Planting the Natural Garden

This is an incredibly useful and inspiring resource. It's probably my favorite landscaping book that I own. It provides a comprehensive catalogue of great plant varieties, many of which are good in my zone (6, previously 5). It is full of experience based honest information about plant performance and tendencies, noting varieties that take over or self sow, require extra care/staking, fail in harsh winters, extent of bloom periods, etc. There is a great little collection of lists towards the end of the book also that is handy (plants w autumn colors, structural plants, pollinator attracting, etc) which can help if you have specific goals in mind with your landscape. There are some very nice collections of mature landscape photos and plant combination recommendations which sound lovely.I'm a landscape designer and I appreciate books that delve deeper than your typical plant picture book, but I also don't think this would be too much information for your average home gardener. To me, it feels very accessible regardless of skill level. You can flip through it to just look at pictures, but there is a lot if great information if you choose to jump in.I also bought their book Dream Plants and found it to be basically the same as this book, but outdated and much less comprehensive or informative. Planting the Natural Garden is a deeper dive and I recommend it over Dream Plants. Piet Oudolf, Henk Gerritsen, and Noel Kingsbury are probably the biggest names in this trending landscape style. If you are interested in this planting style, I can't recommend this book enough.

I was worried this would be a giant list of plants. Plants that I probably could buy if I wanted to, either because the local nursery wouldn't carry them, or that it would cost so much money to buy enough of the fancy plants. That would be a useless tease of a book!It did have a lengthly list of plants. I have no idea yet if I can even buy many of these. We will get to the planning and planting next season, we want to be thoughtful about it.What I did like about the plant list is that it had lots of pictures. Maybe not every single plant and variety, but enough to be happy. It is super frustrating when there are lists of plants with no descriptions. This did a good job here. What I also liked about the plant list, is that it listed sun and height and description and other qualities. This started getting me thinking about why you would select a certain plant, rather than just picking ones you liked.There are also a modest but important amount of text about how to plan the garden, and ways to think about your strategy. For example, think about what the plants will look like in different seasons. It has some interesting descriptions and pictures of gardens that look fantastic in the fall and winter seasons.Perhaps I am new to garden planning, but I found the book approachable and inspiring. It got me thinking about new ways to garden. My only gripe, it is not exhaustive -- I want more! :) I do wonder if I am up to the challenge of actually implementing such a feat.The book is well done in my opinion. The text, the pictures, the print quality. I like the diminutive yet sufficient size of the book. It's not a giant coffee table monstrosity.

Always like to read books to learn gardening techniques. This one was very helpful

This book is great if you want to get ideas from what plants Piet Oudolf uses in his gardens and gives you combinations you can try.I didn't give it 5 stars because it does not list soil/moisture requirements for the plants.

I sent this book to my sister for her birthday and she was thrilled!

Beautiful! Simple, direct and awesome! I will use ideas exposed in the book to my projects in Chile. Highly recommended!

this book is excellent. if you like to garden and want more detailed information on how plants enhance each other throughout all the seasons this is one of piet oudolfs best books

Beautiful book with great info, I can't wait to get outside this spring and start!