David Tarrant's Canadian Gardens

Pleasance Crawford is a Canadian landscape and garden-history researcher
and writer, and the editor of Landscape Architectural Review.

David Tarrant is well known as the host of television’s The Canadian
Gardener, as a garden columnist with the Vancouver Sun, and as the
author of several previous books on gardening. He and the editors of the
magazine Canadian Gardening have collaborated to produce this
well-produced armchair tour of 20 residential gardens in eight
provinces.

Full-color photographs by various photographers affiliated with
Canadian Gardening provide strong visual impressions of each garden. As
well, each garden appears in a hand-drawn plan executed by Bonnie
Summerfeldt Boisseau. The book’s lively and informative text describes
the past and present of each garden, and quotes generously from
interviews with owners whose backgrounds, preferences, and inspirations
have made each space unique. (It is heartening to learn that many of
these gardeners use organic methods.) In addition, a sidebar provides
detailed information on some special element, technique, or activity
associated with each garden. Concluding the book is a list of suggested
readings.

The featured gardens range from tiny, heavily detailed backyards to
large, expansively planted landscapes. Each of the 20 is representative
of a particular stylistic theme: the country garden, the Japanese
garden, the whimsical garden, the prairie garden, the old-fashioned
garden, and so forth. The avid home gardener will most certainly enjoy
this book.