The Living Landscape: Designing for Beauty and Biodiversity in the Home Garden

Rick Darke, Douglas W. Tallamy

Hachette+ORM, Feb 4, 2016 - Gardening - 786 pages

A "thoughtful, intelligent" ( New York Times Book Review ) gardening book about how to create a garden that nurtures the wildlife surrounding it.

Many gardeners today want a home landscape that nourishes and fosters wildlife, but they also want beauty, a space for the kids to play, privacy, and maybe even a vegetable patch. Sure, it's a tall order, but The Living Landscape shows you how to do it. You'll learn the strategies for making and maintaining a diverse, layered landscape—one that offers all of the following:

• Beauty on multiple levels
• Outdoor rooms and turf areas for children and pets
• Fragrance and edible plants
• Shelter and sustenance for wildlife

Richly illustrated, The Living Landscape will enable you to build the garden of your dreams.

"With beautiful photos and many examples, [the authors] argue eloquently that gardens can be civilized, lovely and even elegant while incorporating local plants and creating habitat for birds and the entire ecosystem in which they live." — Chicago Tribune

"Both a primer on how landscapes develop in the wild and a manual for learning how to observe wild areas and then apply nature's principles to your own garden, the book has breathtaking photographs by the authors of wildlife including birds, butterflies, moths, turtles, and bees luxuriating in habitats provided by gardens designed with their needs in mind." — Gardenista

Contents

• Preface by Rick Darke: 6
• Preface by Doug Tallamy: 8
• Introduction: 11
• Layers in Wild Landscapes: 17
• The Community of Living Organisms: 94
• The Ecological Functions of Gardens: 110
• The Art of Observation: 121
• Applying Layers to the Home Garden: 131
• Landscape and Ecological Functions of Plants for the MidAtlantic Incluting All the Plants Featured in This Book: 289
• References: 367
• Acknowledgments: 369
• Photo Credits: 370
• Index: 371

About the author

Rick Darke is a landscape design consultant, author, lecturer, and photographer based in Pennsylvania who blends art, ecology, and cultural geography in the creation and conservation of livable landscapes. His projects include scenic byways, public gardens, corporate and collegiate campuses, mixed-use conservation developments, and residential gardens. Darke served on the staff of Longwood Gardens for twenty years and received the Scientific Award of the American Horticultural Society. His work has been featured in the New York Times and on National Public Radio. Darke is recognized as one of the world's experts on grasses and their use in public and private landscapes. For further information visit www.rickdarke.com.

Doug Tallamy is a professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, where he has authored 107 research publications and has taught insect-related courses for 44 years. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities. Among his awards are the Garden Club of America Margaret Douglas Medal for Conservation and the Tom Dodd, Jr. Award of Excellence, the 2018 AHS B. Y. Morrison Communication Award, and the 2019 Cynthia Westcott Scientific Writing Award. Doug is author of Bringing Nature Home, Nature's Best Hope, and The Nature of Oaks; and co-founder with Michelle Alfandari of HOMEGROWN NATIONAL PARKŪ. Learn more at HNPARK.org.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Living Landscape: Designing for Beauty and Biodiversity in the Home Garden
• Authors: Rick Darke, Douglas W. Tallamy
• Publisher: Hachette+ORM, 2016
• ISBN: 1604697393, 9781604697391
• Length: 786 pages
• Subjects: Gardening / Garden Design; Gardening / Landscape