Miniature Garden Guidebook

Nancy Norris contributes the columns “Greening Your Railway” and “Plant Portraits” as well as feature articles for Garden Railways magazine. In addition, she’s a garden railway planning and construction consultant, having founded her business, Garden Lines, in 1997 for building outdoor train layouts in her own San Francisco Bay area. Nancy has a B.S. in Plant & Soil Sciences, a Master of Occupational Education, and has completed a full schedule of gardening in New England and California. As an education researcher in the 1980s, Nancy became a ham radio operator and boat builder. She also learned to build and fly radio-controlled model airplanes, which her grandson wanted to fly. She gives him credit for towing her to a local train show where she saw her first copy of Garden Railways magazine. Now she and her grandson are active in their club, the Bay Area Garden Railway Society, building and running live steam locomotives.

Introduction

Part 1. Mini-Habitats
1. Gallery of miniature gardens 
2. "Zoning laws” for climate compatibility

Part 2. Creating Living Landscapes
3. Design your mini-garden: principles of design, theme ideas, site evaluation
4. Massing plants to frame a focal point	
5. Color me content 
6. Easy access into your garden 
7. Mini-plant care: fertilization, cultivation, irrigation, propagation, and maintenance
8. Prune trees for a scale appearance 

 Part 3. Plant Selection
9. Annuals for color and contrast 
10. Aquatics have wet feet 
11. Cascading trees and the rocks that support them 
12. Deserts need succulents 
13. Drought-resistant plants and practices to reduce water usage 
14. Invite critters into your railway 
15. Isolate your garden from nuisance nibblers 
16. Grass-like miniatures 
17. Junipers to appreciate 
18. Low-down groundcovers 
19. Micro-miniature trees and shrubs 

 APPENDICES
i.    Bibliography
ii.   Online links
iii.  Miniature gardens you can visit
iv.  Online nurseries
v.   Glossary 
      About the author/Acknowledgements