Bold and Brilliant Garden

The Bold and Brilliant Garden By Sarah Raven Photographs by Jonathan Buckley Francis Lincoln, Publisher ISBN 13: 978 0 7112 1752 2 A book arrived by post this morning, on the shortest day of the year, when the sky was dreary, the temperature had dipped below minus twelve degrees centigrade and fifteen centimeters of snow were predicted to fall. The unwrapping of the book was the equivalent of lighting a bonfire in my living room. It arrived at the best moment to warm and illuminate the day. This publication is about color; not about any color and not about the colors we traditionally associate with polite flower gardens. This is a book about sizzling color that sets a flower garden ablaze. In the introduction, the author declares that the use of bold and brilliant color is the result of a need to redefine the palette of her own garden. Having tired of "delicate" color schemes, she was ready for "passionate". However, when these strong colors were introduced into her garden, they turned out to be either too rich or too dark and needed brightening up in order to set them off. To achieve the desired color saturation, the author began to mix tomato-soup red flowers with purples, orange with magentas and crimsons with gold. As a background for these intense combinations, she used acid green and silver plants to achieve the most eye popping results. The introduction of the book ends with a double page montage of the twenty four vivid flowers that the author relies upon to create brilliance. Sorted into an eye catching color sequence, they range from blue Meconopsis to red Allium, from purple Salvia to scarlet Poppy, from ruby Clematis to tangerine Arctotis and from gold Helianthus to acid green Euphorbia. Never heard of some of these plants? Never mind! By the time you've finished reading this book, these flowers will have seared themselves into memory and you will never again look at a garden in the same way. Readers with an appreciation for music will enjoy the author's metaphors. Traditional gardens with delicate coloring are compared to the string section of an orchestra, while richly colored gardens are referred to as the brass section. The deep red flowers that give a garden its overall structure are called base notes, while the adjective "jazzy" is used to describe any vivid colored flower. The main body of the book is an exposition on how to use intensely colored plants in each of the growing seasons. And, within a season, the plants are sub divided into those suitable for damp grounds and into those that require sun, shade or partial shade. Sprinkled through out the book, are care instructions for high maintenance plants such as Roses and Dahlias, as well as advice on staking flowers and soil preparation. Each page is brimming with detailed information about recommended flowers, suitable companion plants to create vividness, anecdotal details about the personalities of the suggested flowers and inten

I LOVED this book. Ms. Raven is a woman after my own heart. We have the same color sensibilites and I naturally gravitated towards this book. She is a proponent of using bright,saturated colors and deep,rich colors in the garden,in contrasting groups as opposed to soft pastels and whites-the "wedding colors" as she calls them. She also is fond of using bold,architectural foliage. I couldn't agree with her more. I loved the two page layout of the "floral pallette" she uses,they are all of the colors I love(and I love color). The photographs are beautiful and I really liked how they took photographs of flowers,with their colors and blended the pages into a kind of pallete. I do share the dissapointment of one reviewer-that Ms. Raven's garden is in another zone from mine,and so therefore many of the plants she grows will not survive in my zone 5 Chicago garden. And I don't even think I have ever seen a wallflower here in my life! The text on plant culture is informative and helpful,but not casual reading-it can get a little boring. Use it as reference. The strongest point in this book is the photographs,as it should be. This book is about color in the garden so visual strength would be the only way to go. This book is a great combination fo informative and practical and visual and inspirational. This book really inspired me and I highly reccomend it-now on to order some spring bulbs!

I have found this book very inspiring. The pictures are great and the text is full of practical knowledge. Although I am from another zone (Zone 9) I found that the guidelines, the concept in the designs, are so well described that is easy for anyone to adapt them to their own zone. It is not a book for "just copying designs" but to learn how to manage color, texture, scale and develop you own creativity.

I loved this book- it had beautiful photographs and good descriptions of the plants used. It was helpful to have the seasons and preferred exposure of the plants included in their description. There are also several good sample garden plans. My only disappointment (if it can be so considered) was that many of the featured plants are not hardy in my zone 4 garden (Ms. Raven's garden is in Britain).For anyone who loves contrast in their gardens, this is the book to inspire you!

Are you afraid of too much color in your garden? Do you fall into the trap of conventional landscaping rules of lumping similar colors with each other? Then, take a bold step and challenge your visual senses. The Bold and Brilliant Garden is an invaluable addition to any gardening library. Sarah Raven presents the use of beautiful color combinations in a very naturalistic manner. She outlines the use of different types of plants and color combinations, and she supplies us with a wealth of vibrant color photographs.