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HomeGarden StoreMowers, Tillers & MorePlanting Design Illustrated: A Must-Have for Landscape Architecture: A Holistic Garden Design Guide with Architectural and Horticultural Insight, and Ideas ... Gardens in Major Civilizations (2nd edition) |
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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 26 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Good technical guide. Jun 01, 2010
By Daniel T. Donohue
This is a great guide for those interested in the technical aspects of landscape design. The examples provided are helpful and insightful. Additional graphic examples would be useful.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Planting Design Illustrated Apr 16, 2010
By Linda Jassim
I found this book comprehensive and thorough. I underlining and starring a lot of material that articulated ideas I knew but helped to clarify. The hand drawn illustrations were clear and well labeled. The underlining throughout and outline format was a bit curious and distracting for me as a reader, I like to do my own underlining. I would recommend this to professionals and students alike. The historical gardens chapters on the Chinese and Japanese were very well written and I learned a lot. I appreciate the clear writing and the succinct style. Some of the black and white photographs could be higher res but the illustrations were excellent.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
interesting! Mar 22, 2010
By Deb Nagan
Gang Chens book provides interesting background exemplars for planting design, especially the often overlooked area of traditional chinese garden design. Dense with detail, this book is a good general guide to some of the basic principles of planting design, and read in conjunction with other more illustrative guides, is should prove indispensible in the design studio.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Well done Mar 16, 2010
By Jed
This book is extremely organized and well done. It sets up the fundamental framework of planting design. Not only does it discuss some commonly used plant materials in various gardens, it also uncovers universal principles and truth for planting design. Chen raises the bar by introducing plants' symbolic meanings into the planting design. The plant lists at the end of the book make it practical to apply the plants' symbolic meanings in landscaping.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Philosophical aspects of planting design revealed. Jun 04, 2010
By K. Scarmuzza
Mr. Chen has done a great job with this book of filling a large gap in the technical understanding of the art of planting design. Planting design has been little understood by those outside of the profession of landscape architecture, and little appreciated by many within the profession. This text provides a great deal of insight into the complexity of issues involved in planting design decisions, which go far beyond the anticipated aspects of form, color, texture, scale, and space. He discusses details such as the way sun aspect and atmospheric conditions can change the perception of plant color, and how the expected position of the viewer is so important to design decisions.
He expounds greatly on the human dimensions of planting, explaining how people have developed relationships with various types of planting styles and plant varieties through history, and how these relationships come to bear on planting choices. An extensive review of landscape design history is used to illustrate these points, providing a cultural understanding of the evolution of planting design through civilization that is very useful for understanding gardens from a deeper perspective. The result is quite profound - that a garden is so much more than the sum of its parts, and that garden design has evolved over time as a high art seeking to give physical form to very complex philosophical ideas about the universe and humanity's place in it. Mr. Chen approaches this discussion through a general review of the formal (Occidental) school of planting design and the naturalistic (Oriental) school. The depth of discussion on this issue is, in my opinion, the biggest achievement of the book, although it does tend to give you the impression you are reading a landscape history book rather than a planting design book.
The book is somewhat lacking in graphics to provide greater illustration of the ideas and concepts described, particularly in the Oriental landscape history section, but those familiar with garden design will be able to follow the points. Perhaps in the next addition, Mr. Chen can provide more illustrations for the benefit of people not as familiar with landscape history. The book also seems to wander into various tangents at times that could benefit from more structure, but overall, it makes for an enlightening read that would certainly benefit students of landscape design.
See all 26 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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