Required Reading: Evergreen, Living with Plants

New from German publisher Gestalten is Evergreen: Living with Plants, a verdant 256-page tome that “allows city dwellers to bring nature back into the everyday and quenches urban gardening desires.” In addition to diagrams and tips (about which plants thrive in damp bathrooms, for example), the book features dozens of gardeners, florists, farmers, and designers as inspiration—starting with a bearded, suspender-clad man on the cover. Here’s a look at a few of our favorite projects.

Photography courtesy of Gestalten.

Above: Evergreen: Living with Plants is available for $60 via Gestalten or Amazon.

Above: Plants are veiled by dappled glass at the Botanical Garden in Geneva, Switzerland. Photograph by Samuel Zeller.

Above: A collection of geometric glass and steel terrariums at Turkish shop Müz. Photograph by Maurizio Braggiotti.

Above: In the living room of the couple behind plant-inspiration blog Haarkon, a jungle of plants perched on stools, shelves, and sills. Photograph by Haarkon.

Above: Swallows and Damsons, an antiques and flower shop in Sheffield, England, has botanical drawings pinned to the walls and shelves full of well-weathered terra cotter planters. Photograph by India Hobson.

Above: Rebekah Northway drives her mobile San Francisco-based flower shop The Petaler around the city, delivering blooms to restaurants and homes—and to the San Francisco Remodelista Market, where she’ll be selling her creations again this year. Photograph by Airyka Rockefeller.

Above: Denmark-based company Ferm Living’s collection of minimalist concrete pots—and clever metal trellises that fit inside. (See our posts: Pots & Planters: New Spring Colors from Ferm Living and High Achievers: Trellises and Pots for Indoor Vines and Climbers.) Photograph by Ferm Living.

Above: At Flo Atelier Botânico in São Paulo, Brazil, Carol Nóbrega and Antonio Jotta craft bespoke terrariums in vintage vessels. Photograph by Karen Suehiro.

Above: “Over 6,000 plant species” from all over the world thrive in an unexpected place: the historic Winterbourne House and Garden in Birmingham, England. Photograph by Haarkon.

Above: An ingenious solution for urban gardens with small footprints: go vertical. This patio in Berkeley, CA, tightly “tucked between its neighbors’ backyards,” features a sloping, structured path to a reading nook high above. Design by Mary Barensfeld Architecture; photograph by Joe Fletcher.

Above: At Copenhagen rooftop farm ØsterGRO and its companion restaurant Stedsans, a communal table—complete with warm fur throws—is tucked amid the beds. Photograph by Preston Drake-Hillyard.

For more garden-inspiration books we can’t put down, see our posts:

• Required Reading: House of Plants by Caro Langton and Rose Ray.
• Required Reading: Ruth Bancroft’s Bold Dry Garden.
• Required Reading: In Bloom by Ngoc Minh Ngo.