Structural creations in the garden

60 designs to make yourself

Forget about garden furniture made out of tropical hardwood, interlocking patio bricks, and endless plastic garden chairs that create an eyesore. Welcome to ecological self-made garden furniture! This book insists on natural, traditional, local or salvage materials.
Here are just a few examples of the 60 different, easy-to-do and very innovative reations that are proposed in this book: create a path, build a set of steps and dd vegetation, make your own fences, build a dry-stone low wall and dress it up with rockery plants, install a trellis panel out of chestnut poles, redesign the patio and give it fragrance using different fragrant plants, make an original wooden den or a sand-pit for your children, make an arbour out of metal rebar, install a solar
oven, or even create a small pond, …
In addition to enjoying a garden that reflects your identity, the idea is also to avoid over-consumption, tropical hardwoods and materials that pollute or are difficult to recycle.
The aim of the book is to rediscover the pleasure of making, creating and imagining, restoring forgotten know-how, and in reviving the “do it yourself” concept.
All the described examples in the book are real creations. Serge Lapouge’s photos are very explicit and help the reader achieve the handiwork.
Throughout the book professionals give accounts of their own know-how and experience. Last but not least, each type of creation is presented with the ideal plants to accompany it.
This book will no doubt be passed on from neighbour to neighbour, gardener to
gardener and will live a sustainable life!

THE AUTHORS
Brigitte Lapouge-Déjean is an organic gardener and the author of many books on landscape gardens. She regularly writes for the
French magazine “Les 4 Saisons du jardin bio”
Serge Lapouge, her husband is a landscape gardener, passionate about design and natural structural creations.
Together, they created “Les jardins de l'Albarède” (Albarède Gardens) in the Dordogne region of France. The gardens are open to the
public (http://jardins-albarede.com).