Product Description
Christopher Lloyd's evocative presentation of the development of the cottage garden, from humble vegetable patch to lush flower garden.Amazon.com Review
Cottage gardens are popular in North America for theirabundant informality, but British gardener Christopher Lloyd remindsus that a working cottage garden isn't all hollyhocks and lamb'sears. In its Old World origins, it served many purposes: as vegetablepatch, cutting garden, and a place to sit in the cool of theevening. "It has evolved through common sense, combines need withenjoyment and is entirely unpretentious." The Cottage Garden,by Lloyd and photographer Richard Bird, is an homage to thiscenturies-old style that allows a multitude of plants to flourish in asmall space, with a minimum, if crucial, amount of control exerted bythe gardener.

Lloyd's introduction is a brisk examination of thecottage garden tradition, after which he describes a large number ofcottage garden plants. Happily for North American gardeners, theseinclude plants that are commonly found outside of Great Britain aswell as those that have been in the English cottage garden forcenturies. A chapter on cottage garden features addresses hedges,waterways and ponds, garden furnishings, and outbuildings. The book'sfinal two chapters are "Planning the Cottage Garden," with severaldifferent layouts emphasizing different types of plants, and "TheWorking Cottage Garden," which offers details for tending the gardenthrough the seasons and using its produce. Some of these seem ratherdeliberately quaint, such as the recipes for parsnip wine, mead, andpickled eggs. But overall, Richard Bird's serenely intimatephotography and Lloyd's affable, opinionated erudition make TheCottage Garden a book to linger over. It's a pleasant addition tothe lush DK Living series, which includes other notable gardeningtitles, such as Anna Pavord's The New Kitchen Garden and PippaGreenwood's The New Gardener. --Barrie Trinkle ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Best True Cottage Gardening Book Around
I love cottage gardens, real cottage garden, not those perfect ones you see in some books and magazines that claim to be cottage gardens.I've read a lot of books about this topic and I found this to be one of the best, both in content and in photos and drawings.I found myself getting this book from the library so often that I finally bought myself a copy.I'm constantly looking through it when I'm wanting inspiration for my gardens, or when I need something to help get me through a long winter's evening.It's truly a charming book.

If you like cottage gardens and like growing vegetables you'll be delighted by the garden plans and all the information, plant suggestions and photos in this book. The drawings of various cottage garden layouts in the back are really fantastic, as are the photos throughout the book.

After reading through this book, you'll definitely find yourself dreaming of a small cottage surrounded by a riotous mass of herbs and flowers out front with a few hedges and a bountiful vegetable garden out back, and perhaps a few chicken running around.

Full of Details
This book covers many topics related to the traditional English cottage garden without alienating the modern gardener.There are a great many color photographs which include overall garden shots and pictures of individual traditional cottage garden favorites, many of which are easily available in the U.S.There are also many color drawings with various cottage garden designs (aerial views) including the traditional cottage garden with primarily vegetables, a garden with fruits and vegetables and flowers, and flowers only and flowers and vines.

The book is well organized and is both charming and useful.If you are very visual you won't be disappointed with the combination of pictures and drawings.

The end of the book contains information on what garden tasks can and should be completed during the four seasons, and how to accomplish them, including a brief section on pruning.There is also a section included in this part of the book which gives traditional recipes and ideas about how to use the bounty from your garden, including dandelion wine, and mead.This book is a good read and there is plenty to return to again and again. ... Read more

Product Description
This unique book is a dialogue between two extraordinarily knowledgeable and opinionated plantsmen who offer valuable advice on which seed-raised flowers to grow, how to germinate and tend to them, and how to use them in the garden. The discussion is informative, urbane, and entertaining.Published at $22.95 Available Now at $11.49 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A great chat from two british master gardeners.
I'm not a flower gardener but this book is quite unusual.Two british gardeners handle each species of flowers they have experience with, trading sentences in a dialog.The photos are just OK, but because the text is genuine experienced gardeners chatting, it makes a conversation worth getting close enough to hear.A 1994 book, but worth buying as if new, master talk worth reading. ... Read more

