The Garden Designer

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This book is for the serious garden designer - Rated
The Garden Designer by Robin Williams, with its beautiful photographs and hundreds detailed coloured drawings, is easy to read and follow. The lovely clear drawings are among the best I've seen in a garden design book - far superior to photographs, because of their intricate detail that is lost in a photograph. The reader can learn (and be really inspired) from these wonderful, comprehensive annotated drawings, without even reading (the very readable) text. I found the information on undertaking a survey and drawing up the site survey to be extremely useful, especially the detail on the many different ways of determining the changes in level of a garden and how to establish the exact position of the trees in my garden which I wanted to keep.

This is a book for someone who is serious about wanting to do a 'proper job' in designing their garden, irrespective of what size it is. It's not for someone who is only interested in a quick 'make-over'. And, the book has been structured from this point of view, ie, for the person wanting to start from scratch or wishing to alter their existing garden.

This beautiful book is excellent value for money and a true source of inspiration.

Don't bother - Rated
The designs in this book, (what few there are), are great if you happen to own a large plot of several acres but to the average person with an average garden looking for design ideas everything presented in this book is far too grandiose to be of any practical use.

There are many far better books around than this (and a lot cheaper - but then it does have RHS in the title!) and my advice is to steer well clear.

The first section will proceed to tell you a lot of stuff that you already know, like what walls can be made of, and will then proceed to give you ideas for garden features that are either too grand or too expensive for the average man in the street.

This book has been done a lot better elsewhere, check out The Ultimate Garden Designer or 20 Best Small Gardens if like me you're looking for practical inspiration for a small or medium sized garden. It's a shame the Royal Horticultural Society couldn't have done better, normally their publications are top-notch and can be relied upon.

A comprehensive and inspiring garden design manual - Rated
I have a large sprawling garden mostly laid to lawn and neglected for years. Most text books I had come across were either designed just with small town gardens in mind, or were too narrow in their focus. This is a big book in many senses, and I found the layout and the comprehensive coverage of the various elements which go to make up a well designed garden very inspiring. There are also clear diagrams and helpful photographs of these ideas in context. If I have one quibble it would be the lack of detail on the plants used, or suitable plant choices for various ideas - but maybe that is the province of other types of garden book. Overall a very satisfying adventure, even though the price is more than I would usually pay for this kind of book.