Interesting ideas, but ultimately this only focused on a few design styles that may not appeal to everyone. Some good how-to information, but mostly this was a "look book" for design ideas.

Field Guide to Outside Style by Ryan McEnaney is loaded! It has page after beautiful page of garden design with attention to a lot of detail in writing about each one. Many styles from minimalist, modern to meadow. Ryan McEnaney does have a long history of knowing plants and his writing into this fantastic arrow of choices shows.

This book demonstrates how vital it is to elevate our outdoor spaces around our homes for they are an extension into quality living when we understand it is not just "outside style" but living and observing nature and what that does for our well being.

I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher Quarto for the opportunity to read and review Field Guide to Outside Style by Ryan McEnaney.

I appreciate Net Galley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book for an honest review. As someone who has just taken up the art of gardening… I need all the help I son get! This book was a great guide for garden design. I also want to use my space for entertaining so I thought the “drinks” section was a nice touch! Great ideas!

Ryan McEnaney's FIELD GUIDE TO OUTSIDE STYLE is a beautiful, inspirational, and authoritative guide to creating the outdoor environment that fits your lifestyle and family. I learned a great deal through photographs of extraordinary spaces and how a deliberate design rather than typical approach can yield an outdoor environment that draws you outside. While I cannot easily label myself into the design sensibilities laid out in McEnaney's approach, I learned from all of them. I received a copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.

This will be a great book for many people. It was just not a good fit for me. I absolutely love my gardens and I am now loving helping my grown kids design the landscapes of their houses. I love this subject. That said, all of us have three priorities that aren’t well suited to this book.

1. Our family has bought all of our homes debt free for very little money. One daughter’s house was $4,000. We are frugal. This book was written by a man whose family has owned a nursery business for generations. They have lots of money. That’s the audience— people happy to buy specific branded cultivars of recommended garden plants, hire contractors, fully renovate their yards and otherwise spend large amounts of money on designing the perfect outdoor space. I was hoping more for general tips and inspiration with lots of out of the box suggestions.

2. We care deeply about the environment. We garden organically, grow plants that help birds and butterflies and bees (even the occasional opossum is welcome), and design our yards to conserve water, help wildlife, thrive without chemicals and otherwise help nature. That’s just not a priority in this book, which never touches on sustainability, organic gardening, pollinators, birds, xeriscaping or other environmental concerns. One of the three garden styles that he profiles is a naturalist aesthetic but it’s presented as a design style and not an environmental lifestyle. The author mentions native plants only to say that’s your choice either way, without ever going into the reasons so many people recommend them.

3. We don’t want to commit large amounts of time to our landscaping. This book is really for planning overhauls of your whole yard, not sweet ideas to perk up a corner or easy ways to bring in some color. It would be great for folks who just bought a home and have time and a budget to create their dream landscape.

One other note is that the plants don’t have their zones listed, which is frustrating for me as a zone 4 Minnesota gardener. It does list temperature ranges but zones generally make it so much easier to quickly tell if a plant will work in my garden. It also doesn’t profile that many plants with photos, and none of my favorites.

I hope it’s obvious that I consider it a well done book that will be a good resource for many readers. No book will be a good fit for everyone. I gave it three stars, which Goodreads says means “liked it.”

I read a temporary digital arc of this book for review.