I am always keeping a eye out for decent products for my own garden — even if they are just for my wish list. Over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll be highlighting a series of products that might fit in my garden — or yours! — Douglas


The Layered Garden: Design Lessons for Year-Round Beauty from Brandywine Cottage

Sometimes the best thing you can do in the garden i curl up with a good book and if that book just happens to be a garden book, so much the better. The great thing about garden books (and blogs), of course, is that you can learn so much from your fellow gardeners without having to be near them geographically. Such is the case with this book. It is filled with great ideas, great writing and amazing photos to fuel your gardening dreams as you doze in your hammock. You DO have a hammock, don’t you? (SMILE)

From Amazon.com…

Brandywine Cottage is David Culp’s beloved two-acre Pennsylvania garden where he mastered the design technique of layering — interplanting many different species in the same area so that as one plant passes its peak, another takes over. The result is a nonstop parade of color that begins with a tapestry of heirloom daffodils and hellebores in spring and ends with a jewel-like blend of Asian wildflowers at the onset of winter.

The Layered Garden shows you how to recreate Culp’s majestic display. It starts with a basic lesson in layering — how to choose the correct plants by understanding how they grow and change throughout the seasons, how to design a layered garden, and how to maintain it. To illustrate how layering works, Culp takes you on a personal tour through each part of his celebrated garden: the woodland garden, the perennial border, the kitchen garden, the shrubbery, and the walled garden. The book culminates with a chapter dedicated to signature plants for all four seasons.

As practical as it is inspiring, The Layered Garden will provide you with expert information gleaned from decades of hard work and close observation. If you thought that a four-season garden was beyond your reach, this book will show you how to achieve that elusive, tantalizing goal.

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs

Previously in Summer in the Garden: