BOOK REVIEWS

Here are a few book reviews that our editors consider to be "evergreen" -- welcome additions to any traditional landscape gardening bookshelf.

Outside The Bungalow: America's Arts & Crafts Garden, by Paul Duchscherer & Douglas Keister. Penguin Putnam, Inc., New York, NY; Ph:212-366-2000; FAX 800-227-9604. 184 pp.; hardcover; $32.95; ISBN 0-670-88355-7

Writer Paul Duchscherer and photographer Douglas Keister have already won themselves places in Arts & Crafts Heaven thanks to their previous collaborations, The Bungalow: America's Arts & Crafts Home(1995) and Inside The Bungalow: America's Arts & Crafts Interior(1997), both published by Penguin Putnam. The release of their third volume in the series, Outside The Bungalow: America's Arts & Crafts Garden, will surely elevate the duo to seats beside The Throne itself, as far as all lovers of the Arts & Crafts style are concerned.

Rather than contribute one more book about period gardens, Duchscherer and Keister have created a persuasive account of garden design in the Arts & Crafts aesthetic. They have traveled throughout the United States, documenting extraordinary examples of Craftsman-style gardening.

One chapter highlights a half-dozen Greene & Greene houses in California -- living tributes to this style's vitality and beauty, and the vast range of possibilities it offers.

Profusely illustrated with over 280 color photos, the book examines flower gardens, vegetable gardens, kitchen gardens, rock gardens, and water gardens. Wisely, Duchscherer and Keister also cover those additional elements which are part and parcel of the Arts & Crafts vision of design. Special chapters zero in on entry gates and arbors; wooden fences and masonry walls; paving materials; water elements, including ponds, fountains, birdbaths, and pools; patios, gazebos, and other outdoor rooms; the spectrum of appropriate garden furniture; and even beloved details from tree houses and tool sheds to mailboxes, lighting, and gate hardware.

"Whether or not it belongs to a bungalow," writes Paul Duchscherer, a garden has a life of its own and can trigger universal responses of wonder and delight." One sure proof of that sentiment is the enthusiasm which Outside The Bungalow is certain to excite.

Gazebos and Trellises, by Peter J. Harrison. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY; Ph: 212-850-6000; FAX 732-302-2300. 280 pp.; hardcover; $60.00; ISBN 0-471-32198-2

Like his previous pattern book, Fences(1998, John Wiley & Sons), Peter J. Harrison's Gazebos and Trellises carries the subtitle, Authentic Details for Design and Restoration. This time, the author and artist offers over 200 hand-drawn American gazebos and trellises, taken principally from examples found in the Northeastern and Southern United States. (He also includes several drawings Of My Own Imagination design gems which will surely begin appearing across the country!) Harrison's two-part book is methodically divided into major sub-categories: Part I, Gazebos, covers Garden Temples, the Accent Manor, the Elizabethan Fashion, the Chinese Taste, the Gothic Style, and Trellis Work; Part II, Trellises, encompasses Colonial Times and Republic (1700-1820), Later Times (1820-1875), and Modern Times (1875-1900).

In its prose, layout, and even typography, Gazebos and Trellises maintains a consistent Victorian-era tone and appearance, making the book all the more entertaining even for those who won't be erecting their own gazebos or trellises after its examples. "I have long been taken with much desire for these and other slight structures," Harrison confides in his Preface, "and seeing their neglect by others in their great works, I felt it my duty to bring forth my knowledge of them in all degrees of exactness, to once again encourage those like myself engaged in the noble art of building." Harrison has an exacting eye for design detail, and a sure hand for re-creating those details on paper. This book may be as light on text as it is heavy on art, but by forgoing matters of dimensions or materials and concentrating instead on the designs themselves, Gazebos and Trellises can offer readers a treasure trove of ideas for garden structures, which can be adapted to their own situations. And what possibilities there are! The gazebos range from gate houses, follies, and tea houses to summer houses, pavilions, and tool houses; the trellises cover the spectrum from simple vertical supports to elaborate archways designed to frame a window or doorway.

Everyone who is dissatisfied with the stock designs available from gazebo manufacturers -- and bored to tears with the characterless wooden (or plastic) ladders that pass for trellises these days -- will feel as if the sun has risen every time they open the pages of Gazebos and Trellises. May that sun never set on their gardens! -- Cole Gagne

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