Product Description
Christopher Lloyd, Britain's most famous garden writer and the owner of one of Britain's most visited gardens at Great Dixter, has always enjoyed spending a great part of the year travelling around Great Britain, Australia and America visiting other people's gardens. Some of these gardens are written up in his weekly column for "Country Life", and in this book the gardens range from specializing in botanical specimens to simple yet beautifully planned gardens. Gardens with rivers, gardens with wildernesses, gardens with statuary, gardens on the mild western coast of England and Scotland, gardens in very dry terrain in Australia and gardens in the USA are all covered. ... Read more

Product Description

Here, at last, is a book on gardening with color by its most adventurous exponent, Christopher Lloyd. Color for Adventurous Gardeners is about using color for maximum impact.

Previous books on gardening with color have treated each color as a separate entity, but, in fact, colors work with and against each other, and must be viewed as relationships. This is the first book on gardening with color that explores how to make successful color associations with plants. Yes, there are color rules, but you have to know when and how to break them.

Offering expert views based on his many years of experience, Christopher Lloyd explores each color and encourages readers to be adventurous and daring. "The limitations imposed by rules," he writes, "are a safe-haven, but the adventurous gardener will want to try something different."

Color for Adventurous Gardeners includes over 200 stunning photographs throughout its 11 chapters, each followed by a recommended plant list:

• Red - Nothing to Fear
• Challenging Orange
• True Blues are Few
• The Value of Mauve
• Enigmatic Green
• Broken White
• Cheerful Yellow
• The Truth about Pink
• Sunlit Purple
• Brown Studies
• Sophisticated Black

Informative and inspiring photographs by Jonathan Buckley illustrate Lloyd's colorful writing on a colorful subject, making Color for Adventurous Gardeners both a visual feast and an entertaining read.

Customer Reviews (2)

Bold Color Vision
Christopher Lloyd's bold color vision helps bring out the adventurous gardener in all of us.

TRUE value!
The first thing a book about color in the garden ought to have is big pictures and lots of 'em. This book is positively unstinting: full page and even double page wonders (muzzle yourself; although the paper quality seems good, it would be a pity to sully the pages with drooling).

The seldom-under-opinionated Christopher Lloyd provides text as colorful as the photos, so brace for throwaway remarks about mundane dahlia leaves and not being snobby about dandelion flowers. There is a reassuring coziness, too, as Lloyd reviews his delights and prejudices about gardening in general and on his own expansive plot.

Here's a Christopher Lloyd lecture and slide show to peruse at your leisure. Just like such events, the book is thoroughly informative and completely entertaining. ... Read more

Product Description
7/1/87--PBK WILL NOT BE RUN-ON. 19/8/87-REPRINT 5000X183P. BOOKS "THE WELL CHOSEN GARDEN" AND WILL HAVE APPROXIMATELY 6O COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN BY PAMLA TOLER, THE PHOTOGRAPHER WHO HAS WORKED VERY CLOSELY WITH HIM ON THE NEW EDITIONS OF "THE WELL-TEMPERED GARDEN" AND "FOLIAGE PLANTS". ... Read more

Product Description

Another of Lloyd's enthusiasms is cooking from the garden, and he writes of sowing lettuces successively to provide greens from spring to October and gives advice about growing fruit and tomatoes. He also loves ornamental grasses, water gardening, vines, and flower borders. All the monthly tasks and triumphs of making and caring for a complicated garden are captured here in color photographs and in Lloyd's opinionated and knowledgeable prose. "I am a bit snooty about escallonias," he begins, and then goes on to tell which are worth letting into your garden. This is a book worth letting into your heart and onto your bookshelf. --Valerie Easton ... Read more

