Author(s): Paul Bangay

Gardening

Now in a handsome new edition, Paul Bangay's The Balanced Garden is one long, glorious stroll through more than thirty of his landscape designs - an invitation to discover the very different charms of a variety, of gardens from the minimalism of a rooftop space to the vistas and garden rooms of an extensive country retreat. As always, Paul is passionate about showing his readers the elements of good design - symmetry, equilibrium, focus, purposeful axes, correct scale and proportion, simplicity and restraint - which he sums up as the achievement of balance. But the great strength and surprise of all Paul's writing is his engagement not only with the creation of beauty through balance but with the problems and practicalities of garden making. He loves the challenges that sites, conditions and plants continually throw out to the designer, and what he has to say about his specific solutions is constantly enlightening.