Garden Getaways: Havens at Home

The idea of turning your backyard into a lush retreat is appealing, but landscape designer Glassman's idea of a backyard haven is to choose a ""theme"" and transform your backyard into a replica of your favorite vacation spot, be it Costa Rica, Miami, New Orleans, Santa Fe, Provence or Tuscany. His clients appear to be wealthy owners of trophy homes with lavish entertaining needs, and the designs feature fireplaces, outdoor kitchens, ""water features,"" and pseudohistorical elements such as fake ruins and fallen urns. For readers with limited means, ""Big Ideas, Modest Budgets"" inserts suggest simpler solutions; some tacky (tiki torches and palm fronds stapled to a cloth umbrella for a Costa Rican feel), others more generally useful (living screens of climbing foliage). Glassman's design principles are sound: the designer should consider functionality equally with aesthetics, identify the unique problems of each property (such as preventing hillside erosion or muffling neighborhood noise), ""find solutions that work seamlessly with a design concept"" and manifest a design that the client will like and use. But he shows little interest in local conditions and regional considerations except in using flora that will withstand local weather.