The Art of Gardening

“In this delightful book, the staff gardeners are full of advice—on using small evergreens for screens, deploying bursts of color, choosing plants for dry shade—that that will be useful in any size garden, even one where you’re the only gardener on staff.” —The New York Times

“Flipping through the pages of The Art of Gardening, it is abundantly clear why people visit Chanticleer, and why this book has had so much wonderful press already. . . . Those with an eye for landscape design will be especially drawn in, and home gardeners will appreciate the helpful how-to tips for ways to achieve creative planting displays at home. . . . From landscape shots to beauty shots of especially photographic cultivars, each page is a delight.” —NYBG's Plant Talk

“This is a gardener’s garden, on a scale that, incredibly, home gardeners can relate to. . . . The Art of Gardening offers plenty of down-to-earth advice.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
“The book provides a great escape for a winter's day: In addition to the beautiful color photos and history of the gardens, it also offers insights from the gardeners who design—and redesign—the series of interlocking gardens that make up the 35-acre whole.” —The Chicago Tribune

“Anyone who has been seduced by Chanticleer’s deft use of color, form and sculpture will find all the guidance they need.” —The Financial Times 

“Even if you don’t have a garden, the book is a source of pictorial and practical inspiration and a wonderful read.” —Hortus

“A great behind-the-scenes look into this one-of-a-kind spot.” —Daily Architectural Digest

“Take-away ideas are plentiful—it really doesn’t matter on which side of ‘the pond’ you garden. . . . This is more than just a beautiful book; it is essential reading for passionate gardeners everywhere; who will become enchanted by the magic of Chanticleer.” —Gardens Illustrated

“If you have ever wondered how to translate something you see at a public garden for your home landscape, this inspiring book offers numerous ideas.” —Country Gardens
 
“You’ll see and learn about top no-fail plants and fussier varieties worth the effort. You’ll also take away design ideas you can use in your own yard.” —GROW

“If gardening as pure pleasure is your desire, you'll definitely want to spend some time with The Art of Gardening. . . . this book is a must for anyone open to the sheer possibilities of gardening.” —Garden Design Online

“There are oodles of practical design ideas that home gardeners can actually accomplish on a smaller scale. . . . The book is sumptuously illustrated and will help both the beginner and experienced grower design a garden that is filled with great plants and little surprises.” —Lancaster County Magazine

“The individual and unique voices expound on topics that are both useful and translatable to all gardens, making for a satisfying read. It is one of the few gardening books I have read from cover to cover in a single sitting. . . . It is a must for any serious gardener.” —Pacific Horticulture

Préface
This visually stunning book shows gardeners how to incorporate the lessons of Chanticleer, one of the most imaginative public gardens in the United States, into their own landscapes.

Auteur

R. William Thomas is the executive director of the Chanticleer Foundation. He served as executive director and head gardener for Longwood Gardens after twenty-six years in the education and horticulture departments. He holds bachelor and master’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin, is an avid plantsman, and writes about trees, shrubs, and vines.

Texte du rabat

To visit Chanticleer is to step into a world of beauty and creativity that few other gardens can match. Its fifteen distinct areas—from formal borders to woodland glades to a fantasy garden planted among ruins—offer unique embodiments of color, texture, and form. 

But Chanticleer isn’t just a place to marvel at. It also offers practical lessons for re-creating some of the gardens’ most spectacular effects in your own home landscape. Whether your goal is a spectacular display of spring bulbs, a drought-tolerant border bursting with color, or container plantings that dazzle the eye, you’ll find a unique blend of inspiration and practical craft in every chapter.

Chanticleer owes much of its success to the creative freedom it allows the individual gardeners, and in these pages you’ll hear their voices as they reveal the techniques specific to different conditions and plant palettes; how to experiment successfully; and how to achieve the perfect union between plant and site. Whether you’re already under Chanticleer’s spell or have yet to visit, The Art of Gardening will enable you to share in the special magic that pervades this most artful of gardens.
 

Échantillon de lecture
Introduction
For some, the words art and gardening never mesh. To them, art is something found in a museum, a theater, or a concert hall. Art outdoors might be a sculpture park, where the plantings are merely a background. But for the Chanticleer staff, art is an everyday experience. Our gardeners are artists in every sense of the word, and they work in all media from plants to paint, wood, stone, metal, and clay. Their artistic vision sees beauty in the plants, stones, water, and pavement as visual elements. They create a garden experience where scent, sight, color, sound, and texture combine to make three-dimensional works of art that continually grow and change. Their endeavors may be compared to a chamber orchestra performance, where a number of soloists come together to produce a single, unified piece. At Chanticleer, the conductor is the head gardener/executive director, whose role is to meld the exquisite work each gardener produces into one unified production: the garden. For the past twelve years, I have had the pleasure and privilege to be that conductor at Chanticleer.

This book aims to be a conversation between our staff and you. All of our staff have contributed in some way to the book, and many wrote individual sections explaining how they garden or design their areas. Their biographies are at the back of the book, if you’d like to learn more about them. Our garden exists to inspire and is filled with ideas to try at home. We hope this book leads you to garden more frequently and freely. Chanticleer is our research laboratory where we try new plants, designs, and techniques all in the public view. Our guests see our successes and our failures, although we try to rush the losers to the compost pile. Horticulturist Dan Benarcik calls what we do “gardening without a net.” You might want to do the same in your own garden. Try. And try again. Continue what you like. Move on to something else if you are displeased. Plant enough so the loss of one plant is not tragic.

What Is Chanticleer?
Some people don’t understand the Chanticleer experience. It’s true, we are not easily pigeonholed, perhaps because of our unique confluence of art and horticulture. We aren’t a typical botanical garden or arboretum. We’re not a park. And we’re not really a museum. We were once a private estate, and we like to keep the feeling of a private garden, but everything we do has the purpose of inspiring our guests.

One editor of a lifestyle magazine tried to figure out “w…