Product Description

This work offers a new approach to planning and planting. It shows how to throw caution to the wind and orchestrate colours, textures, scale and scent to spectacular effect from spring until autumn. The key is colour: intense, strong and voluptuous - deep crimsons combined with acid green and incandescent orange, for example. Integral to Sarak Raven's vision is a feeling for dramatic scale: plants with huge presence, architectural foliage, strong, sculptural shapes. To complete the effect, she includes flowers with silken and velvety textures and describes how to flood the garden with scent. There are schemes for sunny, open beds and borders for shady areas, for damp soils and to clothe walls and fences - many of which include lots of quick-growing annuals and take only a season to achieve.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9543 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 168 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Bold and Brilliant Garden is a stunningly beautiful book, crammed full of inspired ideas with glorious photography by Jon athan Buckley.Sarah Raven knows her plants and has a sure instinct for drama and daring. This is no-holds- barred gardening at its most exhilarating--few other gardeners would risk bright pink hyacinths amongst burnt orange wallflowers, punctuated by young rhubarb shoots, newly liberated from their forcing pots, in shades of pink and yellow; or suggest enhancing the effect of the almost black tulip Queen of the Night by scattering the gold and scarlet slashed Mickey Mouse amongst them. Her work as a flower grower and florist ensures that she has sought out the best varieties and many unusual colour variations.

One of the great strengths of this book is that although the brilliant flowers are undoubtedly the stars, the supporting cast is not neglected--foliage is used throughout as a backdrop, for structure and as a foil for the vivid colours of the flowers. Sarah Raven admits that her type of gardening is labour intensive, but at a time when too much gardening attempts to be "instant" it is refreshing to read a book which honestly states that effort is required to achieve stunning results. --Stephanie Donaldson

Review
... an antidote to pale pink and blue gardening. --The Times

Garden News, July 12th 2001
Bold and Bright does not mean gaudy and the clear planting diagrams look wonderful and are really inspirational.

Customer Reviews

A fantastic and inspirational book
Having borrowed this book from my local library several months ago and renewed it so many times I feel guilty, I've come to realise that I simply must buy this book. Having read it cover to cover and gazed at the gorgeous pictures, I now dip into it in on a regular basis for reference and ideas. This book is full of suggestions for filling your garden with a riot of colour and dramatic foliage with sections on suggestions for damp, dry, sunny and shady areas with helpful planting plans. Not a book for those who like their gardens sedate and pastel coloured but for everyone else it really is a must have book. Honestly one of the best gardening book I have ever read.

The best gardening book around
Too many garden books these days are blighted both by pockets of bad taste and by dreary colour schemes. You cannot accuse Sarah Raven of either of these. Her favoured flowers are stunning and her sense of colour does what all gardens should do-cheer you up. Her selection is quite tight, which prevents confusion-a great asset. In addition, the book is clearly set out, with simple guidance as to which plants are suitable for a)early and late flowering b)shady or sunny ground. Lastly, the photographs are superb so that, even if you are a novice (like me) the book is, quite simply, a beautiful read.

It does what it says on the cover!
This stunningly illustrated book will give you lots of ideas for unusual plant and colour combinations. There are also planting schemes and diagrams, advice for using different areas of the garden and getting the best out of your garden in every season. Get away from pastels and think orange, blue, purple! And if you aren't a gardener just get it for the sheer feel good factor of all the gorgeous pictures.