A Child's Garden

• 60 enchanting ideas for integrating children's play into adult gardens and landscapes
• A creative response to parents' concerns about children's lack of connection to nature
• 190 color photographs

Until recently, children played outdoors with carefree abandon after school and in the summer. Today, however, children are more likely to spend their free time indoors, watching television, playing video games, or using a computer. But children thrive in the natural world. They love to play in water and with creepy critters. They savor hideaways, can not get enough dirt and sand, and relish climbing to great hieghts. They need movement. They want to pretend and to nurture other growing things. And most of all, they learn from everything that is new and stimulating.

Addressing these basic needs, A Child's Garden offers a wide range of innovative examples showing how to create special places in which children can experience nature on their own home turf. Here are child-friendly ponds, places for pets, and private refuges. Out-of-the-ordinary sandboxes are pictured, along with paths, mazes, furniture, peepholes, and scores of ideas for creative play areas that fit perfectly into adult gardens.

Featured throughout this profusely illustrated book are miniature paradises that parents and grandparents have designed just for the children in their lives, highlighting an enchanting variety of elements that will make any garden come alive for children.

"[Dannenmaier] presents 60 vibrant and inspired landscape plans and innovative weekend projects designed to help motivated parents create imaginary havens that will appeal to both young ones and those who are young at heart." Carol Haggas, Booklist

"[Dannenmaier believes that a garden made for children will engage adults too, because it will be full of secret hideaways and sensory delights."
—House and Garden

Molly Dannenmaier is a writer and former children's editor of Garden Design magazine, where she sought out examples of innovative gardens that stimulate children's natural inclinations. She has also served as an editor of Landscape Architecture, published by the American Society of Landscape Architects, and was editor of Parent and Child magazine. Since becoming a mother, she has taken an active role in creating teaching gardens, and is now settled in Galveston, Texas, with her husband Bill and their two children, Ben and Kate.

Publisher: Timber Press
Distributor: Barnes and Noble
Publication Date: 01-15-2008
Pages: 180
Measurements: 10.04in X 8.08in X .56in X 1.08lb