You may never look at a garden in the same way again. Though not a "how-to" book, Beauty By Design is a treasure trove of ideas and enchantment for seasoned gardeners and beginners alike. Eleven inspired artists of the garden share their stories, their secrets, and their passion for gardening. Landscape is the canvas. Foliage, flowers, rocks, water, and other bounties of nature are the materials. With plants, objects, art, and artifice, they create magical spaces, engage our senses, and summon forth pure delight.

Travel with Bill Terry and Rosemary Bates to these special places on the Pacific Northwest coast. Visit Dan Hinkley's enchanted garden, perched above the shore of Puget Sound in Washington State. Close by, beauty explodes in an earthly paradise created by sculptors George and David Lewis and in Linda Cochran's stunning garden of exotics. Cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Vancouver Island and potter Robin Hopper's "Anglojapanadian" woodland wonderland. Enjoy the subtle blending of texture and colour in painter Eva Diener's Sunshine Coast botanical garden. Admire the genius of Robert and Birgit Bateman's inspiring space on Salt Spring Island, Des and Sandy Kennedy's fairy-tale forest house and garden on Denman Island, and Kathy Leishman's garden of refinement for all seasons on Bowen Island. In downtown Vancouver, Glen Patterson indulges his passion for alpines and conifers in his astonishing third-storey roof garden. Elsewhere in the city, Pam Frost's eye for colour and arrangement transports the viewer out of the urban into the sublime, while on the Saanich Peninsula, writers Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane speak with love and eloquence of their garden, and in verse, too.

Accompanied by breathtaking photographs, these gardeners and their stories will inspire all who love to paint with plants.