Big Garden Design: The Making of Beautiful Country Gardens is Paul Bangay's most expansive survey to date — a tour through large-scale landscapes designed to feel ancient, unhurried, and inextricably bound to their surroundings.
About This Book
Scale is the animating idea behind this book. Bangay works with gardens too large to absorb in a single glance — places where an allée draws the eye toward distant mountains, where vast lawns give way to wild grass terraces, and where borrowed landscapes become as integral to the composition as any planted border. For each project, he shares the design process in full: the reasoning behind spatial decisions, the planting lists, and the garden plans that reveal the underlying geometry. Simon Griffiths' photography renders light and form across gardens in France, forested sites grown from saplings, and properties anchored by lakes and walled enclosures. Essential reading for landscape designers and serious garden makers.
Key Features
- 320 pages of project documentation, garden plans, planting lists, and landscape photography by Simon Griffiths
- Photography by Simon Griffiths
- Projects include grand gardens in France, forest gardens, and landscapes featuring lakes, mountains, and walled gardens
- Published by Thames & Hudson, ISBN 9781760763299
What You'll Discover
- How Bangay uses borrowed landscapes — mountains, forests, open countryside — as structural elements within a garden's composition
- The design logic behind creating distinct spatial experiences within a single large-scale garden, from intimate dining courtyards to expansive lawn terraces
- Planting strategies that sustain herbaceous borders in flower across all four seasons at this scale
- The process of developing a garden that reads as established and permanent from the outset — Bangay's particular approach to achieving a sense of deep-rooted continuity
About the Author
Paul Bangay is a landscape designer with an exceptional command of scale, known for gardens that emerge from their sites as though long settled into the land. His work spans grand European estates and expansive rural properties, each shaped by his ability to envisage proportion and spatial drama across large ground.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 320
- Dimensions: 25.7 x 33.6 x 3.2 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781760763299
- Publisher: Thames & Hudson
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Landscape designers, garden architects, and serious horticulturalists working at scale, as well as collectors drawn to the intersection of designed landscape and countryside.