Garden Style

I have a single favorite place for soul restoring. It's a local plant nursery, but this one is more than that. The owners frequently change and update and relocate plants, garden items, things that hang on walls, in trees, nestle against fences, dangle from ceilings, embrace the earth, cozy in planters with fellow plants and dazzlingly different plants. The place has so many cubbyholes. After I wander this fairy world of greenery and flowery boudoirs, I leave refreshed, my mind ready for more of the knocking about that the world outside brings. A second choice is a book like "BH & G Garden Style." I can sit with a book like this and imagine life in one of these pictures of garden comfort, inside and out. This is not plant gardening but the comfort of resting and entertaining and playing next to a garden, in a garden setting, just being outdoors or indoors with the ambience of outdoors. I have numerous books like this, but "Garden Style" is really special because it has such rich, imaginative, calming, creative rooms inside and out that are "garden style." The important selling point for a book like this is how doable are the looks. There are actually affordable decorating tips here. Let me show you what I mean. Randomly opening to p. 38, I find a wicker chair with a side wooden stool, simple design, with a potted pink geranium and a colorful birdhouse. These items are available at local do-it-yourself stores or as is in others. Then surrounding the chair and stool are containers and containers of more potted pink geraniums, pink petunias, junipers, broadleaf plants--all in blue or white or clay pots, creating a calming scene to sip tea and read a book. Here's another on p. 79. Take a small drop-leaf table, paint it white, put it in a nook or empty corner or wall, add matched botanical prints, two mismatched but coordinated chairs, and top the table with an assortment of plants for a quiet garden look in the midst of indoors. One more: a mini-greenhouse in wrought iron filled with potted flowering plants set against a large window, anchored by two wicker chairs upholstered in green and white. A lovely garden look (p. 105). I am currently creating a cottage garden outside my patio where I feed the birds. Some of my ideas come from this book. See you later outside for tea and Pennyroyal dumplings from my herb book, or maybe herb scones from a scone book.

I love decorating books and have a slew of them, but this is one of the best. It contains page after page of fabulous photos, and is an inspiration for anyone who wants to brighten up a home with ideas from the garden. For browsing on a gloomy, rainy evening, this book can't be beat. It is also a superb coffee-table book that your guests will enjoy as much as you do. Highly recommended!

Page after page of stunning photographs of beautiful environments that real people can aspire too! My brain wanted to explode trying to figure out all the different things I wanted to incorporate into my home using this luscious book's examples. Its just a feast for the imagination.

This is my favorite decorating book this year. In fact, I can't stop going back to it for ideas! What can I say? It's me!

I bought my first copy of this book for a family member who was so excited about Garden Style that she asked me to leave so that she could sit down and spend time alone with it. It's beautifully photographed and full of ways to bring the outdoors inside. (My favorite idea? A new birdbath used to hold magazines on a porch.) There's even a guide to garden shops around the country-something I plan to copy and take along as we travel. I'll be buying more copies for Mother's Day and birthday gifts.