Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love

Calm beauty and a real oneness with the owner in his environment. A great need for your library…..watch your visitors be drawn to It’s simple warmth. Send this small work to your special holiday card recipients as part of a genuinely deserved emotional “hug.”

Home Outside is a great book. I am happy that we purchased it. We want to reinvent our yard with new priorities on edibles, pollinators and natives. We want it to be a refuge not just for us, but for the birds, the butterflies, and our friends, children and grandchildren.Julie has given us fresh ways of viewing our property and be able to actually utilize all of it (not just the house) to enrich our lives and the lives of others. Here is a quote form the book: "Home is the place where you feel safe and find refuge. Like being hugged by a loved one, encircling your house so that it feels enclosed brings a comforting sense of security to your property. Enclosing arms - walls,fences, screens, and hedges - mark and guard the territory around your home against intrusion from outside, while offering sanctuary and seclusion within". p. 106Blessings,Sue

This book is exactly what I was looking for! The photos and text in this book are informative and inspirational, but what makes this book stand out is the approach of the author. She helps you to identify your personal style and helps you to decide whether you want a front-and-center style of yard, one of overlapping circles, or the like. She challenges you to envision what you want--emotionally--from the garden you are creating, and to use techniques you would use inside your home. This book gave me the final push I needed to finally make sense of my own challenging front yard, and guess what? I love it!

I have read many landscape books, but this one is my favorite because of her holistic approach. The author's aim is to help us to connect with our outdoor spaces. Her methodology is unique and inspiring. Instead of just planting a garden, I am inspired to slow down, really tap into my dreams and desires of how I would like to experience the outdoors around my home, come up with a plan and then implement it in stages. Very insightful.

I am a gardener for just two seasons now. Made some basic mistakes and looking to re-envision my property. Borrowed the book from the library. It is perfect for my needs. It has great photos, some before and after shots that demonstrate the design principles the author describes. I don't think I have seen another landscaping book that explains design in ways that a layman can understand. I have perused many garden/landscaping books, read a handful from cover to cover, and this one is one I will purchase for reference.

I enjoyed this book and will, no doubt, read and re-read it many more times, as is my custom. It has knowledge of color, placement of plants and/or hardscape. Of particular interest to me was the last chapter, Little House in the Woods, which I found charming and helpful. However, my interest these days lies more in the area of the natural habitats of wildlife and while garden design is important, a natural habitat cannot retain a neatness and perfect look if it is to draw birds and butterflies and all the other small creatures who have been displaced due to overbuilding, forest fires, etc. Native plants can be placed in the same way ornamental and exotic plants are, however, so I believe "Home Outside" can be helpful to all gardeners. The pictures are beautiful and the text direct and clear.D.Reinert, Shawnee, Ks.

We’re planning additional landscaping for our 1/4 acre backyard, and we’re going to re-do our front yard. This is a very informative book, and great for pre-planning your patio, garden, or any part of your yard.

Finally a book that really guides you through landscaping!This was very helpful in really helping me figure out how I want my yard to look. Step by step (and simple!) process of figuring out what you want and how to do it and why.I loved the text, but only three stars because I was very disappointed with the photography. Nearly all the photos are of yard that obviously spent 10's of thousands to landscape their yards... not reasonable and distracting as your read.The photos of professional and unreasonably done yards didn't seem to match the words of the book telling us how to do our own, realistic landscaping design.I would have loved seeing some real yards landscaped in a real way for inspiration like is done in "front yard gardens" by Liz Primeau.