New Garden Design: Inspiring Private Paradises

From vegetable and succulent gardens to sculpture and rose gardens to mountain and waterfront gardens, New Garden Design covers a range of interpretations incorporating walls, fountains, pavilions, canals, pools, terraces and groves in unexpected ways. The resulting new garden is a pleasure garden vested with spiritual, symbolic and ecological intent. A modernist interpretation of Roman stone furniture and freestanding walls punctuate the space behind a 1970s ranch house. A home designed by Bernard Maybeck is accented with a freehand composition of urns, cement pipes and rusty objects, as well as over a thousand species of plants. A grove of olive trees underplanted with rosemary and lavender fields gives personality to two acres surrounding a house designed by modernist Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta.

The new garden is a pleasure garden vested with spiritual, symbolic and ecological intent. A modernist interpretation of Roman stone furniture and freestanding walls punctuate the space behind a 1970s ranch house. A home designed by Bernard Maybeck is accented with a freehand composition of urns, cement pipes and rusty objects, as well as over a thousand species of plants. A grove of olive trees underplanted with rosemary and lavender fields gives personality to two acres surrounding a house designed by modernist Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta. From vegetable and succulent gardens to sculpture and rose gardens to mountain and waterfront gardens, New Garden Design covers a range of interpretations incorporating walls, fountains, pavilions, canals, pools, terraces and groves in unexpected ways.
Garden ideas spring from many sources, and new gardens today-abstract in design and with seemingly no connection to the formalities of a paradise garden or its Persian, Indian or Greco-Roman and Mediterranean antecedents-echo them all. New Garden Design aims to show how many ancient lessons haven't been forgotten. These gardens are fertile ground for creation, perception and meditation. Thirty-eight garden projects and more than 200 gorgeous full-color photographs provide inspiration for creating your own garden sanctuary.
ZAHID SARDAR is a San Francisco writer, editor and designer specializing in gardens, interiors, architecture and design. He is the Design Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and has also written about Bay Area and West Coast design in national and international publications including Metropolis, Architecture, House and Garden, and Western Interiors and Design. He has lectured on garden design for the San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum, the Garden Conservancy and at UC Berkeley Extension. Sardar has contributed to several books and is the author and designer of San Francisco Modern.
MARION BRENNER is an award-winning photographer whose work has appeared in numerous books and magazines, including House & Garden, House Beautiful, Martha Stewart Living, the New York Times, Elle Decor, and Sunset. She is also in the permanent collections of the SFMOMA and the Berkeley Art Museum. In 2002, she had a one-person exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum. She lives and gardens in Berkeley, California.
Book and cover design by Zahid Sardar Author portrait by Judy Dater Photographer portrait by Sasha Stedchinski Cover: Garden by Bernard Trainor Back cover: Garden by Roger Warner Endpapers, front: Sunflowers, art print Endpapers, back: Scabiosa flowers, art print