Introduction Designing the landscape Garden writers, landscape architects and garden historians frequently debate what it is that makes a garden great and inspirational. Though opinions are diverse, many experts agree that a great garden must display a sense of artistry, using the sky and soil as a canvas and plants and structures as ''paint'' to create a visually exciting space that can be formal or informal in style, large or small in size. Moreover, great gardens can exist in a wide range of settings, from the highly artificial environment of a city to stimulating natural surroundings such as that of a Scottish loch, a Normandy river valley or a Carolina coastal swamp. When painters seek artistic development and inspiration they visit great art collections, like those in the Louvre, Paris, the Tate Gallery, London, and the Getty Museum, Los Angeles. When gardeners seek inspiration there is no one place to find a wide selection of styles and designs, hence the reason for this book. Though it may reflect a personal appreciation of garden designs, it is a convenient collection of stimulating garden features from all over the world, aimed at presenting a gallery of useful ideas in an encyclopedic listing for ready reference. Gardens of inspiration The great French Impressionist painter, Claude Monet, considered his garden at Giverny, north of Paris, his greatest work of art, and as many as a hundred special design ideas can be gleaned from visiting the restored garden today. In his Clos Normand flower garden, these include visually exciting color harmonies such as his hot-color borders, using mostly yellow, orange and red flowers.

Another Monet innovation is the floral tunnel, his Grande Allée. He used climbing roses on arches to create the roof and perennials, such as asters, to form the sides. Nasturtiums planted to creep across the path completed the tunnel effect. In Monet''s water garden, a Japanese-style arched bridge with a canopy of blue and white wisteria is probably the most familiar garden structure ever made, and the inspiration for many bridges like it worldwide. Since artistry is so important to a garden''s success, many of the design ideas for this book are from the restored gardens of Monet and his painter friends, Renoir and Cezanne. Other images have been selected from inspirational gardens all over the world, not only public gardens in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Australasia, but also little-known private gardens. A study of Paul Cezanne''s half-acre restored garden at Aix-en-Provence, and Auguste Renoir''s five-acre restored garden near Nice reveals startling design innovation quite different from that of Monet. Though all three artists were friends and identified with the Impressionist movement, their gardens are as different as their painting styles.

While Monet created a labor-intensive design using mostly flowers to ''paint'' his outdoors sanctuary, and taking color high on trellises and arches, Cezanne planted a labor-saving garden using less ephemeral elements of nature. His restored garden is essentially a shade garden, terraced with quarry stones and filled with trees and shrubs that paint a tapestry of foliage colors, their trunks pruned to create eerie sinuous lines. Renoir purchased an old olive orchard to save it from development and created a retreat where he could pose nudes as though they were sitting in shadowy woodland on the upper slope of his property. He also seated models on a sun-drenched wildflower meadow at the lower part. Like Monet, who built a boat so he could paint his water garden from the middle of his pond, Renoir constructed a rustic shelter with floor-to-ceiling windows so he could paint the main tree-lined vista during inclement weather, his nude model seated outside in dappled light. Even the well-respected Victorian garden designer, Gertrude Jekyll, gleaned ideas for her plantings from studying the work of the great French Impressionist painters. Many of the ideas featured in this book are from my own garden, historic Cedaridge Farm, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They have been realized from studying gardens worldwide, never slavishly copied, but adapted to the environment of an historic farm dating back to 1791, and similar to the historic farm Renoir purchased as his home in Provence.

At Cedaridge Farm there are no power lines visible, and like Renoir we try to maintain an old-fashioned appearance, making repairs with rusty hinges and nails, and never minding if shutters show peeling paint. Spring and autumn are cool, summers are hot and humid, and winters invariably bring snow and cold that will freeze the ground solid to the depth of a spade. As a consequence of creating twenty theme areas connected by a stroll path, the garden has received several awards for design excellence, including ''Best Interpretation of an Impressionist Garden''. Informal versus formal design The years between 1600 and 1900 saw formal garden design hugely popular, particularly in Europe and North America. In recent years formality has experienced a decline, perhaps because people today see enough formality in their daily lives and yearn for more intimacy with nature. Also, informal gardens generally are less costly than formal ones, which often require expensive stonework and regular pruning of hedges to keep the design sharply defined. Therefore, the first design decision when contemplating the creation of a garden is to determine whether it should be formal or informal, or a combination of the two disciplines. Popular examples of formal gardens are those created in Italy during the Renaissance, such as the Villa Lante and Villa d''Este, which in turn inspired the great French gardens of Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles, and the California garden of Hearst Castle, weekend retreat of newspaper magnate the late Randolph Hearst.

Japanese and Chinese gardens, with their emphasis on stone, water and evergreen trees, are also considered formal because the dynamics of both garden styles rely heavily on exaggeration through pruning and mounding, and the precise placement of stone and water features, even though the end result is not as formal as the Italian model. Informal gardens have always existed around country cottages of Europe, particularly in Normandy and England, but it was the publisher William Robinson, and one of his contributors, Gertrude Jekyll, who rebelled against the formality of Victorian carpet bedding to advocate informal garden designs for estates, inspiring the planting of meadow gardens, rock gardens and woodland gardens, using flowering plants generously and naturalistically. Softscape versus hardscape components Though many garden spaces, such as meadow gardens, can be made entirely by using plants (''softscape'' to use the term preferred by landscape architects), it is often the use of structural elements (or ''hardscape'') which produces the strongest sense of design. These hardscape elements can be highly functional (like bridges and paths) or strictly ornamental (like sculpture and fountains). It should be realized that the more hardscape used for a garden, the less labor-intensive it is likely to be. Woody plants generally do not need the upkeep of herbaceous plants like annuals and perennials, which explains the liking among many modern designers to create minimalist gardens, where a potted plant with a strong sculptural quality, like a candelabra euphorbia ( Euphorbia candelabrum ), may be the only embellishment to a courtyard. Seasonal considerations It is sometimes difficult to keep a garden picture-perfect through all four seasons, and so it may be desirable to go for a big boost of color during a favorite season. Spring is an obvious first choice because it is a welcome respite from winter''s bleakness, and more floral color can be concentrated into spring than any other time.

Rainfall is usually plentiful, while summer months can bring drought. However, meadow gardens can look their best.