With the exception of a few indispensable classics I'm not the type to acquire stacks of large-format coffee-table books, but a just-released tome from French botanist and landscape designer Patrick Blanc is now item #1 on my Christmas list. 

If you haven't run across Blanc's work before, prepare to be wowed. He's the creator of Le Mur Vegetal -- the remarkable "vertical gardens" that now adorn the exterior walls of buildings in Paris, Manhattan, Bangkok, and other cities. One notable example is the Musée du quai Branly in Paris (photo © goodduckling @ Flickr):

There's something about lush greenery in the vertical -- the hanging gardens of Southwestern slot canyons; epiphyte- and bromeliad-encrusted trees in a Costa Rican cloud forest; mossy seastacks on Washington's Olympic Coast -- that captivates me. What an audacious and delightful surprise to see duplicated in the urban environment something so like those places.

By all accounts, Blanc's new book, The Vertical Garden: From Nature to the City, is both beautifully made and very informative. I'm very much looking forward to reading it.

The video below sheds a lot of light on Blanc's achievements and methods, and his flamboyant green hair and fey mannerisms score entertainment points, too.