Designing with Palms
Published by Timber Press in 2018, with photos by Caitlin Atkinson, Designing with Palms offers inspiration, ideas, and information for using these noble plants in landscape design.
Buy Designing with Palms online from Indybound, Amazon, Books A Million, and Barnes & Noble, or visit Flora Grubb Gardens and pick up a copy signed by Jason.
Pictured here and featured in the book, Edith Bergstrom’s painterly garden on the San Francisco Peninsula contains 200 species of palms arrayed over two acres she has sculpted amid heritage oaks and redwoods.
Designing with Palms: A Courtyard Garden in San Francisco
Featured in the book, Richard Gervais's tiny courtyard garden in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood is the product of his collaboration with designer friends over 25 years. Pygmy date palms, fittingly elfin in the intimate space, add to the dollhouse delights of the garden while conjuring the Southeast Asian landscapes beloved by the owner.
Designing with Palms: the superlative foliage plant
Palm fronds, the plant kingdom's largest leaves, are the superlative foliage element in garden design. Whether feather-shaped or fan-shaped, gathered high on a trunk or sprouting in a rosette at ground level, palm leaves are both dynamic and geometric: They're expressive in movement, and regular in form.
These Chilean wine palms (Jubaea chilensis) and silvery pindo palms (Butia odorata) add movement and stateliness to the late Dick Douglas’s landmark garden in Walnut Creek, California.
Designing with Palms: the book
Published in 2018 and illustrated with 270 beautiful photographs by Caitlin Atkinson, Designing with Palms introduces gardeners and designers to the power of palms in landscape design. Offering an introduction to this fascinating, diverse, and charismatic family of plants, Jason Dewees shows the many ways palms can contribute to and structure beautiful, useful gardens, landscapes, and public spaces. A chapter of engrossing essays on gardens from Hawaii to South Carolina to Florida and California emphasize the special aesthetic and symbolic impact of palms, while a portfolio of more than 100 species, including dozens adapted to cooler Mediterranean, subtropical, and warm-temperate climates.