The Vertical Garden: From Nature to the City

By Patrick Blanc
W.W. Norton & Company, $65.00, 208 pages

The Vertical Garden by author, artist and botanist Patrick Blanc is a book beyond your typical garden book. The book opens with nine chapters devoted to natural habitats such as waterfalls, cliffs and epiphytes, just to name a few. Blanc has traveled the world and has captured some stunning photos of plants and their habitats. The book then moves to the impact of plants on architecture. Again, Blanc has countless photos detailing superficial, hazardous and destructive impacts. For many of the pictures, you must look at them several times in order to believe they are real.

Blanc’s passion is obvious. He invented the concept of the vertical garden in 1991 and believed he could make a building transparent or invisible with plants. He offers step-by-step photographs detailing the incredible process. The book then closes with almost 100 pages of photographs and details of many of his works. This book is a testament to Blanc’s vision, dreams and artistry in a life-altering way. You will be mesmerized from beginning to end with the intricate plans and the attention to detail that is not often seen.

Reviewed by Seniye Groff

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You’re So Invited: Panic Less, Play More, and Get Your Party On!

By Cheryl Najafi
St. Martin’s Press, $29.99, 192 pages

If you need an idea for drinks, a party theme or recipes, Cheryl Najafi’s book You’re So Invited has it all. Najafi offers ten creative festivity ideas ranging from a garden or guys-only scotch & cigar gathering to a dainty spa birthday party. She gives loads of advice on avoiding “sticky situation” scenarios and recovery ideas. You also will find here general preparation recommendations and decoration tips.

Najafi gives intimations to her celebrity clients with stories of what the clients wanted and how she developed the theme for each party. The book has a one-page resource guide, as well as a comprehensive index. As expected with a book on this subject, it has lots of photographs and is written in a very conversational style. This is a book you will refer from time to time. Moreover, it might even spark your imagination to come up with several of your own ideas.

Reviewed by Seniye Groff

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Gardening Vertically: 24 Ideas for Creating Your Own Green Walls

By Noemie Vialard
W.W. Norton & Company, $24.95, 144 pages

In Gardening Vertically: 24 Ideas for Creating Your Own Green Walls Noemie Vialard brings the work of garden innovator Patrick Blanc to life. Blanc is known for creating famous vertical gardens around the world. These can be found on the walls of the Caixa Forum Museum in Madrid, the Rue d’Alsace in Paris and the Siam Paragon Shopping Center in Bangkok. This book does a wonderful job of showcasing the versatility of this type of garden. In addition to discussing plant requirements and design concepts, she details ways readers can create a variety of displays at home. Vialard includes photographs and technical illustrations. Step-by-step instructions are accompanied by soil, water and fertilizer suggestions. Vialard challenges readers to make informed decisions about water consumption and environmental impact. She provides suggestions on suitable plant choices, specifically herbs, flowers, aromatics, and vegetables. This book will appeal to the garden artist seeking inspiration. It will also benefit landscape designers and installation crews. Readers should be aware that some of the material is patented. Home use is allowed but commercial restrictions apply.

Reviewed by Brenda Searle

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Pocket Neighborhoods: Creating Small-Scale Community in a Large-Scale World

By Ross Chapin
The Taunton Press, $30.00, 224 pages

In four-part sections, Pocket Neighborhoods takes you on a relaxing joy-ride through city communities, apartment living and close-knit neighborhoods where people share their porch swings and yards, their gardens and back steps, their farmers’ markets and barbeques all with one another. It’s a modern-day time-warp back to the days of Andy Griffith’s Mayberry, South Carolina where life was simpler, happier, more fulfilled with what’s really important…people, neighbors, friends and family.  Sidewalk chalk pictures tell the tale of the neighborhood endearing one to the message that “kids are welcome here”!

Chapters include; The Neighborhood the Neighbors built, A Floating Neighborhood, Lanes, Woonerfs and Mental Speed Bumps and New Urban Pocket Neighborhoods just to name a few, but you get the idea, right?

Wonderful illustrations and real-time photos of what some communities are doing fill the glossy pages transporting you to a place where you feel welcomed and actually expected. This book is all about not just the community but the individuals within that community making the choice to bond with their neighbors. It’s an attitude, not a district! This lovely, enchanting book would make the perfect house-warming gift, maybe with a basket of bread and a bottle of wine to share…

Reviewed by M. Chris Johnson,

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The Perfectly Imperfect Home: How to Decorate and Live Well

By Deborah Needleman
Clarkson Potter, $30.00, 254 pages

The Perfectly Imperfect Home: How to Decorate and Live Well by Deborah Needleman is not a book that lays out style options accompanied by neat little photographs of how a house “should” look. Rather, it’s a guide to style, on how to find and create your own style, on making a house a home, making it inviting rather than sterile, to find and create elegance that makes your family happy, and a guidebook to creating a background for the best life possible in your home. Needleman describes light, entryways, “cozifications”, bedrooms, books, and scented candles, among many, many other aspects of the house, explaining how one thing or another affects the overall sense of the room, helping the reader create their own styles and themes. For instance, overhead lighting is the enemy of cozy warmth and lamps with adjustable arms and double-bulb lights for a medium and soft setting are highly desirable, especially for the bedroom. The watercolor illustrations that accompany Needleman’s collection of essays on decorating and living well reinforce the sense of fluidity, that decorating is an art, an evolving thing, not a stage set decided by professionals, but something that grows and changes with you and your family.

