Landscape architecture and garden-making have witnessed huge changes during the twentieth-century, and the impact of these will continue to be discussed and interpreted in the twenty-first. New materials and responses to different social conditions, along with new attitudes to how gardens are perceived and interpreted and above all the relationship of built work to the larger landscape of territory and society - all have challenged long-held practices of garden-making, even while those same traditions continue to be at the center of both designers and users. A Cultural History of Gardens in the Modern Age presents an overview of the period with essays on issues of design, types of gardens, planting, use and reception, issues of meaning, verbal and visual representation of gardens, and the relationship of gardens to the larger landscape.

The Enlightenment raised fundamental questions about what it meant to be human in a truly global world. At the heart of debates about nature, culture and history, the garden offered itself as a practical demonstration, a living experiment, and a site of debate and discourse. The design, planting, experience and representation of contemporary gardens in Europe, China and North America reveal intense contributions to debates on aesthetics, both personal and national politics, and on the shaping of nature. A Cultural History of Gardens in the Age of Enlightenment presents an overview of the period with essays on issues of design, types of gardens, planting, use and reception, issues of meaning, verbal and visual representation of gardens, and the relationship of gardens to the larger landscape.

The history of the garden in the Renaissance, traced from the late fourteenth century in Italy to the death of Andre Le Notre in 1700 in France, is a story both of dynamism and codification. The period saw the emergence of what would become archetypal elements of the formal garden and the fixing of theory and language of the garden arts. At the same time, newly important sciences, developments in engineering, as well as globalization, historicity, and theories of aesthetics were embraced in the construction of such gardens. The result was the notion of the landscape as something to be labored on, created, and delighted in, that ultimately would become a stage upon which Renaissance cultural politics played out. A Cultural History of Gardens in the Renaissance presents an overview of the period with essays on issues of design, types of gardens, planting, use and reception, issues of meaning, verbal and visual representation of gardens, and the relationship of gardens to the larger landscape.

The Middle Ages was a time of great upheaval - the period between the seventh and fourteenth centuries saw great social, political and economic change. The radically distinct cultures of the Christian West, Byzantium, Persian-influenced Islam, and al-Andalus resulted in different responses to the garden arts of antiquity and different attitudes to the natural world and its artful manipulation. Yet these cultures interacted and communicated, trading plants, myths and texts. By the fifteenth century the garden as a cultural phenomenon was immensely sophisticated and a vital element in the way society saw itself and its relation to nature. A Cultural History of Gardens in the Medieval Age presents an overview of the period with essays on issues of design, types of gardens, planting, use and reception, issues of meaning, verbal and visual representation of gardens, and the relationship of gardens to the larger landscape.

Across the world there are more than a thousand botanical gardens, which combine scientific research, conservation and beauty with public access - Kew Gardens alone attracts around one million visitors a year. Their uses have varied through history - they might focus on cultivating exotic plants and produce; be honed to commercial ends (introducing lucrative plant crops such as tea and rubber to new countries); center on preserving collections of international plants; focus on scientific classification and research - or combine of all these things. Sarah Rutherford here tells the story of these diverse gardens in Britain and around the world, from their beginnings in the sixteenth century to their long heyday in the last three hundred years. She explains the design of the gardens, the architecture employed, the personalities and institutions that established and contributed to them, their important role in research and conservation, and what makes them so appealing to the millions of visitors they attract.

Elizabeth Lawrence (1904-85) is recognized as one of America's most important gardeners and garden writers. In 1957, Lawrence began a weekly column for the "Charlotte Observer," blending gardening lore and horticultural expertise gained from her own gardens in Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina, and from her many gardener friends. This book presents 132 of her beloved columns. Never before published in book form, they were chosen from the more than 700 pieces that she wrote for the "Observer" over fourteen years.

Lawrence exchanged plants and gardening tips with everyone from southern "farm ladies" trading bulbs in garden bulletins to prominent regional gardeners. She corresponded with nursery owners, everyday backyard gardeners, and literary luminaries such as Katharine White and Eudora Welty. Her books, including "A Southern Garden," "The Little Bulbs," and "Gardens in Winter," inspired several generations of gardeners in the South and beyond.

The columns in this volume cover specific plants, such as sweet peas, hellebores, peonies, and the bamboo growing outside her living-room window, as well as broader topics including the usefulness of vines, the importance of daily pruning, and organic gardening. Like all of Lawrence's writing, these columns are peppered with references to conversations with neighbors and quotations from poetry, mythology, and correspondence. They brim with knowledge gained from a lifetime of experimenting in her gardens, from her visits to other gardens, and from her extensive reading.

