Gardening at night, in the morning, whenever.

July 7, 2015 10:45 AM

I'm looking for images of residential gardens that embody high design standards--websites are fine; books are great.

I know there's approximately a gazillion Pinterest items associated with 'garden design' but the signal to noise ratio isn't in my favor.

I want to see a mass of examples of strong garden design but not like 'here's a single municipal botanical garden'.

I am seeking inspiration (and education: lots of education) but a lot of what I find is like a one-off image of a hosta or shade garden or close ups of individual plants. I am looking to see lots of gardens at scale, not just selected little bits and not to have to search so hard for every image.

(I'm already a heavy/obsessive Pinterest user and Fine Gardening subscriber.)

Any ideas?

posted by A Terrible Llama to Home & Garden (5 answers total)

Best answer: Use Piet Oudolf as a search term, if you like his style. Given his use of mass plantings the pictures tend to be of gardens rather than single flower beds. He's greatly imitated these days (by me as well, he's wonderful!) so you should get plenty of examples of other landscape designers to explore.
posted by lydhre at 10:57 AM on July 7, 2015

Best answer: Garden Design is a quarterly publication that focuses on high-end, large-scale gardens.
posted by missmary6 at 4:01 PM on July 7, 2015

Best answer: If you'd like to explore residential gardens in person, the Garden Conservancy has Open Days around the US. People open private gardens to the public for a day or so. There are so spectacular private gardens that you'd never see otherwise.

I have a long list of garden-related websites that I follow.
Dirt Simple is the blog of a garden designer. It shows many gardens that she's been involved with.

The Enduring Gardener

Prairie Break is by a professional who travels widely and will have both closeup and landscape photos.

Michael King has some nice stuff.

I feel like Gardenista is variable in its content. It is a spin off of a home blog, Remodelista, and occasionally I'm reminded of this when the post too many articles about furniture or food. But they frequently feature nice collections on types of gardens.

The suggestion of Oudolf is actually a pretty good one. I worked in an Oudolf-designed garden a few years ago and really enjoyed his book Landscapes in Landscapes.

I might suggest spending some time in a bookstore or library with a decent shelf of garden books and just browsing until you find something you like looking at.

In terms of periodicals, I like Gardens Illustrated. It is a bit on the expensive side and as it is a UK publication, it focuses on that climate range, so YMMV.
posted by sciencegeek at 5:30 PM on July 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

Where are you located? Where I live, there happens to be a specialty design/architecture bookstore with a huge section of books on garden design. But even a mass bookstore should have a decent collection, or your public library. Personally, I like to browse through several books, so this would be my first stop rather than picking up an individual book online.
posted by three_red_balloons at 5:31 PM on July 7, 2015

Edible Cities is awesome for tons of ideas of small-scale horticulture.
posted by guster4lovers at 11:15 PM on July 7, 2015