Sun-Drenched Gardens: The Mediterranean Style

One of the best garden books ever published, by one of the best authors in the country! I recommend for all to enjoy the fine details of these magnificient gardens that Jan Smithen visited. Inspire one to take part in working in your garden at home, no matter how large or small.

Lots of pictures with captions, not too much text. Good ideas to fit any garden.

Having bought an olive grove in greece, we are now setting about making a garden and found that this book gave us lots of ideas and enjoyed it thoroughly. It will be read a lot.

Sunshine is the most defining element of a mediterranean garden. Pliny the Younger (AD 61-113) wrote of the detached room in his own garden with its cool marble floors. It was open on all sides and covered with vines. He loved to rest in the airy green shade. In a bright and arid climate, the contrasts provide a breathtaking visual and sensory experience that this book passionately and successfully conveys. It features ideas such as those based on a French tese with a shady tunnel of green clipped shrubs that function as doorways to sequential rooms, - Italian gardens sliced out of terracing and covered with alluring ancient pietra dura, - niches with terra-cotta figures, grottos, and Southern Californian water features. The lavishly, and skillfully photographed book is divided into chapters that demonstrate how to achieve the mediterranean look in plantings, introduce shade and water features, create structure with various types of enclosures, design with clipped and pruned greenery, and adroitly use gravel, stone, and other paving materials instead of lawns. The book is an inspiration and sensory delight.

An informative and intrinsically interesting text by Jan Smithen (who teaches the art and science of gardening at the Los Angeles County Arboretum) comprises Sun-Drenched Gardens: The Mediterranean Style. This is a remarkable work which is superbly enhanced with memorably stunning full color images by professional photographer Lucinda Lewis showcasing lush, cultivated, verdant gardens flourishing through the mild winters and dry summers of the Mediterranean climate. Sculpted foliage, antique pots, majestic gazebos and much more fill this captivating, memorably visual tour which is enthusiastically recommended for gardeners, horticulturalists, and the non-specialist general reader.