A Moment in Time: Designing a Country Garden

The eminent and much-awarded designer is well-known and respected for her high-end, poetic gardens that are contemporary yet full of elegant softness inspired by quintessential English gardens--perfect for today's lifestyles and a lovely way to update and complement a historic house. Here, she fully explores her own twenty-acre garden, which she has developed and cared for meticulously over decades--the historic Pepperidge Farm estate in Fairfield, Connecticut--breaking down her design process by touring the garden in sections and adding thematic essays full of a career's worth of tips and tricks so all home gardeners can adapt elements of her approach themselves, including the following: form and structure, color, ornament, incorporating history, layering plantings, creating meadows, cultivating an orchard, planning a perennial garden, creating a pool garden, incorporating edibles and vegetables, making a garden appealing to wildlife, and planning for seasonality (winter structure and interest).

Herman believes that a great garden is laid out to create a series of changing experiences. She guides the reader through the importance of sound, through rustling of leaves or moving water, scent from fragrant shrubs, the touch of a soft, velvety perennial, and many other seasonal and intimate moments, all to enhance the sensual experience of spending time in nature, in one's own garden.