Lawrence once wrote, "Dirty fingernails are not the only requirement for growing plants. One must be as willing to study as to dig, for a knowledge of plants is acquired as much from books as from experience." As inspiring today as when they first appeared in the "Charlotte Observer," the columns collected in "Beautiful at All Seasons" showcase not only Lawrence's vast knowledge but also her intimate, conversational writing style and her lifelong celebration of gardens and gardening.

A year in the life of a garden. From the stillness of winter, unfurling through spring and summer to the contentment of autumn, this imaginative interpretation of a specific space - a twelve-acre garden within an urban university campus - exposes a secret oasis, full of surprises. This book presents the personal vision of the Artist in Residence at the Harris Garden in the University of Reading. Jenny Halstead captures the seasonal changes, portrays the stages of its renovation, and celebrates its enthusiastic workforce, especially the many volunteers. Accompanied by a history of the garden and an account of its restoration, these paintings and sketches memorialise a place in time.

Francis Halle examines the human---and even scientific---bias toward animals at the expense of our understanding of plants. Readers will find their ideas about plants fundamentally altered and their appreciation immeasurably enhanced. This is a black-and-white edition.

Finally, for every resident and visitor to the region, a comprehensive guide to the gardens of eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and northern Delaware. Magnificently illustrated with nearly 200 full color photographs, A GUIDE TO THE GREAT GARDENS OF THE PHILADELPHIA REGION provides essential information on how to locate and enjoy the finest gardens the area has to offer. As the horticultural epicenter of the United States, Philadelphia and the surrounding towns, suburbs, and countryside are blessed with more public gardens in a concentrated area than almost any other region in the world. Stretching from Trenton, New Jersey through Philadelphia and down to Newark, Delaware, this area (often called the Delaware Valley) offers more horticultural riches than a visitor can possibly see even in a coupl of weeks of hectic garden-hopping. In A GUIDE TO THE GREAT GARDENS OF THE PHILADELPHIA REGION you will find: Detailed coverage of almost 100 gardens Maps to indicate where area gardens are in relation to each other to plan day trip itineraries Key information about each major garden, including hours, fees, time needed for a tour, history, acreage, and special features Over a dozen gardens that have never before been featured in any garden guidebook Arranged by interest, to help guide readers to gardens that will most meet their needs Notations about historical houses, cafes/restaurants, gift shops, and chidren's features at each major garden

For readers who like gardening (and love the English language), this posthumous collection of Henry Mitchell's Washington Post "Earthman" columns is "equal parts entertainment and shrewd horticultural advice" (Science News). Henry Mitchell is "beloved for his witty, smart, informed, philosophical, wide-ranging and often wickedly humorous columns" (Detroit Free Press).

In the sequel to The Essential Earthman, the Washington Post columnist offers a harvest of sharp observations and humorous adventures gathered during a year in his garden, along with much down-to-earth advice on horticulture.

As much as the nineteenth and early twentieth century gardens and their designs were a product and representation of industrialization and urbanization, they were also motors of change. Gardens became an industry in and of themselves. They were both the last resting places of the dead and cultivated plots for survival. Gardens were therapeutic environments regarded as civilizing, socializing and assimilating institutions, and they were designed and perceived as social landscapes and community playgrounds. Rich with symbolism, gardens were treated as the subject and the setting for literature and painting and were often considered works of art in themselves. In a time of empire, when plants were drawn from across the globe, gardens also reflected territorial conquest and expansion and they fostered national, regional and local identities. A Cultural History of Gardens in the Age of Empire presents an overview of the period with essays on issues of design, types of gardens, planting, use and reception, issues of meaning, verbal and visual representation of gardens, and the relationship of gardens to the larger landscape.

Hybrid Drawing Techniques: Design Process and Presentation reaffirms the value of traditional hand drawing in the design process by demonstrating how to integrate it with digital techniques; enhancing and streamlining the investigative process while at the same time yielding superior presentation images. This book is a foundations guide to both approaches: sketching, hardline drawing, perspective drawing, digital applications, and Adobe Photoshop; providing step-by-step demonstrations and examples from a variety of professional and student work for using and combining traditional and digital tools. Also included are sections addressing strategies for using color, composition and light to further enhance one's drawings. An eResource offers copyright free images for download that includes: tonal patterns, watercolor fields, people, trees, and skies.

