Inside Out: Relating Garden to House
One of the first steps in garden design is finding an appropriate match of gardening and architectural styles. If you happen to love English cottage gardens and live in a sleek, modern house, this blending can be especially difficult.Inside Outpresents plenty of positive inspiration for people struggling with this stylistic dilemma and may provide you with the just the ideas you've been searching for. Over a dozen different homes and gardens have been included here, each with a totally unique style. Ranging from a weathered summer house in Connecticut to an ultramodern desert retreat, each home has achieved an amazing blending of indoor and outdoor living space. Lush photos emphasize the particular areas of each house where this blending is at its most delightful, with an equal amount of views taken from inside and outside of the actual home. One small garage of a turn-of-the-century mansion is surrounded by old stone walls, lush terraces, and surprising spaces for sitting. The transformation the owners accomplished in creating this space from a debris-filled pit is tremendous, and the result is a serene escape from city life.  The tropical-island space created in Miami is an altogether different story, crowded as it is with varieties of palm trees, vibrant flowers, and a spring-fed pool. The pool was transformed from its original rectangular shape and chlorinated water to a natural-looking blue-green pond framed with ferns, irregular decking, and a small waterfall. No matter what your taste or style, here you'll find gorgeous landscapes that showcase the best of the art of indoor-outdoor living.--Jill Lightner