Book Review and Giveaway: Refresh Your Garden Design With Color, Texture & Form

**The winner of the book giveaway is Jackie Holliday!**

This week I'm reviewing Refresh Your Garden Design With Color, Texture & Form just in time for the spring garden spruce-up we look forward to each year.

If you've had an exceptionally cold winter and lost quite a few plants like I have then this spring brings a good opportunity to make some changes to the garden.   You might be thinking your garden doesn't look as pulled together as you originally envisioned or maybe you just know it's time to update your garden.  At this point questions such as how to decide what to change and how to get started come to mind.  Wouldn't it be nice to have a top-notch garden designer "visit" to share her ideas for bringing a fresh look to your garden?  Even very good gardeners would welcome that opportunity.

In the book Refresh Your Garden Design With Color, Texture & Form, author Rebecca Sweet
speaks to you as if she is visiting your garden to share her tips on how you can restore harmony to your own garden.   Rebecca addresses the concept of "harmony in the garden" as what's often missing in gardens that aren't living up to expectations.

Rebecca is a garden designer in Northern California and a regular contributor to Horticulture Magazine through her column "Harmony in the Garden" which is also the name of both her garden design firm and newsletter.  You can also follow Rebecca at her excellent blog Gossip in the Garden.

Beginning with her chapter on "seeing with fresh eyes" Rebecca shows how your camera and a few simple steps can be used to identify what needs to be changed in the garden.  From there she proceeds to focus on color, texture and form as the three design elements most important in garden design.  While discussing each of these elements in separate chapters she takes you into the garden to learn her techniques in a hands-on way with detailed illustrations.  Check out this post in Gossip in the Garden for a great preview on how well Rebecca's technique works.  By tying it all back to the concept of harmony in the garden she keeps the focus on that goal.  Understanding the goal of creating harmony in your garden is key because the book is not about listing right and wrong ways to design or update your garden, but rather how to harmonize changes within its existing surroundings and structure.  I especially liked the book's focus on making changes to existing gardens because that's the gardening challenge for most of us.

The chapter on color is my favorite.  Rebecca shows you why understanding the color wheel is important to harmony in the garden.  Plants can clash just like design elements inside the house.  In fact, that is a good way to look at this core principle, namely, that harmony of design elements is as applicable in the garden as inside the home.  I especially liked the plant color wheel included in the book which can also be downloaded.

Rebecca's personal writing style had me smiling throughout especially as she brought up some of the color issues I've been tackling in my own garden such as too many silvery plants can make the garden seem blindingly hot in our Texas summers and decidedly non-harmonious pinks near my driveway which I've been intending to do something about.  The solutions to these issues are covered in the book and I'll share the changes I'm making in a future post.  Even with my background in design I have sometimes found it challenging to take my skills out into the garden and several times I wished I could have a book or reference just like this one as a guide.  By distilling the elements of design down to color, texture, and form, Rebecca has shown me where to focus for highest impact in the garden.  Refresh Your Garden Design With Color, Texture & Form works well on several levels of design knowledge.  If you're not as familiar with basic design principles you can follow Rebecca's simple steps and understand how to apply the fundamentals of design in your garden.  If you understand design basics and want to take it up a notch her design tips will help you look at your garden with a new perspective.

Several quibbles have come up in other reviews and I do agree the cover doesn't grab your attention as well as it should and a few of the photos are too small.  On the other hand some of the photos like this one used to illustrate "Form" are quite inspirational.

Because Rebecca lives in Northern California the plant lists at the end of the book contain a number of plants which will not grow in my climate.  Not to worry because the plants are categorized by Color, Texture, and Form as outlined in the book and I found it easy to simply use those as illustrations from which to visualize locally grown plants that could substitute.  Since one of the current stars of my garden, Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard', is included I'd say it's an excellent list.

I enjoyed having Rebecca "visit" my garden and share her expertise through her book.  Not only do I plan to put what I've learned to work in my own garden, I recently found myself reaching for this book as a good review before heading out to volunteer as a design consultant at the Watersaver Design School here in town.  Often when I'm asked a design question I begin with a discussion of concepts such as the use of repetition and the color wheel only to see eyes roll.  It's easy to think you can skip the basics and look for quicker solutions but if you learn the principles in Refresh Your Garden Design With Color, Texture & Form you can evaluate and refresh your own garden whenever you choose.

The Fine Print:  This book was sent to me free of charge by the publisher for my review with no obligation.  This review is my own opinion and it is the same review I would have written if I had purchased the book.

I'm also excited to announce the first giveaway on my blog and it's a copy of Refresh Your Garden Design With Color, Texture & Form.   To enter simply leave a comment below and the winner will be selected by a random number generator Sunday, March 16th and posted Monday morning.  US residents only please.  If you don't have a link, be sure to leave an email in the comments so we can get in touch with you.