Designing the Lush Dry Garden

“A guide to designing a dry garden customizable to the homeowner’s or professional’s own vision that offers images of 17 real-life dry gardens as even more inspiration.”–Marin Independent Journal
“An inspiring read for any gardeners dealing with drier conditions…This is not a book to skim and shelve, but one to revisit season after season as a source of ideas, and reassurance that experimentation is a good thing.”–Garden Answers
“An Inspiring read for any gardener dealing with drier conditions.”–Gardens Illustrated
“Designing the Lush Dry Garden is more than an instruction manual…it is a font of visual inspiration as well.”–Gardenista
“Drawing on the wisdom of the late Ruth Bancroft, this book shows how to adapt her renowned dry garden principles to modern landscapes. It demonstrates how these ideas can transform real-life spaces into thriving, beautiful sanctuaries.”–The American Gardener
“This celebration of dry gardens will be most useful for gardeners…but appreciated more widely by those looking for a broader definition of a beautiful, welcoming garden, spines and all.”–Library Journal
This beautiful, hopeful book draws you into a conversation about how to make a resilient garden and takes you through lush home spaces designed for the future now. The authors share the stories of people who create and love dry gardens, and honor the capstone work of a woman, Ruth Bancroft, whose curiosity and influence live on today in all of us who are enchanted and fascinated by her pioneering garden. –Jason Dewees, horticulturist and author of Designing with Palms
“Landscape design books are sometimes plagued by being either overly technical and manual-like OR by simply showing beautiful, polished images of “finished” projects with no meaningful explanation of how or why these gardens came to be. Designing the Lush Dry Garden deftly avoids these stereotypes and instead, explores purposeful, generous new territory that defies easy categorization. It is somehow simultaneously both pragmatically useful, philosophically inspiring, and extremely helpful while also being emphatically supportive of leading garden design towards its next paradigm. I, for one, adore a book that is both transcendent but also easy a mellow Sunday read.” –David Godshall, Co-Founder and Principal, TERREMOTO
“There is a real art to creating climate-resilient gardens that inspire us with their beauty, are infused with personality and feeling, and that add joy to our daily lives. Whether you’re a novice home gardener or an experienced designer, the design principles, essential plant lists, personal stories, and stunning imagery included in Designing the Lush Dry Garden make this art form so much easier to understand and possible to achieve in your own outdoor space.”–Leslie Bennett, founder of Pine House Edible Gardens, and co-author of Garden Wonderland and The Beautiful Edible Garden
“If you live in a dry or part-of-the-year dry climate, if you live in a climate with erratic weather conditions (hello: all of us), if you want to contribute to wise-resource use as a model and a mandate in our world, but you really, really want a beautiful and lush feeling garden to escape the world as well–there’s hope. In both time-tested instruction and inspiration–starting from the perfect frame of reference in Ruth Bancroft’s famous plant-driven dry garden in Walnut Creek, California– gardener-writers Cricket Riley, Alice Kitajima, and Kier Holmes offer us a whole new garden path to amble down, learning and loving the gardens that result as we go. With photographs by Caitlin Atkinson that show us what, and how, as well as fill our imaginations’ horizons with true beauty of color and form, Designing the Lush Dry Garden is just what the garden doctor ordered. Prescription: a chapter a day till complete; repeat as needed for mood and motivation.”–Jennifer Jewell, founder and host of Cultivating Place and author of What We Sow
“The gardens in this book show brilliantly the range of colours, textures, and forms of drought-resilient plants. There is really no excuse for dry habitat plantings to have a mean, dry look. We can and should open the garden gate to exuberance!”–Noel Kingsbury, co-creator of gardenmasterclass.org and author of Wild: The Naturalistic Garden
“The Ruth Bancroft Garden has inspired generations of gardeners. Ruth’s visionary collection of plants is ever-more relevant as we adapt to the vulnerability of our beloved coastal ecosystem. As the climate changes and each season brings new calamities, we welcome new sources of inspiration and guidance. Designing the Lush Dry Garden is a beautiful resource for creating gardens that honor the remarkable variety of plants that thrive in our special Mediterranean climate while building ecological resilience in the place that we love.”–Flora Grubb, owner of Flora Grubb Gardens

Cricket Riley is the Design Servies Director at the Ruth Bancroft Garden (RBG) where she has worked since 2017. In this role she leads a team of landscape designers helping homeowners embrace regionally climate appropriate gardens. She is also the primary instructor for RBG’s Dry Garden Design Certificate Program which she co-created with Alice Kitajima in 2020. She has an AA in Landscape Architecture from Merritt College, a BA in History from University of California, Santa Cruz and an MA in Near Eastern Studies and Broadcast Journalism from New York University.

Alice Kitajima’s profound connection to gardens and landscape design started at an early age, thanks to the influence of her father, who immigrated to Los Angeles to install Japanese-style gardens. She has worked at various botanical gardens and arboreta around the U.S. after finishing her forestry and music studies at University of California, Berkeley. As the Program Director at the Ruth Bancroft Garden, overseeing the education department, her greatest passion is connecting and deepening people’s connections with plants.

When not digging in her own laboratory-like garden, designing thoughtful gardens for clients, or lecturing on various gardening topics, Bay Area native Kier Holmes is a contributing writer and content creator for Gardenista and Sonoma Magazine. Kier has also contributed to numerous other publications including Martha Stewart, Sunset Magazine, Better Homes and Gardens, National Geo for Kids, Edible Marin and Wine Country, and Marin Magazine, plus is the author of The Garden Refresh: How to Give Your Yard Big Impact on a Small Budget.

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