The Bold and Brilliant Garden, Paperback/Sarah Raven

This work offers a new approach to planning and planting. It shows how to throw caution to the wind and orchestrate colors, textures, scale and scent to spectacular effect from spring until autumn. The key is color: intense, strong and voluptuous - deep crimsons combined with acid green and incandescent orange, for example. Integral to Sarar Raven's vision is a feeling for dramatic scale: plants with huge presence, architectural foliage, strong, sculptural shapes. To complete the effect, she includes flowers with silken and velvety textures and describes how to flood the garden with scent. There are schemes for sunny, open beds and borders for shady areas, for damp soils and to clothe walls and fences - many of which include lots of quick-growing annuals and take only a season to achieve.