Product Description
An elegant and amusing exchange of letters on life and gardening between two of the world's leading gardeners. In this delightful correspondence, which spans a garden year, two dear friends and celebrated gardeners share their observations, anecdotes, and accumulated wisdom. Beth Chatto, whose mastery of unpromising sites is unequalled, began her garden 30 years ago, tackling the dry, flat, exposed landscape of East Anglia. Triumphing over the most daunting conditions, it is now a mecca for plant lovers. Christopher Lloyd has been no less successful at Great Dixter in Sussex, transforming an old rose garden into a hotbed of brightly colored tender perennials. Brimming with wit and closely-observed detail, their letters are a pleasure and an inspiration. Among Beth Chatto's books are The Dry Garden, The Damp Garden, and The Green Tapestry. Christopher Lloyd has written a host of classics, including The Mixed Border, The Well-Tempered Garden, and The Gardener Cook. 254 pp 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Dear Friend and Gardener
I had trouble with this book. I just couldn't get into it. Was it because I don't share the authors' fascination with the many types of snowdrops? Or maybe because I don't care for opera? And what exactly does opera have to do with gardening? Perhaps it was the writing. The letters were more esoteric discussions than chatty correspondence between two gardeners who are also close friends. Are the English more formal in their letter-writing?

The answer, of course, is that these are not "real" letters. They are merely a literary device suggested and edited by publishers. This was hinted at by Mr. Lloyd in his introduction but I didn't catch on until the very end when the "correspondence" drew to a close. I read the entire book under the impression that I was reading genuine letters originally written with no thought of future publication. Once it was revealed that the "letters" were written specifically to be published in book form, I felt cheated. It should have been clearly stated at the beginning that this is a collection of essays addressed to each other so that the reader is not led to think that s/he is about to be privy to something special.

First-rate writers, who happen to garden
Two old friends, who also happen to be two of England's best known gardeners--correspond for two years in this absorbing and heart-warming book.The conversation was intended to be about their respective gardens and nurseries, and the reader who loves gardens will be richly rewarded.But the correspondence ranges much further--to music, food, family, friends, colleagues, and, inevitably , the weather. Beth Chatto's luminous intelligence and courageous openness set off the forthright and irrepressible Christopher Lloyd.This is a book about love, life, and plants, and a real winner. ... Read more

Product Description
Most gardeners want their borders to be interesting and colorful over a long season, even year-round if winters are not too severe. With this book, Christopher Lloyd shows how he chooses and orchestrates plants so that the borders always look their best. Once having covered the principles of succession planting, Lloyd explores the ingredients necessary to ensure continuously lively borders---from anchor plants and permanent perennials to drop-in plants and self-sowers. Packed with fresh ideas and practical advice for every season, Succession Planting contains all the information you need to create brilliantly successful year-round planting schemes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Fantastic resource and eye candy
This is a great balance of fantastic full-page photos and invaluable information.The text is insightful without being stuffy, and the photos are fantastic.Easily approachable as a book to read cover to cover or pick up for a few minutes of inspiration.Fantastic buy.

Loaded With Ideas and Great Photos
What an inspirational, fun and delicious book by Mr. Lloyd. Just a wonderful go-to book to get the most out of each growing season. I own every book Christopher Lloyd has ever written, and I find myself picking this one up the most. Buy this and enjoy!!!!

Read it for fun, and ideas, but not for examples of what you can do at home
This is a beautiful, and beautifully made book, and has many interesting ideas, not the least of which is how to think about the beauty of "off-season" plantings. I'm thinking about the colors of shrubbery stems in the winter in a way I didn't before.

That being said, if I'd known that the author had inherited a generations-old garden and worked on it all his life, full-time, in Sussex, England, I probably would not have bought the book. There's no mention of the cost of a garden like his (400 years of compost), no awareness that some people can't garden full time, and no thought given to other climates or sizes or types of terrain. For him, a border is going to be 15 feet wide--for me, that's half my yard. And about half the plants he recommends highly simply will not grow where I live.

To be fair, this information was available in the listing--buried in the back link to Editorial Reviews, half-way down, or if one clicked on Look Inside and then read the back flap. Since this is a highly local gardening book, I would have liked to see that information front and center.

