The Spirited Garden Creative Private Retreats

A private view of intensely creative residential gardens, lovingly designed and tended by the plant-obsessed owners themselves. Hundreds of inspiring photographs show home gardeners how to successfully inject elements of their own personality—as well as plants in unique combinations—into their own yards.

A mix of high plant/horticultural knowledge and a love of artistically repurposed everyday materials as low-cost but unique features will strike a chord with all those who dream of perking up their own gardens. The photographer-author team sought out the most original gardens to featured here: those that use cleverly repurposed industrial and found materials, handmade archways made of gnarled branches or hand-welded fences, or unique sculptures and structures. Text and deep captions full of plant IDs highlight unusual or remarkable collections of flora and foliage and allow readers to re-create the planting designs and combinations that they see on the page.

Doreen Wynja has been shooting plants and gardens for over thirty years, and has been the principal photographer for Monrovia Nursery for the past twenty. Her work has been published in numerous books and magazines, including Landscape Architecture Magazine, Garden Design, Fine Gardening, the American Gardener, Marin Magazine, the Seattle Times, and the Oregonian. She makes her home in Oregon’s wine country. Lorene Edwards Forkner has been the weekly gardening columnist for the Seattle Times for nearly fifteen years and is the author of several gardening books including Color In and Out of the Garden (Abrams, 2022), The Beginner’s Guide to Growing Great Vegetables (Timber, 2021), and Now Is the Time for Trees (with the Arbor Day Foundation, 2022). She also contributes regularly to the popular gardening blog GardenRant. She lives and gardens in West Seattle.