Garden Wonderland: Create Life-Changing Outdoor Spaces for Beauty, Harvest, Meaning, and Joy

(Hardback)

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A visual feast of garden design inspiration that embraces diversity and teaches you how to create a lush, colorful, edible, and meaningful garden wonderland of your own. Award-winning garden designer Leslie Bennett creates gardens filled with stunning layers of color and texture. But even more than that, they "feed the eye and nourish the soul" (Elle Decor). Featuring practical how-to information alongside examples from nineteen gardens, Bennett shows how to incorporate personal and edible elements into the landscape to honor a variety of cultures, while including families of all shapes and sizes, to create space that nurtures self, community, and more. For example, the team designed a garden for the cofounder of the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation to showcase art from emerging Black artists, while for a vegan chef's garden, they incorporated unusual vegetables that can't be found in grocery stores. A garden for a daughter of diplomats reflects the many places she's lived around the world; for a family that wants to beautify their neighborhood, they designed a vibrant community-oriented front yard. With chapters on floral, edible, gathering, healing, and cultural wonderlands, Bennett provides advice for tailoring a garden to your own needs, whether it's a place to host elegant garden parties, for children to play, to grow your own food and creativity, or a sanctuary to rest and relax. In Garden Wonderland, Bennett helps you unlock the potential of your garden to become a space of inspiring natural beauty, abundance, connection, and belonging.

Reviews

Ive been an avid fan of Leslie Bennett for years. What first hooked me was her keen love of plants, but over the years my appreciation deepened as I realized thather gardens really celebrate relationships and how we as gardeners interact not only with nature, but also with our neighbors, our local communities, and society at large.Stephen Orr, editor-in-chief of Better Homes & Gardens

Pine House Edible Gardens projects always bring me joy. Founder Leslie Bennettunderstands the power of gardens to connect and feed us. I am grateful that this book allows her to share her wisdom with all of us on how to envision a fruitful, stunning, and personal landscape, and give uspractical advice on how to turn that vision into reality.Melissa Ozawa, former features and garden editor of Martha Stewart Living, and writer at Gardenista

Through story and imagery, Garden Wonderland reminds us over and over thatplants should be part of everyday for everyone: as food, experience, memory, and creativity.Jennifer Jewell, creator and host of the Cultivating Place public radio program and podcast, and author of What We Sow

Leslie is an expert on creating deeply meaningful and transformative garden spaces. This delightful book isequal parts inspiring and instructive. Itsbrimming with ideas, whether you want to fill your plot with food or flowers.Erin Benzakein, owner of Floret Flower Farm and New York Times bestselling author of Floret Farm's A Year in Flowers

Yes,your garden can change your life. Leslie Bennett shows you how to put your heart and muscle into your garden, so that it becomes a source of everything that matters the most. Leslie leads the way towards a garden-centric life that is richer, more delicious, and more connected.Flora Grubb, owner of Flora Grubb Gardens

Whether youre an experienced gardener or embarking on this journey for the first time, Garden Wonderland serves as a guide through the transformative process of designing, cultivating, and wholeheartedly embracing your distinct outdoor haven.Bryant Terry, James Beard and NAACP Image awardwinning author of Black Food and editor-in-chief of 4 Color Books

Celebrated landscape designer Leslie Bennett believes that gardens are for all. In Garden Wonderland she treats us to an accessible garden-making approach to create our own plant-based spaces that provide sustenance, beauty, and wonder. Follow her journey through the design process and you'll gain more than a pretty landscapeyoull redefine your own relationship with nature.Debra Prinzing, author of Where We Bloom and Slow Flowers

If you have even a slight desire for a more beautiful and bountiful landscape, this isa must-read that youll devour in a weekend and then refer back to season after season.Nicole Johnsey Burke, founder of Gardenary Inc. and author of Kitchen Garden Revival and Leaves, Roots & Fruit

Author Bio

Leslie Bennett is the owner of Pine House Edible Gardens, a landscape design/build firm based in Oakland, California, and coauthor of The Beautiful Edible Garden. She is the winner of the American Horticultural Society's award for Landscape Design and her work has been featured in Better Homes & Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, Garden Design, Sunset, American Gardener, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Gardenista. Bennett is the founder of Black Sanctuary Gardens, a project that creates spaces of refuge and beauty in collaboration with Black women and communities. Julie Chai is a garden writer and editor, and is the former senior garden editor of Sunset Magazine and the editor of Floret Farm's Discovering Dahlias, New York Times bestselling Floret Farm's A Year in Flowers, and Floret Farm's Cut Flower Garden, and Floret Farm's Discovering Dahlias. Her work has been featured by media including Martha Stewart Living, Better Homes & Gardens, HGTV, the San Francisco Chronicle, Gardenista, and Sunset Magazine where she was the senior garden editor. She lives and gardens in Los Altos, California, with her husband and son.