Creating Rustic Look at Home

BOOKS

Rustic is hot these days, and taking the log cabin route is about as rustic as it gets, beyond living in a dirty van down by the river. Several books have hit on this loggy theme recently and Linda Arms White’s “Log Spirit” ($22, Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 2000) is one of the latest.

Like the others, White doesn’t recommend ditching your urban palace for four walls and a dirt floor. She’s more into finding ways to create a rustic ambience by using woods and raw countrified designs within the existing home. As White puts it, “the home that feeds the spirit and enriches the soul is much like a traditional cabin in the woods: quiet, simple and minimal.”

Specifically, there are chapters on walls, roofs, windows and doors, stonework, porches and posts and beams. For the most part, information is specific and tells what problems to avoid when trying to achieve something of that cabin flavor.

Exploring With Your Nose

The title for Suzy Bales’ “A Garden of Fragrance” ($30, ReganBooks/HarperCollins, 2000) says it all. Bales thinks what you smell is just as important as what you see when strolling through the garden.

To get the most scent out of your backyard, she describes the best flowers and herbs for planting. Bales breaks them into categories and details their cultivation, noting what goes with what and what doesn’t.

“Seductresses,” for instance, are “heavily perfumed” varieties such as roses, gardenias, lilacs and lilies. Others are “Moonlighters,” which give scent in the evening and include honeysuckle, petunias and angel’s trumpet, and the subtler “Come-Closers” of which snowdrops and violets are two examples.

THE WEB

Topiary Sites Lets Dreams Emerge

Toopiary may seem Goofy to many of us (I’ve seen topiary Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny) but followers of this unusual craft consider it the height of garden imagination. They take bushes, shrubs and vines and turn them into all sorts of things, from abstract shapes to whimsical animals.

There are a handful of noncommercial topiary sites and a few are amazing, in a head-scratching sort of way.

Take the topiary tableau at The Old Deaf School Park in Columbus, Ohio. The garden, which can be toured at https://www.topiarygarden.org, is an expansive rendition of Georges Seurat’s famous pointilist painting, “Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte.”

As the site proudly points out, the park features 54 people, eight boats, three dogs, a monkey and a cat, all in topiary.

A one-stop destination is Topiary Art on the Net (https://www.topiaryart.com), featuring tours of the world’s most elaborate gardens. Style, not kitsch, is the theme here, and some examples are remarkable for their creativity.

Also worth a click is the site for Levens Hall and Gardens (https://www.levenshall.co.uk), a famous--and large--English topiary garden that dates to the late 1600s.

* To have a book or Web site considered for this column, send information to: Home Design, The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626. Mark Chalon Smith can also be reached by e-mail at mark.smith@ latimes.com.