The food forward garden How to create beautiful, bountiful, edible gardens

Landscape designer Douglas debuts with a delectable handbook on incorporating edible plants into the greenery outside one's home. Detailed tours of eight gardens Douglas has designed provide ideas on how to decorate with crops in a variety of locales. For instance, he notes that he planted lemon-and-lime hedges to line the patio of a suburban home and strung grape vines across the arbor to provide shade. Showing how he landscaped a townhouse backyard, Douglas reports planting fast-growing salad greens in raised beds to make the most of the limited space and positioning planters filled with mint, rosemary, and lemon balm next to an outdoor bar cart for use in drinks. Offering guidance on designing one's own garden, Douglas recommends readers layer trees, shrubs, and vines to make the space "feel more natural," and consider how much time they're willing to commit when deciding which plants to grow (vegetables typically require weekly maintenance, while fruit trees only need annual pruning). The sumptuous garden photos prove one doesn't need to sacrifice utility for aesthetics, and a particularly helpful section presents tips on growing 60 edible plants. For instance, he suggests that sage grows best in arid conditions, shishitos are among the more adaptable pepper varieties, and huckleberries thrive in the shade. It's a clever mix of kitchen gardening and landscaping. (Oct.)

Landscape designer Douglas (gardening columnist, Marin Living magazine) successfully advocates for combining farming and landscape design to create stunning, productive gardens. He shares eight gardens, ranging from a city garden and a suburban sanctuary to a wild wonderland. Each highlights one of his landscape design techniques, illustrated by multiple beautiful color photographs. He covers the principles of garden design--from layout to plant palette to layering--and gardening basics, such as creating healthy soil, troubleshooting problems, protecting the garden from pests, crop planning, planting, harvesting, and utilizing favorite tools. There's a selection of over 60 tried-and-true varieties of herbs, edible flowers, pollinator species, vegetables, berries, and fruit trees. Each gets an illustrated description, a color photograph, and an explanation of their landscaping uses. The book concludes with a table listing edibles for use beyond vegetable beds--ground covers, tender and woody perennials, vines, and trees--indicating the harvest season, USDA hardiness zones, size, and sun requirements (and which are Douglas's favorites). One caveat; the featured gardens are located in warm climates, and some may be beyond the resources of many home gardeners. VERDICT An informative, gorgeous book with useful tips for gardeners interested in incorporating food plants into their landscapes.--Sue O'Brien