Landprints: The Landscape Designs of Bernard Trainor

This is a wonderful book without undue copy. Many nice photos of Trainor's designs. If you like the idea of keeping things natural and working with the land/surroundings you're given, this book has some great examples of how that can be done.

Bernard Trainor is an undeniably gifted landscape designer. An artist, really. And I eagerly awaited this book's arrival. Let me just say by way of explanation that my shelves, tables and floors are covered with books about architecture, and interior & exterior design so I speak with some experience as a consumer of these books. My frustration has to do with the design of this book. First of all it's somewhat smaller than the usual coffee table books one gets and no, it's not a deal breaker. It also comes with no book jacket which not only covers and protects the book, it also allows one to mark a couple of favored pages in the book. Again, not a deal breaker but both those choices made me feel, rightly or wrongly, that the book is not quite at the level of other design books on the market. But more importantly for me, while each of the properties in this book is a staggeringly beautiful example of landscape designed for a specific site using and celebrating the plantings, trees, even the stone of that particular place, on most pages there is only a picture with absolutely no explanation about the specific plantings you're looking at. There are too few description of what trees, what ground cover, what shrubs, what hard scape materials were used. In fairness, all that information exists in the book but in the back, listed property by property and grouped under each of those different categories and not even by page. For me, it was a little like a waiter who might bring you a series of delicious courses, setting them down and walking away. You have no clear idea what you're eating until you're handed a list of all the ingredients as you leave the restaurant. This created a disconnected experience for me and one I haven't really noticed in any other books like this. So there you have it. Perhaps this was only my experience but I do think Mr Trainor deserves a better, more holistic experience of his extraordinary work.

Beautiful photography of amazing gardens and landscapes! Bernard Trainor is remarkable, a genius for the garden. Even if the ideas are not ones I could implement in my smaller spaces, I could feel my eyes being trained to imagine any size space differently.

I've been waiting for this book for a long time. Wonderful inspiration. The text is almost as good as the photography.

The cover photo and design was the most interesting. Many of the others were minimalist to the point of being boring.

Just purchased the book and I have very mixed feelings about it. Virtually all the works shown are in Carmel; million-dollar views at the beach, million-dollar views of Carmel highlands, million-dollar views of the Carmel skyline. There are some works shown at million-dollar homes in (what looks like) Los Altos. Everything is just great until you realize that to execute even a part of the landscape shown would require a significant amount of cash; probably in the hundreds of thousands to execute the work given the substantial amount of hardscape shown.I'd love to have any of these great gardens, don't get me wrong. I just don't have a hundred thousands of dollars to do it. Most of us don't either. I have a home that is in the size and scope of those in the book, but lordly, I don't have a wad of cash recreate the work in the book. The book is great to look at, but you are not going to come away with many useable ideas for the average homeowner. Most of the ideas in this book will not translate to the average tract home.

This is a must have book for all garden designers and people interested in developing their garden space...in harmony with nature and the environment.the text describes the garden before the photograph...which allows you to develop your own vision of what the garden design hopes to achieve.Its compact size makes it easy to read and dip in and out of....a coffee table read.the layout of text accompanied by pages of stunning photographs makes this book a keeper!!!

Lovely, great photos