This book details, perhaps for the first time in print, how to garden on an impermeable surface such as pavement, rock, brick or wood. Gardens can be planted almost anywhere, given a little soil. To be successful, though, it helps to know what soils to use and which plants to seed, and that's where this volume fills a void.
Divided into chapters by the type of surface used -- Pavement; Stepping Stones, Parking Grids, and Pavers; Rocks and Railings; Stumps and Logs; Table -- the book lists dozens of the best plants to use on each, with information on their size and growth rate. Some of the best plants for pavement gardening include evergreen maidenhair, Irish bell heath, false heather, sweet woodruff, blue star creeper and Harbour Dwarf bamboo.
The author, George Schenk, is a former nurseryman and landscaper who gardens in the Pacific Northwest, Australia and the South Pacific. His suggested plantings and the garden tours featured in the book are decidedly Pacific, but the methods are workable anywhere in the gardening world, he points out.
"This book is in part a manual on what to plant and how to plant it on platforms. It is also an account of some memorable occasions in which friends and I have been brought together by one of humanity's more effective social agents, ornamental plant life," Schenk writes.
While some folks will undoubtedly find the idea of gardening on pavement discomfitting, perhaps even profane, proponents like Schenk defend the practice as a "greening" that brings plants more fully into urban and suburban lives. Like the illustrious Hanging Gardens of Babylon, platform gardens can be a surprise and a wonder, prompting the question "What is that garden doing here?!"