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Student Book List

Please see below our recommended book list. Just click on the links or images and you will be taken to the book entry on Amazon.co.uk. Add the book to your basket and then click the back button on your browser to select any further books that you require.

Dream Plants for the Natural Garden

Piet Oudolf, Henk Gerritsen, Henk Gerristen

Gerritsen and Oudolf describe their special choice of ideal plants - perennials, bulbs, grasses, ferns and small shrubs. The book provides complete growing information for each plant and advice on how to use them to best effect. Rather than striving to create big and bold masses of colourful blooms that are vigorously pruned back as soon as they have finished flowering, the Gerritsen and Oudolf choose plants chiefly for their form - leaves, flower heads and stems included - which retain their natural beauty through all the seasons. The structure of the book is based around the way that plants behave - their relative growing strengths and reliability - factors that always inform the authors' designs.

Planting the Natural Garden

Piet Oudolf

It provides an update of cultivars developed since 1999 however, and there are a number of suggested plant combinations that do not appear in the previous books which will be helpful to those enthusiasts developing a naturalistic style of planting in their own gardens. The text is also peppered with little gems of information that increase understanding of individual plant life cycles. To keen supporters of Piet Oudolf's and Henk Gerritson's work these features alone will justify getting the book.

The Landscape of Man: Shaping the...

Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe, Susan Jellicoe

This volume looks at the landscape of 28 cultures, ranging from ancient Mesopotamia to the present day, and shows how the environment is conditioned by the philosophy and religion of each civilization. A selection from Geoffrey Jellicoe's "The Atlanta Historical Garden" is included.

The Essential Garden Book: The...

Terence Conran, Dan Pearson

This reference work is for anyone wanting to improve their garden. Design solutions are presented along with practical information enabling you to create a garden that looks and works as you want it to. The book is split into six sections on essential gardens, exterior design, living space, planting design, a directory and foundation techniques.

Gardening with Water

James van Sweden

An acclaimed landscape architect explains how nonprofessional gardeners can create dramatic landscape effects by using such water elements as fountains, pools, water falls, and dry streams, with tips on plantings, construction diagrams, and a glossary of favorite plants.

Garden Colour Palette

Paul Williams

This work provides information on how to achieve successful colour mixes in the garden. The split page format enables you to mix and match plants to create colour combinations, while notes provide planning information, including the growing requirements and characteristics of each plant.

Gardening with Nature

James van Sweden

Bold, Romantic Gardens

James van Sweden, Wolfgang Oehme

From the fabulous clear photographs of Van Sweden and Oeheme's work, to the intricate details of how a kerb detail works, this book will inspire and delight. Unlike so many generic garden design books that attempt to list a collection of concepts, this book shows a fusion of well disciplined hard landscaping with a free form of grasses and other naturalistic planting

Landscape Construction: Earth and Water...

Derek Lovejoy (Foreword), C.A. Fortlage, E.T. Phillips

This third volume of "Landscape Construction" covers the design and construction of simple earth and water retaining structures as far as the normal scope of landscape work is concerned. Major civil engineering work such as highway embankments and reservoirs are excluded. Chapters one to four cover the simpler forms of earth retention likely to be part of a landscape contract, divided into: methods of construction that rely on the soil as part of the structure; various types of gravity retaining walls; and those which are constructed independently of the soil. Chapters five to nine deal with all types of water retaining construction, from "natural" lakes to small ornamental pools, and the construction of natural and ornamental watercourses are also covered.