Routes and roads make their way into and across the landscape, defining it as landscape and making it accessible for many kinds of uses and perceptions. Bringing together outstanding scholars from cultural history, geography, philosophy, and a host of other disciplines, this collection examines the complex entanglement between routes and landscapes. It traces the changing conceptions of the landscape from the Enlightenment to the present day, looking at how movement has been facilitated, imagined and represented and how such movement, in turn, has conditioned understandings of the landscape. A particular focus is on the modern transportation landscape as it came into being with the canal, the railway, and the automobile. These modes of transport have had a profound impact on the perception and conceptualization of the modern landscape, a relationship investigated in detail by authors such as Gernot BAhme, Sarah Bonnemaison, Tim Cresswell, Finola O'Kane, Charlotte Klonk, Peter Merriman, Christine Macy, David Nye, Vittoria Di Palma, Charles Withers, and Thomas Zeller.

From the internationally acclaimed Czech writer Karel Capek comes this beautifully written and marvelously apt account of the trials and tribulations of the gardener’s life. First published in Prague in 1929, The Gardener’s Year combines a richly comic portrait of life in the garden, narrated month by month, with a series of delightful illustrations by the author’s older brother and collaborator, Josef. Capek’s gardeners—all too human, despite their lofty aspirations—often look the fool, whether they be found sopping wet, victims of the cobralike water hose, or hunched over, hands immersed in the soil, “presenting their rumps to the splendid azure sky.” In their repeated folly, Capek gives us not only cause for laughter but also, in the end, “testimony of the imperishable and miraculous optimism of the human race.”

This Modern Library edition is published with a new Introduction by Verlyn Klinkenborg, a New York Times editorialist and the author of Making Hay and The Last Fine Time.

The gardens made on the fringes of Central Asia in the past 5000 years form a great arc. From the Fertile Crescent, it runs west to Europe and east to China and Japan. Asia's fringe was a zone of interchange: a vast landscape in which herders encountered farmers and the design of symbolic gardens began. It appears that as they became settlers, nomads retained a love of mobility, hunting and the wild places in which their ancestors had roamed. Central Asian and Indian ideas influenced the garden culture of China, Japan and South East Asia.
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In West Asia, Aryan settlers made hunting parks known as paradises. They were walled enclosures stocked with exotic plants and animals. In East Asia, great landscape parks were used for similar purposes and had a sacred role. Across Asia, gardens were influenced by religious and other beliefs: polytheist, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Daoist, Shinto and Modernist. Early parks and gardens symbolized wild and civilized nature, sometimes conceived as the realms of the Sky God and the Earth Mother. Asian Gardens: History, Beliefs and Design explores the ways in which designs were guided by beliefs.
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Tom Turner has been researching and teaching the theory and history of garden design for some forty years. His visits, research, drawings and photographs are brought together in detailed studies of West Asia, South Asia and East Asia. The period covered extends from the earliest gardens to the present. Using maps, diagrams and photographs, the author explores how and why Asian gardens developed their characteristic forms and functions. Treating garden design as a 'word and image' subject, the account is coherent, comparative and readable. Further details of all the gardens are available on the gardenvisit.com website, which the author edits.

2018 marks the bicentenary of the death of Humphry Repton, one of the most important and prolific of English landscape designers. Repton made a particularly significant contribution to the landscape of Hertfordshire, working at no less than eighteen places in the county, ranging in size from great mansions like Cashiobury and Panshanger to more modest 'villas' owned by wealthy businessmen and industrialists, such as Woodhill in Essendon. This book - the fruits of many years of research by members of the Hertfordshire Gardens Trust Research Group - describes in detail all of these commissions, assessing in each case the extent to which Repton's ideas were actually implemented and how much survives of them on the ground today. Particular attention is given to those places for which Repton prepared one of his famous 'Red Books', such as Tewin Water, Lamer House, New Barnes and Wall Hall. But sites where Repton's contribution is less well documented are also discussed, including Organ Hall and Hilfield House in Aldenham, Cashiobury Park and The Grove in Watford, Brookmans Park, Bedwell Park, Wyddial Hall, and Marchmont House in Hemel Hempstead. In all cases, the book presents complete transcriptions of all the key documents relating to Repton's activities, including the full text of seven Red Books. The introductory essay by Tom Williamson sets Repton's activities in Hertfordshire within the wider context of his career, and also shows how his work in the county can cast important new light on his style, and on its economic, aesthetic and ideological implications. Profusely illustrated in colour with reproductions of all the Red Book watercolours, together with extracts from contemporary estate maps, sketches and other material, this scholarly yet readable volume will be of considerable interest to garden historians, landscape historians, and all those interested in Hertfordshire's rich historic heritage.

Lord Fairhaven had a vision for his garden. To create a modern version of the grand 18th-century landscape gardens, such as Stourhead and Stowe. With a keen eye, Lord Fairhaven put together one of the largest classical sculpture collections of its time, picking up works at a time when the costly Victorian country house was in decline. Pieces from Wanstead House, Stowe, Chesterfield House and many more have found a superb home at Anglesey.