The Private Oasis

This complementary volume to The Private Oasis: Built Elements in the Landscape (Grayson, 6/2012) focuses on the many ways plants, as a soft element in the landscape, can shape our emotional response to a garden. From lush, low borders that ease the transition between the hardscape elements that define terraces and the natural landscape beyond, to immaculately shaped espaliers and romantic allees, to architectural hedges, to thematic flower gardens planted exclusively to provide beguiling scents throughout the seasons, Edmund Hollander and Maryanne Connelly provide an insider's glimpse into how their firm creates landscapes that are memorable, sensual, and layered. Text by longtime New York Times garden contributor Anne Raver breaks down the design of these glamorous East Coast estate gardens to show how they were created and how the reader can extract elements of them successfully for smaller gardens at home by following Hollander's ecological and practical emphasis on choosing zone-appropriate and condition-appropriate plants. Over 300 lush color images show gardens both in detail and overview. An appendix on the designers' 25 favorite plants for temperate climates (complete with lively anecdotes about why) makes their designs accessible to all.