I will probably use a few of these ideas, and as I said, the book is a pleasure to look at and read. It's just not the content I expected or wanted.

Unattainable Beauty!
Succession Planting for Year-round Pleasure is a fantastic book by Christopher Lloyd, who has previously written quite a few, which are also excellent. The photos are among the most beautiful I have ever seen, and I give this book my highest honors. But perhaps it deserves some demerit on the grounds of impracticality or even depressing unattainability.

For one thing, Lloyd's long border at his estate at Great Dixter is 200 feet by 15 feet, so many of the effects which he finds practical are not possible in any garden likely to be owned by the bourgeoisie. Further, he gardens in England in perhaps the equivalent to Zone 8. Despite this, he is always looking to push the limits of hardiness with exotic plants. And outside of Britain and coastal Oregon and Washington, there is virtually nowhere in the English-speaking world where the winters are so mild, and yet the summers are not too hot for many of his plants.

So taken altogether, in any combination of 3 plants you might consider, it's a safe bet that 1 of them either can't be grown in your location, or will require extraordinary levels of coddling to get through the winter. At some level there's nothing wrong with that; who hasn't at least considered growing Dahlias or Gladioli, which must be dug up, but can then be stored in most basements? However, his planting schemes are more labor intensive than this. The semi-hardy and tropical plants he loves must be dug up, or have cuttings taken, and many are wintered under glass; to do this for all of his many varied plants, he apparently has at least 3 different temperatures in his greenhouses or cold frames.

Normal (i.e., not superhuman) gardeners use biennials and short-lived perennials (the ones which seed themselves to death) such as Lupines, many Dianthus, Digitalis (foxglove) and Lychnis coronaria, as relatively easy self-sowers, performing enough dead-heading to keep seedlings to a modest level, and hopefully to keep the mother plant alive as well. For Lloyd and his head gardener, Fergus Garrett, the chosen method for all of these but the Lychnis (rose campion) is generally to sow seeds in summer, pot them up and put in a cold frame in October, bed out the next April or May, then rip out the plants as soon as their blooms have faded. Naturally his Lupines make mine look diseased. Damn him to hell and all that. For fuzzy-leaved Verbascums, which he winters in their final positions, he actually suspends a plate of glass over their crowns to keep them dry so they don't rot!

All that said, his plant combinations are exquisite, and many of them are obtainable by most gardeners in temperate climates. More important, the principles he espouses, the color combinations, and the methods of succession among broad types of plants, are all transferable to less intensive methods, or to other plants which are more practical for your situation. Further, I defy anyone to read this book without discovering several new plants he will plan to try out. I am made newly aware especially of several with true- and deep-blue flowers. Buy or borrow this book, but also consider his older books, "The Adventurous Gardener" and "The Well-Tempered Garden." They have essentially no illustrations, but a wealth of cultural information and design ideas and critiques of many plants and cultivars.

I love this book!
Normally I don't get into gardening books...I'm a sucker for the pictures, but find the text boring.

This book however has been so fun to read -- and, yes the pictures are beautiful. It helps create a garden for each season, and it shows photos from the same garden each season. I've just planted based on some ideas in this book, so I guess I'll need to report back how it works out.
... Read more

Product Description
Christopher Lloyd was the grand old man of British gardening. Cuttings is a selection from his beloved columns in the Guardian newspaper. Arranged to cover the seasons, this magical book will delight all who love good gardening and good gardening writing. ... Read more

Product Description
Expansive herbaceous borders, orchid-filled meadows enveloped by old stone, precision-carved topiary, and an air of gentle eccentricity make Great Dixter the quintessential English country garden. Yet the impact of Christopher Lloyd’s unique creation extends way beyond the gardening world and affects all who pass through it in a very particular way.

In this intimate collection of written and photographic contributions, Christopher Lloyd’s wide circle of family and friends describe what Great Dixter means to them. Food, poetry, music and plants feature large with one guest recounting the delight of eating an exquisitely cooked turbot and another how a bloom of magnolia was analyzed with botanical precision during the course of dinner. Visitors remember the feel of the centuries-old floorboards underfoot, the thrill of waking early to peer out on topiary enshrouded in fog, and many describe how, in one way or another, Great Dixter changed their lives.

