You may never look at a garden in the same way again. Though not a “how-to” book, Beauty By Design is a treasure trove of ideas and enchantment for seasoned gardeners and beginners alike. Eleven inspired artists of the garden share their stories, their secrets, and their passion for gardening. Landscape is the canvas. Foliage, flowers, rocks, water, and other bounties of nature are the materials. With plants, objects, art, and artifice, they create magical spaces, engage our senses, and summon forth pure delight.

Travel with Bill Terry and Rosemary Bates to these special places on the Pacific Northwest coast. Visit Dan Hinkley’s enchanted garden, perched above the shore of Puget Sound in Washington State. Close by, beauty explodes in an earthly paradise created by sculptors George and David Lewis and in Linda Cochran’s stunning garden of exotics. Cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Vancouver Island and potter Robin Hopper’s “Anglojapanadian” woodland wonderland. Enjoy the subtle blending of texture and colour in painter Eva Diener’s Sunshine Coast botanical garden. Admire the genius of Robert and Birgit Bateman’s inspiring space on Salt Spring Island, Des and Sandy Kennedy’s fairy-tale forest house and garden on Denman Island, and Kathy Leishman’s garden of refinement for all seasons on Bowen Island. In downtown Vancouver, Glen Patterson indulges his passion for alpines and conifers in his astonishing third-storey roof garden. Elsewhere in the city, Pam Frost’s eye for colour and arrangement transports the viewer out of the urban into the sublime, while on the Saanich Peninsula, writers Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane speak with love and eloquence of their garden, and in verse, too.

Accompanied by breathtaking photographs, these gardeners and their stories will inspire all who love to paint with plants.

Bill Terry is a retired CBC executive. He is the author of Blue Heaven: Encounters with the Blue Poppy and Beyond Beauty: Hunting the Wild Blue Poppy. His calendar, Poppies from the Roof of the World, also features this rare and beautiful plant. Since 1994, he has lived on BC's Sunshine Coast with his wife, pursuing a lifelong ambition to create the perfect garden. His collection of Asiatic Poppies is the most diverse in North America.

Please visit www.meconopsis.ca.

Bill Terry's profile page

Born in Toronto, Rosemary Bates spent much of her life working as a print journalist in Winnipeg and Toronto. She later became a producer at the CBC of current affairs and arts programs, including The Arts Report and The Arts Tonight. As co-author of Beauty by Design she joins her husband, Bill Terry, in writing the stories of passionate gardeners.

Rosemary Bates' profile page

"This delightful book . . . takes us into the gardens of some famed artists . . . In each of the 11 gardens, readers are invited to share in its history and observe how the owners have painted the landscape canvas as they, like all gardeners, follow the path of their particular longing for paradise." —The Times Colonist

"The authors have done a superb job of sharing the stories of 11 gardens and their passionate gardeners along with their interplay with other arts including poetry, pottery and painting. Conversations are interwoven with rich memories and influences that include locales far beyond the Pacific Northwest." —The Vancouver Sun

"It's the perfect time for gardeners to dream about next year! What to plant, what to change, what to aspire to. Beauty by Design is a book that will encourage your gardening dreams." —CBC Radio North By Northwest

"Beauty by Design, Inspired Gardening in the Pacific Northwest, indeed provides both inspiration and consolation in equal measure. Painters, poets, a potter, artists, and creatives from all walks of life are drawn to make gardens, bringing with them a fresh perspective and an indomitable spirit when it comes to executing their vision." —Pacific Horticulture