The Woodland Garden. Rev. ed.

Beryl Hamilton is a freelance writer in Thunder Bay who specializes in
home gardening.

Contemporary gardeners, driven by an appreciation for natural settings
and the serendipitous results of trial and error, are increasingly
turning to less artificial gardening styles. A woodland garden, one of
the more popular recent developments, is a relatively sheltered place
consisting of a canopy of large or small trees, a second layer of
shrubs, and a third layer of herbaceous plants and lower-growing species
along the woodland floor. The primary appeal of this type of garden has
to do with its “naturalness and low-maintenance” character.

This revised edition of a 1999 book features a more attractive layout
and offers eight extensive chapters that cover everything about the
design, building, and maintenance of a woodland garden that a gardener
needs to know. It also includes an array of beautiful glossy photographs
and helpful diagrams.

The book emphasizes the more densely populated temperate parts of the
northern United States (especially the Pacific Northwest) and southern
Canada for establishing a woodland garden. And it concentrates on plants
that remain hardy from zones 5 through 9, though its advice will still
be relevant for some colder zones with microclimates. Especially good
are the extensive plant lists the authors provide, and the helpful
descriptions of such popular species as rhododendrons.

Anyone interested in creating a woodland garden will find this
comprehensive, beautifully illustrated book a very useful resource.