Derek Fell, garden writer and photographer, has compiled An Encyclopedia of Garden Design and Structure: Ideas and Inspiration for Your Garden and illustrated it with over 800 of his garden landscape photographs. Landscape gardeners and others seeking visual stimuli and concepts for their own designs will benefit from looking carefully through this encyclopedia and reading the introduction and conclusion. This photographic work makes an advantageous and practical addition to a gardener's reference library, as well as a functional and attractive coffeetable book.
Introduction
Fell establishes his reason for designing this book by comparing painters to gardeners. "Painters," Fell states, "can visit great art collections for development and inspiration. Gardeners, on the other hand, have no one place where they can find a wide selection of style and designs." Fell acknowledges that his wide selection of garden designs may reflect personal bias, but regards his collection as stimulating and "a gallery of useful ideas in an encyclopedic listing for ready reference."
The introduction also contains Fell's sources and rationale for what he chooses as useful ideas. This is an excellent section to read before plunging into the encyclopedic portion. As this is primarily an image-based book, abundant and instructive garden landscape photographs illustrate these ideas. These are Fell's categories in his introduction:
- Gardens of Inspiration - grouping of gardens that Fell uses to demonstrate his observations
- Informal versus Formal Design - contrast of country garden styles with those of the Italian Renaissance, French refinements, United States adaptation of continental styles, Japanese Gardens and Chinese Gardens.
- Softscape versus Hardscape - Fell's opinion, "…the more hardscape used for a garden, the less labor-intensive it is likely to be."
- Seasonal Considerations - ways in which gardens may vary.
- Definitions of Terms - distinguishes among different professional categories of garden help.
- Early Inspiration - a concise and clear account of landscape garden history from antiquity to beginnings of the American Revolution.
- Expressing One's Individuality - Fell asks the reader a series of goal-defining questions.
- Twentieth-century Trendsetters - a summary of the best and boldest 20th-century landscape garden designers. Some names are familiar while others might open entirely new garden worlds.
The Encyclopedia
Fell's encyclopedia is arranged as an alphabetical listing of 120 categories of features and structures found in garden designs. It is a magnificent survey of features that enhance gardens around the world, both large and small, grand and humble.
Conclusion
Fell discusses The Garden as Art in his conclusion to Encyclopedia of Garden Design and Structure: Ideas and Inspiration for Your Garden. He compares two starting points for defining the evolution of a garden:
- Search for Paradise
- Desire to Express Artistry
He finishes by stating that "Perhaps it is the ephemeral quality of gardens that often causes observers to overlook them as works of art. Put a picture in the attic, and its value will only increase over time, but ignore a garden for more than a week, and it will start to revert to wilderness."
More Information here at Suite101 about landscape photographs:
- Residential Landscaping Pictures: How to make use of landscape design and landscape idea photos as landscape design tools.
- Landscaping Photographs Online: Internet sites that offer landscape pictures vary significantly.
- Landscape Design, Tips and Terms: The core of Derek Fell's book "Encyclopedia of Garden Design and Structure" is an information bank of garden landscape photos, but the introduction is its foundation.
©Text and photograph by Georgene A. Bramlage, March 2007. Reproduction without permission prohibited.