This valuable record encapsulates what makes time spent at Great Dixter in particular, and to some extent time spent in all gardens, so irreplaceable. It adds an important layer to our understanding of Christopher Lloyd’s achievements and spurs us on to new heights in our own gardening endeavors.


... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Charming book about a great gardener
For anyone who has visited Great Dixter in England, or has wanted to, this is a great memoir. Written by friends and fellow gardeners this is an affectionate portrait of a passionate, creative and sometimes prickly gardener. Not to be missed, this book is a beautiful and ideal gift for gardeners. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Ranks among the very best
Christopher Lloyd was a passionate gardener with much practical experience from running his own extensive gardens at Great Dixter, Sussex. This book with over thirty sections under six main headings covers almost every aspect of gardening in a fresh and questioning manner, often dispelling long held opinions.

In addition the book is illustrated with many of the author's own photographs (1973 edition). It also has a glossary and substantial index.

Christopher Lloyd's writing is outspoken, opinionated, witty, entertaining, authoritative, practical, informative, one could go on, but above all it is a sheer pleasure to read. Without doubt Christopher Lloyd was one of the greatest garden writers, and this book must rank among his best. This offering notwithstanding its age is an absolute gem; with so many shallow gardening books now being published writing such calibre only goes to highlight the dearth of able garden writers today.

Whether or not one enjoys a similar climate to Lloyds South of England garden, the thinking and principles behind his writing can only enlighten and benefit gardeners wherever they be.

Chock full of advice.....
THE WELL-TEMPERED GARDEN is a classic book, filled with all sorts of advice from one of Britain's leading garden experts--Christopher Lloyd.Lloyd is responsible for Great Dixter, one of the premier gardens in England. WELL-TEMPERED GARDEN was first published in 1973, and this version is the new and updated and somewhat expanded version.

Whether or not the inexperienced gardener can use this book is debatable. GARDEN contains tons of information, but the paperback contains no photographs. Unless you are an experienced gardener who can picture the plant varieties Lloyd discusses, I would think GARDEN would prove more confusing than not. I am an experienced gardener and I found many interesting tips.

Lloyd is a plantsman, and he has a good deal to say about many of the plants generally found in gardens in the temporate regions of America as well as England, but his discussion is confined to examples of plants grown at Great Dixter (past and present, failures and successes).I struggled through the text, trying to read it like a 'book', and then decided it made a better reference work. If you're interested so-called 'tricks of the trade' regarding garden staples such as tulips, peonies, pansies, primulas, or climbers, shrubs, and roses, you can find the item of interest in the index, locate it in the text and read about it.

Lloyd shares his accumulated wisdom about a large assortement of plants, providing the sort of information one usually finds only in specialty books on particular plants, not in a general gardening book. For example, he says, "What is an azalea?" He then goes on to discuss azaleas in terms of their botanical classification (they are rhodendrons), notes that there are many kinds of azalea, and suggests that one sort or another may work better depending on what you are attempting to do.

Many of Lloyd's comments are better suited to the gardener in England (lots of stuff on roses). However, he also discusses plants of interest to Americans. For example, his text concerning Buddleias is quite relevant for gardeners in the mid-Atlantic region. Lloyd suggests Buddleias are in the top flight of second-rate shrubs. They grow fast but are sadly sketetal in winter. However, he suggests, they are indispensible. He then goes on to discuss the different kinds of buddleias you might want to grow. I don't think he quite says why they are indispensible, but anyone who knows their colloquial name 'butterfly bush' knows why.

My sense of Lloyd is that he is like an old maiden aunt or bachelor uncle, full of information that could save you a bit of work and heartbreak if only he would 'spill the beans'. For the most part I have little idea why he's sharing what he's sharing (he starts his sentences in the middle), but every other paragraph or so he drops a gem. ... Read more

Product Description
A highly enjoyable biography of the gloriously eccentric English gardener and writer, Christopher Lloyd (“Christo”) who created the garden at the English house of Great Dixter in Sussex, and was regarded as the greatest “plantsman” of the 20th century.


