Shady Retreats: 20 Plans for Colorful, Private Spaces in Your Backyard

Most flowers and vegetables love the sun, but the gardeners who tend them crave the shade. A comfortable hammock strung between two trees. A set of Adirondack chairs arranged for conversation beneath a vine-covered arbor. A stone bench tucked into a quiet nook. These out-of-the-way outdoor retreats provide busy gardeners with cool relief from the hot sun, as well as precious hours of quiet, privacy, and peace.

In SHADY RETREATS, lifelong gardener Barbara W. Ellis provides detailed plans for 20 gardens with shade as the theme. Each design includes easy-to-read blueprints and a glorious oil painting of what the garden will look like. Ellis also provides specific plant lists; suggestions on how to bring color into the shade; and practical advice on how to use shrubs, trees, vines, and man-made structures to create attractive, inviting, shady sanctuaries in any garden or yard.

The garden design concepts are easy for even novices to grasp, and experienced gardeners will appreciate the unique inspirations and down-to-earth advice on how to adapt the concept of the shady retreat to fit their own garden's configuration. Complete with suggestions on how to use gazebos, containers, fountains, and other garden ornaments, plus an encyclopedia of approximately 100 shade-loving plants, Shady Retreats is an easy-to-use handbook that helps even beginning gardeners make the move out of the house and into a cool, inviting outdoor sanctuary.