Reviewed by Axie Barclay,
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Great Food Starts Fresh

By Nathan Lyon
343 pages, $35.00

Recipes for Fresh and Seasonal Dishes

“So, grab your sauté pan, and a handful of fresh seasonal ingredients, because together, we’re going to be cooking some amazing food.”

Though a beautifully produced large-format cookbook, Great Food Starts Fresh is rather disappointing. It repeatedly emphasizes purchasing fresh and seasonal produce from farmers’ markets, but the recipes are neither original nor exciting enough to inspire a cook to dash out for ingredients. Most of the included recipes can be found in any good cookbook (i.e. meatloaf, vegetable stew, hummus, beet salad).

Author Nathan Lyon starts the book with a list of recipes listed by course and continues with a good introduction on kitchen tools, staples and a shopping guide. “How to Choose and Store” is a 12-page section that lists common produce in alphabetic order and how to properly store each item. Lyon divides the main body of the cookbook into four sections by season plus a fifth entitled Chocolate. The recipes are good, easy to follow and many list a link to bonus material related to that recipe on Lyon’s website. Each section is preceded by a list of recipes which a nice tool to help chefs pick a dish to make. Unfortunately, the book’s layout is poor. Some recipes spill over to the next page which proves inconvenient for the cook. The brief index is not cross referenced. It is no more than a simple recipe index.

<a href="http://www.portlandbookreview.com/tag/george-erdosh/&quot;
Reviewed by George Erdosh,

 

 

 

If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home

By Lucy Worsley
Walker & Company, $27.00, 350 pages

In the book, If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home, author, historian and museum curator Lucy Worsley explores the fascinating social history of various customs and practices of life carried out within the private sphere of the home. Worsley starts with The Bedroom, where, until recently, most people entered the world, and continues on to The Bathroom, The Living Room, and The Kitchen. Each chapter discusses the history and evolution of various aspects of everyday life such as privacy (everyone slept in the same room), childbirth (a communal event), toilet paper (an ‘arsewisp’— a handful of straw), cluttered Victorian drawing rooms (the more ‘stuff’ displayed in a room, the better), and etymology (the word dessert derives from the French word desert, ‘the creation of absence’ of the main course followed by sweets). If Walls Could Talk is a companion book to the popular BBC television series of the same name. However, this book holds its own as a curious and thought-provoking read.

Reviewed by Cheri Woods-Edwin

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The Garden Source: Inspirational Design Ideas for Gardens and Landscapes

By Andrea Jones
Rizzoli, $39.95, 320 pages

The Garden Source: Inspirational Design Ideas for Gardens and Landscapes is more than a beautiful book. It is a marvelous resource for anyone contemplating a garden design or landscaping project. It is also a visually stunning compilation of author Andrea Jones’ beautiful photographs of gardens and landscapes from around the world. The book is composed of four sections. The first, Connect, is about the design elements that bring a garden together while the second, Divide, describes the features that help separate or contain various elements. The third chapter, Space, is about working within the physical constraints of the original area. The final chapter, Style, is about creating a plan and sticking to it and encompasses a wide variety of garden types. For each section there is an overview but it is the over 300 pages of full color photographs that will make readers swoon.

It is important to note that this is not an instructional book. Instead, it is a visual guide filled with inspirational ideas. While there are no diagrams or planting layouts, many of the photographs are accompanied by a detailed description of materials and plants used. A comprehensive plant index will help readers who are looking to use something specific in their designs.

Reviewed by Catherine Gilmore,

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Growing Fruit Trees: Novel Concepts and Practices for Successful Care and Management

By Jean-Marie Lespinasse and Evelyne Leterme
Norton, $49.95, 352 pages

Whether the reader is hoping to improve the fruit production of a single cherry tree growing in the backyard or start a multiple acre orchard, Growing Fruit Trees: Novel Concepts and Practices for Successful Care and Management can help. Addressing the ins and outs of growing almond, apple, apricot, cherry, chestnut, fig, table grape, hazelnut, kiwi, olive, peach, pear, plum, quince and walnut trees, this hefty tome contains a wealth of extremely detailed information. From cultivation history to environmental strengths and weaknesses, methods of training to the importance of specific pollinators, each chapter contains everything a grower needs to know to successfully care for a particular kind of fruit tree. The book also contains a large number of instructive color illustrations and helpful photographs as well as an in-depth glossary. An incredibly comprehensive book, Growing Fruit Trees is sure to have tremendous appeal for the experienced arborist or serious gardener.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Goss

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Salvage Secrets: Transforming Reclaimed Materials into Design Concepts

By Joanne Palmisano
W.W. Norton & Company, $39.95, 256 pages

Often books on design are either practical and plain or only full of photographs with little guidance on how to create the same look in one’s own home. Salvage Secrets by Joanne Palmisano, with photographs by Susan Teare manages to be a design book with both. In the text, Palmisano gives guidance on using salvaged materials. She walks the reader through the steps of working with salvaged materials – where to find them, how to evaluate them, and how to make them work in the home. The first part of the book is organized by material with chapters on wood, glass, metal, stone, concrete, brick and ceramics. A later chapter is devoted to lighting. Palmisano argues throughout that using salvage is both good for the environment and the budget but also stresses that salvage shows a respect for our history and teaches us to use what we already have. The book ends with a portfolio of design concepts where the beautiful and striking photography by Teare no longer simply highlights each page of text, but becomes the narrative and demonstration of each design concept. The book includes a list of resources consulted and an index. It is an ideal book for anyone considering salvage in design.

Reviewed by Catherine McMullen

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