The eminent and much-awarded designer is well-known and respected for her high-end, poetic gardens that are contemporary yet full of elegant softness inspired by quintessential English gardens—perfect for today’s lifestyles and a lovely way to update and complement a historic house. Here, she fully explores her own twenty-acre garden, which she has developed and cared for meticulously over decades—the historic Pepperidge Farm estate in Fairfield, Connecticut—breaking down her design process by touring the garden in sections and adding thematic essays full of a career’s worth of tips and tricks so all home gardeners can adapt elements of her approach themselves, including the following: form and structure, color, ornament, incorporating history, layering plantings, creating meadows, cultivating an orchard, planning a perennial garden, creating a pool garden, incorporating edibles and vegetables, making a garden appealing to wildlife, and planning for seasonality (winter structure and interest).
Herman believes that a great garden is laid out to create a series of changing experiences. She guides the reader through the importance of sound, through rustling of leaves or moving water, scent from fragrant shrubs, the touch of a soft, velvety perennial, and many other seasonal and intimate moments, all to enhance the sensual experience of spending time in nature, in one's own garden.