Small Spaces, Beautiful Gardens [Hardcover]

Keith Davitt's Small Spaces, Beautiful Gardens celebrates the possibilities for awkward, undersized garden parcels, demonstrating convincingly that no space is too small to make a big impact. Lacking dimensionality, most small gardens can be taken in visually with one glance. Davitt offers solutions for creating a sense of spaciousness and surprise, even in the most cramped, unlikely location.

A landscape designer, builder, photographer, and writer, Davitt draws on 16 projects from his own portfolio. "Before" and "after" photographs help illustrate both the process and principles of reconfiguring an outdoor space. Who could imagine, for example, that as ugly a duckling as a narrow, shaft-like urban lot surrounded on three sides by cinderblocks, painted brick and metal piping could be transformed into an enchanting series of multi-levelled wood decks, enlivened with container plantings?

Davitt's ideas are all the more convincing because he has photographed the gardens between peak bloom periods. Although spaces are lush with plant life, the book's emphasis is more on design than plant selection. Offering neither budget remedies nor step-by-step technical advice, Small Spaces, Beautiful Gardens is a beautiful book to pore over for inspiration. --Jennifer Wyatt, Amazon.com

This book will teach the reader how to make beautiful, liveable gardens for small yards and city lots by using imaginative design to create the illusion of space. The author brings twenty years of landscape design experience to provide the homeowner with virtually all the practical and hands-on advice they will need in order to transform a small property into a place of great beauty and enjoyment. Packed with information, Small Space Beautiful Gardens includes real-life garden profiles, tips and tricks on how to visually enlarge your garden, and hands-on projects which tackle some of the particular issues faced by the owner of a small garden.

Keith Davitt has been a landscape designer for twenty years and has written on the subject of gardening for such magazines as Fine Gardening, Gardens, and Period Homes. He won the Herald Award for garden writing in the Spring of 2001.