Mother Nature doesn’t need a paint chip to combine colors. Even her most garish combinations, like a field of riotous wild flowers in spring, have a grace and beauty about them that amateur gardeners often find difficult to duplicate. So America’s favorite gardener turns timid paint-by-number gardeners into bold and creative artists in P. Allen Smith’s Colors for the Garden: Creating Compelling Color Themes. Painting on a canvas as large as a backyard can be daunting, so Smith provides his usual reassuring and clear advice, linking home and garden colors to create a harmonious palette using the garden home concepts introduced in his previous books such as enclosure, activity, whimsy and abundance. Smith helps gardeners discover their color preferences and incorporate cool, warm and neutral plant hues against the backdrop of walkways, arbors, fences and other hardscape elements. The book also explores how texture, shape and light affect colors, and how to use natural elements as frames for outdoor compositions. Excellent photographs underline Smith’s points, and his plant directory features vigorous, easy-care and dependable varieties from shrubs and trees to annuals, along with seasonal combinations in each color temperature, that can be used as a paint box to create original, living art.
Valiant Women is a vital and engrossing attempt to correct the record and rightfully celebrate the achievements of female veterans of World War II.
