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Return to Kathy’s Portfolio

Excerpt From Chapter 1:
Through the Seasons in the Dry Lush Garden

The Dry Cottage Garden
The largest part of the [the author’s] garden is what I like to call the dry cottage garden. This area was given over to a weedy, poorly maintained bluegrass lawn when we moved in. I turned that one foot under with a spade and spread six inches of rotted horse manure on top for the winter, which we then tilled in the following spring. The first year, both new plants and weeds grew enthusiastically out of bounds thanks to this oversupply of nitrogen until a late-season hailstorm struck, turning the lush, floppy tangle into lime sherbet in a few foul minutes. Each year since that ignominious beginning, the garden looks better and better.

With the help of amended soil, a wide range of tough, water-stingy plants give a big, blowsy, romantic effect with about two inches of water a month during the hottest season and one inch each month thereafter. By choosing plants from homeoclimactic regions—areas of the world with similar growing conditions—I’ve been able to create a garden with year-round interest that looks very English, without the rain. As with the strip plantings, the cottage garden consists of a mélange of herbs and Mediterranean plants, native western wildflowers and a large group from the Near East and Central Asia.  Plants with attractive foliage and a host of self-sowing annuals and biennials that pop up in places and mingle in ways my hand could never hope to imitate give the garden the staying power through the summer months. Several shrubs and dwarf conifers add structure and winter interest, as do the flagstone paths snaking through, dividing the garden into discrete asymmetrical, curved patterns.

Reviews

An instant classic! Lauren Springer’s ground-breaking book broadens the horizons of every gardener working in difficult climates. It is practical, passionate, and persuasive. She ranks among a handful of American garden writers who write as well as they garden. Move over, Great Britain, American gardening has come of age.

—Rob Proctor,
author Xeriscape Plant Guide

A witty, lyrical manifesto for gardening in the continental regions. This is a horticultural chinook blasting stale ideas and cliches out of the way.

—Panayoti Kelaidis,
curator, Rock Alpine Garden,
Denver Botanic Gardens

Hundreds of Lauren Springer’s luminous photographs illustrate an enormously painterly approach to garden design. The adventurous spirit of her gardening is evident in these visual feats of color, form, and texture, as it is in her remarkably detailed plant lists. Full of fresh and forthright opinions, this book celebrates a vast range of plants for the diverse climates and regions of continental North America.

—Nina Williams, editor,
Country Living Gardener

It has been a very long time since I have read a gardening book with such pleasure. Written by a genuine practicing gardener whose knowledge comes from the earth and whose boundless enthusiasm springs from the heart, this book is filled with the true spirit of gardening. By the time I had finished I had a list of several dozen new plants I can’t wait to try here at Wave Hill.

—Marco Polo Stufano,
director of horticulture,
Wave Hill, Bronx, New York

This is an inspiring look at how to make regionally adapted flower borders, rock gardens, and mini-meadows that will be useful to gardeners far beyond the Rocky Mountain states.

 —National Gardening

This 256-page book features 264 color photographs and plenty of horticulture wisdom for experts and novices alike. For both, the descriptions of the plants, suggesting where they should be planted, what other plants they go well with, and when there have been disappointments, provide valuable information gleaned from considerable experience.

 —The Denver Post

This garden book should be around for a long time. Its advice and its common-sense solutions for many gardening problems never go out of style.

 —Judie Lalanne
Rapid City Journal

The Undaunted Garden has also been recommended by

Country Gardens magazine
Country Living Gardener
Complete Weekend Gardening Guide
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
El Paso Times
The Wichita Eagle 

Fulcrum Publishing – 16100 Table Mountain Parkway, Suite 300 – Golden, Colorado 80403
1.800.992.2908 – 303.277.1623 – fulcrum@fulcrum-books.com