Books on native plant gardening tend to focus all of their attention on the individual plants and how to manage the site to get them to live. Little attention is paid to how to arrange the plants to have an appealing design. I wonder of that lack of artful design is why many wildflower gardens tend to end up looking like a tangled mess?

I’ve found a wonderful book that explains how to create a living work of art with plants: Professional Planting Design by Scott Scarfone. Scott explains the principals behind planting design and shows how to use them in your garden. I’m sure we will frequently refer to this book as we lay out the plantings for the PGT. The book is enjoyable to read and practical.

One complaint about the book is that the illustrations are in black & white. Many of the books from this publisher (Wiley) suffer from the same problem. Even the electronic (Kindle) version of the book has no color illustrations. Since native plants are the focus of the PGT I wish the book mentioned garden designs that used wildflowers. I could find no reference to native plants or wildflowers. However, the design principles are the same whatever kind of plants you are using.