From the Hardcover edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Less than I hoped for . . .
I have written all the books Christopher Lloyd has written in the last 15 years or so.They were pointed, thoughtful and instructive.So I was interested to read a biography of him.The first 40% of the book is a soap opera of his and his family's life under his eccentric, domineering mother.Sad stuff.The last 60% chronicles his going around the world to look at plants and give lectures.

It seems that the Great Dixter garden only became famous under the organization of Garrett Fergus, who came on to work with him in the last 15 years of his life.
I suppose the book chronicles his life accurately enough.But the persona in his writing is much more interesting than the persona of himself. ... Read more

Product Description
This book takes a personal view of how to combine plants and shrubs to create spectacular effects in a garden. Planting schemes are arranged by season to create the colour combinations of the author's own garden at Great Dixter in Sussex. Many gardeners will be surprised to learn that atmospheric colour and foliage effects are possible in all four seasons. The book includes information on tulips, foliage meadows, ponds, walls, grasses, bamboo, winter arrangements and topiary. ... Read more

Product Description
Everyone has at some time seen the most breathtaking of sights - a meadow of grasses and wildflowers. The community created by flowers and grasses, butterflies, grasshoppers and other fauna, is rich and colourful, but fast disappearing. "Meadows" covers all aspects of the topic - from the romantic concept of the Swiss Alpine meadow and the man-made prairies of the USA to Dutch and German approaches to naturalistic plantings and the wildflowers of South Africa. Full of practical information, this book is packed with all the advice for creating and maintaining your meadow that keen gardeners will crave. ... Read more

Product Description
Christopher Lloyd knows perennials as well as anyone else alive. Now available in paperback, this book represents the fruit of Lloyd’s lifetime study of perennials. Genus by genus, he sets down everything he has learned, thought, seen, tried, liked, or regretted about them, individually or in combination. He is formidably knowledgeable, iconoclastic, opinionated, and always entertaining. Here, meticulously recorded, are his expert opinions about numerous varieties of flowering garden plants, from Acanthus to Zigadenus, accompanied by spectacular photographs from Jonathan Buckley and others. Any gardener will find themselves opening this book time and again with pleasure and the frequent thought, "I MUST grow this one, too." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The gardening book we've always wanted
Following a short but informative introduction the main body of the book is arranged alphabetically by plant genus, wherein there is a general description followed by an assessment of each species or variety of that genus. The book concludes with a glossary and an index to plants and photographs. The book is beautifully illustrated with in excess of eighty full and half page colour photographs depicting plants singly and in stunning combination - but however fine the photographs are the stands on its writing.

Unlike any other gardening "encyclopaedia" Christopher Lloyd's Garden Flowers is a personal account. Yes it is full of information about the plants, size, colour and so forth, but it is honest and forthright in its descriptions. It is typical of his work; in discussing plants he takes no prisoners, and he is not afraid to express his opinions; one might not always agree with him, but such was the stature of the man that I am sure he would not expect one to.

This is a book full of delightful phrases and expressions, brimming with powerful observation and wit. Christopher Lloyd is always a delight to read such that I am sure even a non-gardener would fine his writings pleasurable. It is his combination of informed authority, open mindedness, fearlessness, adventurousness, his passion for plants and gardening and his wit which make his writings such a joy. Christopher Lloyd was one of our greatest plantsmen and garden writers, and this is perhaps the book we've always wanted from him, how fortunate we are now to be able to enjoy it.

Christopher Lloyd -- organized, yet still colorful
Lloyd's normal rambling, storytelling style doesn't suffer at all from being organized into this alphabetical presentation of his favorite plants.In fact, I like him this way.Some plants get a quick brush off.Some get rich detail.Even the ones I'll never grow are fun and interesting to read about.

