Book Review: How to Create a Gravel Garden Workbook

Alena Samoylenko

Amazon 2024

A simple yet satisfying guide to creating a low-maintenance gravel garden which can produce an elegant, well-planted, drought-tolerant area, free from frequent weeding.  It may not attract lovers of cottage gardens with visions of horticultural profusion, but the book offers an interesting array of designs and plant selections.

Planning is the name of the game for a design that is inherently structural with precision being crucial at the start. Helpful layout templates on graph paper give alternative suggestions, with plenty of photographic examples.

Small trees, perennials and grasses are displayed in group photographs, with informative sketches for small plant collections that sit well together. For example: Santolina rosmarinifolia ‘Lemon Fizz’ with Salvia officinalis ‘Purpurascens’ and Origanum vulgare ‘Aureum.’  Here’s another: Euphorbia wulfenii, Stipa gigantea, Festuca mairei and Sporobolus heterolepis.

This book is really a beginner’s guide for those who want to create their own space rather than employing an expensive landscaper with interesting and restful combinations of plant positioning.     

Review by Marjorie Orr – Mediterranean Gardening France