Garden Design Books | Planting Design | Hibernate

Books we recommend without hesitation.

Reference and inspiration for gardeners, designers and the plant obsessed. Both of these are books we return to ourselves - one a working reference for choosing plants properly, the other a visual survey of what contemporary Australian residential landscaping can be at its best.

Secret Gardens Book $50 /
Plantology Book $105 /

Books on planting and contemporary landscape design.

Plantology is a planting design book compiled by professional planting designers, profiling species from ground covers through to shrubs and trees. Its most useful feature is the plant thesaurus, which offers alternatives to the same narrow set of species most gardens default to — genuinely valuable if you are planning a garden and want it to look like more than everyone else's.

Secret Gardens is a landscape design book surveying contemporary Australian residential gardens. It is closer to inspiration than instruction, and a genuinely beautiful object in its own right — the kind of book that stays on a coffee table rather than a shelf. Both make good gifts for anyone planning a garden or renovating outdoors, and both earn their place long after the project is finished. They pair well with a pot or a plant care kit if you are putting a gift together, and both are frequently bought by landscape designers and architects as studio references rather than as gifts at all.