Designing the Lush Dry Garden

The Ruth Bancroft Garden, known as one of the finest dry gardens in the world, is a pioneering example of resilient design with a focus on water conservation. Ruth Bancroft (1908-2017) was a self-taught gardener and designer whose eclectic methods encourage richly textured, bold, and colorful layers of regionally climate-appropriate flowers, shrubs, trees, and succulents. These include her favorite aloes, agaves, yuccas, and echeverias that she collected and experimented with for over 60 years, and which the garden has continued to steward. Designing the Lush, Dry Garden is the first guide to lay out Ruth Bancroft’s methods for the home gardener and designer. With gorgeous photographs by Caitlin Atkinson, and detailed portraits of 20 gardens inspired by the Garden, discover how to create a design that suits your vision, including:

• How to choose the right plants for your site, including Ruth’s favorites
• The appropriate methods for adapting your garden to climate change
• Advice on integrating paths and structures in a waterwise design
• Tips for low-water container gardens and designs

• “The gardens in this book show brilliantly the range of colours, textures, and forms of drought-resilient plants. There is really no excuse for dry habitat plantings to have a mean, dry look. We can and should open the garden gate to exuberance!”
  Noel Kingsbury, co-creator of gardenmasterclass.org and author of Wild: The Naturalistic Garden
• “If you live in a dry or part-of-the-year dry climate, if you live in a climate with erratic weather conditions (hello: all of us), if you want to contribute to wise-resource use as a model and a mandate in our world, but you really, really want a beautiful and lush feeling garden to escape the world as well—there’s hope. In both time-tested instruction and inspiration—starting from the perfect frame of reference in Ruth Bancroft’s famous plant-driven dry garden in Walnut Creek, California— gardener-writers Cricket Riley, Alice Kitajima, and Kier Holmes offer us a whole new garden path to amble down, learning and loving the gardens that result as we go. With photographs by Caitlin Atkinson that show us what, and how, as well as fill our imaginations’ horizons with true beauty of color and form, Designing the Lush Dry Garden is just what the garden doctor ordered. Prescription: a chapter a day till complete; repeat as needed for mood and motivation."
  Jennifer Jewell, founder and host of Cultivating Place and author of What We Sow
• “Landscape design books are sometimes plagued by being either overly technical and manual-like OR by simply showing beautiful, polished images of "finished" projects with no meaningful explanation of how or why these gardens came to be. Designing the Lush Dry Garden deftly avoids these stereotypes and instead, explores purposeful, generous new territory that defies easy categorization. It is somehow simultaneously both pragmatically useful, philosophically inspiring, and extremely helpful while also being emphatically supportive of leading garden design towards its next paradigm. I, for one, adore a book that is both transcendent but also easy a mellow Sunday read.” 
  David Godshall, Co-Founder and Principal, TERREMOTO
• “The Ruth Bancroft Garden has inspired generations of gardeners. Ruth’s visionary collection of plants is ever-more relevant as we adapt to the vulnerability of our beloved coastal ecosystem. As the climate changes and each season brings new calamities, we welcome new sources of inspiration and guidance. Designing the Lush Dry Garden is a beautiful resource for creating gardens that honor the remarkable variety of plants that thrive in our special Mediterranean climate while building ecological resilience in the place that we love.”
  Flora Grubb, owner of Flora Grubb Gardens
• “There is a real art to creating climate-resilient gardens that inspire us with their beauty, are infused with personality and feeling, and that add joy to our daily lives. Whether you're a novice home gardener or an experienced designer, the design principles, essential plant lists, personal stories, and stunning imagery included in Designing the Lush Dry Garden make this art form so much easier to understand and possible to achieve in your own outdoor space."
  Leslie Bennett, founder of Pine House Edible Gardens, and co-author of Garden Wonderland and The Beautiful Edible Garden
• This beautiful, hopeful book draws you into a conversation about how to make a resilient garden and takes you through lush home spaces designed for the future now. The authors share the stories of people who create and love dry gardens, and honor the capstone work of a woman, Ruth Bancroft, whose curiosity and influence live on today in all of us who are enchanted and fascinated by her pioneering garden. 
  Jason Dewees, horticulturist and author of Designing with Palms