He includes names of favored varieties. Unlike with many "Euro-gardening" books, I have been pleased to find those varieties available by mail and even locally (from a good nursery specializing in perennials).There are exceptions.I liked the Dr. Seuss look of Helianthus Salicifolius in one of Lloyd's photos.Most sites I found by searching for it on web were in foreign languages.There's hope, however, as it's apparently known as "willow-leaved sunflower and rock sunflower" in Kansas.If it doesn't get to Ohio from Europe, maybe it will get here from Kansas.

I can't give five stars to a book that commits my pet peeve:photos, although lovely and colorful, are printed in sections.They are cleary labeled and referenced to the text and text descriptions have photo number references in the margin, where they are easy to find.It works, but I have four other books by Timberland Press, each intermixing great content with great photos.Go figure. ... Read more

Product Description
A scholar among professional gardeners, Christopher Lloyd is famous throughout the English-speaking world for his articles in Country Life - decades of sustained brilliance and entertainment, unparalleled in gardening journalism. He is renowned also in Britain for the gardens of his Sussex home, Great Dixter, where he ceaselessly experiments with new ideas. Thirty years ago he wrote the classic Well-Tempered Garden. Now, he presents his lifetime's study of the gardener's main materials - perennial plants. Describing over one thousand plants, with common names, descriptions and judgements on thousands of species and varieties, he outlines how to choose perennials, what to choose and what absolutely not to choose. Most encyclopaedias show garden plants impartially: the easy and the difficult, the graceful, the graceless and the frankly awful, all without any discrimination. Lloyd goes further. With every group he discriminates, appraises, warns, speculates and experiments, offering an individual perspective on horticulture that will entertain, enthuse and inspire. ... Read more

Product Description

Christopher Lloyd was one of the world's most outspoken and adventurous gardeners. In this, his last book, he offers his unique perspective on creating 'hot and steamy' planting schemes wherever you garden. It features his most extravagant plantings in the famous borders and pot displays that delight and excite, and sometimes shock, visitors to his garden, Great Dixter.

Covering structure as well as content, hardy as well as tender, foliage as well as flowers, Exotic Planting for Adventurous Gardeners is a worthy successor to Succession Planting and an exuberant swansong for one of the most respected and beloved gardeners ever.

Customer Reviews (3)

Exotic Planting for Adventurous Gardeners
For those of you out there, absolutely mad about tropical gardens, this is the ticket for you! Christopher Lloyd, though he left us a short time ago will always be #1. His magnificent transformations of the plain into the fabulous is his trademark.One can see his wonderful, childlike, sense of whimsy, written into his designs. I myself, having seen Great Dixter, his work of art in the UK, was transfixed! His command of the Botanical, as well as the outlandish is phenomenal.

Any general-interest collection appealing to gardeners will find it a popular lend.
Christopher Lloyd was one of the world's most influential gardeners, and while he passed in 2006, his influence remains. EXOTIC PLANTING FOR ADVENTUROUS GARDENERS covers garden content, structure, and theory and represents his last work, nearly complete at the time of his death. His gardener friends helped finished the book, which receives gorgeous color photos by Jonathan Buckley as it presents articles describing exotics in an urban garden, managing unusual plant combos, and more. Any general-interest collection appealing to gardeners will find it a popular lend.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Unexpected new book by the Master Gardener
To us garden readers who have enjoyed reading the adventures into gardening by Christopher Lloyd will be pleased and thrilled with the unexpected book by the Master on his 'Exotic Garden' area at Great Dixter UK. After reading the book 'Cuttings', I thought that was the end of an era; but no, we have a new adventure book. Well presented with loads of new photos by Jonathan Buckley. A delight is the additional material given by his gardening friends and these appear throughout the book.
Great read on the exotic garden that began life in 1994. One disappointment is the lack of mention of Farfugium japonicum var, giganteum, or even a photo; to me it is the pinnacle of an exotic garden plant. C. Lloyd did mention it in his book 'Succession Planting' even supplied a dashing photo.
Good Xmas read. ... Read more