting in shadowy woodland on the upper slope of his property. He also seated models on a sun-drenched wildflower meadow at the lower part. Like Monet, who built a boat so he could paint his water garden from the middle of his pond, Renoir constructed a rustic shelter with floor-to-ceiling windows so he could paint the main tree-lined vista during inclement weather, his nude model seated outside in dappled light. Even the well-respected Victorian garden designer, Gertrude Jekyll, gleaned ideas for her plantings from s