Daringly innovative when it opened in 1848, the Palm House in Kew Gardens remains one of the most beautiful glass buildings in the world today.

Seemingly weightless, vast and yet light, the Palm House floats free from architectural convention, at once monumental and ethereal. From a distance, the crowns of the palms within are silhouetted in the central dome; close to, banana leaves thrust themselves against the glass. To enter it is to enter a tropical fantasy. The body is assaulted by heat, light and the smell of damp vegetation.

In Palace of Palms, Kate Teltscher tells the extraordinary story of its creation and of the Victorians’ obsession with the palms that filled it. It is a story of breathtaking ambition, of scientific discovery and, crucially, of the remarkable men whose vision it was. The Palm House was commissioned by the charismatic first Director of Kew, Sir William Hooker, designed by the audacious Irish engineer, Richard Turner, and managed by Kew’s forthright curator, John Smith, who battled with boilers and floods to ensure the survival of the rare and wondrous plants it housed.

When Page Dickey moved away from her celebrated garden at Duck Hill, she left a landscape she had spent thirty-four years making, nurturing, and loving. She found her next chapter in southern Connecticut, on 17 acres of rolling fields and woodland around a former Methodist church. In Uprooted, celebrated garden writer Page Dickey reflects on this transition and on what it means for a gardener to start again. In these pages, fol low her journey: searching for a new home, discovering the ins and outs of the landscape surround ing her new garden, establishing the garden, and learning how to be a different kind of gardener. The sur prise at the heart of the book? Although Dickey was sad to leave her beloved garden, she found herself thrilled to begin a new garden in a wilder, larger landscape. Written with humour and elegance, Uprooted is an endearing story about transitions - and the satisfaction and joy that new horizons can bring.

This book presents a chronological review of garden design which both simplifies the big picture and supplies a rationale, with examples, of the merits and demerits of each design period while reflecting on the social conditions which generated each one. It gathers together design ideas and their implementation over the last 500 years, presented in historical order and simplified to allow easy digestion by the reader, particularly if meeting the subject for the first time. As such the book demystifies history and identifies the relative importance of new approaches in design, particularly where they are seen to be progressive. Essential examples from each design period or style are included, based upon their contribution to the progress of design and relating to their value, particularly in the teaching of garden and landscape design principles. Thus the reader will be able to quickly grasp the essence of historical design styles, discover where they can go to see them for themselves and to appreciate how relevant they are to present day theories of design.By concentrating on Britain's own heritage the book offers a sound understanding of influences and thereby helps to inform design practice. Since the principles of design are universal, it will be of relevance in many countries throughout the world. The book is illustrated with photographs, diagrams and plans, creating a readily-accessible and informative volume.

Design-Build provides everything you need to know about how to embark on a design-build project within a studio or professional practice setting. Design-build models have increased across academic programs worldwide, allowing students to address the real-world challenges of working in the community using a participatory design process. In practice, they offer a full partnership between the designer and builder to elevate design concepts and reduce project costs. Written by an experienced practitioner and educator, this book offers contextual background on the development of the design-build model in pedagogy and practice, guidance from inception to conclusion for classroom and field usage, discussions on the shift to community-engaged design and inspirational examples from international case studies. Illustrated in full color throughout, it looks at structuring a design-build firm, best-practice, efficiency and the limitations of design-build as a practice model. This is the fundamental guidebook for those interested in developing or working for a design-build professional practice, academics leading design-build programs and students interested in social and environmental justice, education, and practice through a design-build model.

Locus Amoenus provides a pioneering collection of new perspectives on Renaissance garden history, and the impact of its development. Experts in the field illustrate the extent of our knowledge of how the natural world looked and how humans related to their environment. * A ground-breaking collection of new perspectives on garden history * Essays demonstrate the extent of our knowledge of how the natural world looked and how humans related to their environment * The book's broad coverage includes botany and herbals, literary reflections of changing ideas of landscape and nature, and human's place within it * Contributors come from a wide range of experts, including archaeologists, scholars and the librarian and archivist to the Royal Horticultural Society * Reflects the growing emergence of this field, which has been assisted both by archaeology and ideas from green studies and environmental criticism * Richly illustrated throughout

Teaching Landscape: The Studio Experience gathers a range of expert contributions from across the world to collect best-practice examples of teaching landscape architecture studios. This is the companion volume to The Routledge Handbook of Teaching Landscape in the two-part set initiated by the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS). Design and planning studio as a form of teaching lies at the core of landscape architecture education. They can simulate a professional situation and promote the development of creative solutions based on gaining an understanding of a specific project site or planning area; address existing challenges in urban and rural landscapes; and often involve interaction with real stakeholders, such as municipality representatives, residents or activist groups. In this way, studio-based planning and design teaching brings students closer to everyday practice, helping to prepare them to create real-world, problem-solving designs. This book provides fully illustrated examples of studios from over twenty different schools of landscape architecture worldwide. With over 250 full colour images, it is an essential resource for instructors and academics across the landscape discipline, for the continuously evolving process of discussing and generating improved teaching modes in landscape architecture.

Spanning from the Washington, DC, Metro Area to the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, this fascinating tour of 15 gardens by well-known designers illuminates the sophisticated yet inviting landscape style of the Capital region. Hidden from the public, they are tucked into tiny urban backyards, set into suburban enclaves, or preside over open views: A waterfront garden of natives that draws local wildlife; a refined townhouse terrace with crisp paving; a sprawling property with plants massed to create year-round colour and sculptural effect. In addition to a plan and plant list, each project includes a description of the owners' goals and the principles behind the design. Every garden responds to the demands of the site, climate, and clients' needs. Together they share the light-handed information about design and ecological intelligence that modern gardeners will appreciate.

One of the most admired gardening writers of her generation, Katherine Swift returns to describe a year in the life of her garden she created over twenty years in the grounds of the Dower House at Morville, Shropshire, meditating on everything from the terrain and its history, to the plants and trees, and the odd habits of the animals and humans who inhabit the garden. Following the turning wheel of the Morville seasons, from the green shoots of spring, through summer and autumn, to the stark beauty of winter, and back to spring again, The Morville Year is a journal full of surprises and enchantments that will appeal not only to gardeners, but to all who enjoy the natural world.

The Routledge Research Companion to Landscape Architecture considers landscape architecture's increasingly important cultural, aesthetic, and ecological role. The volume reflects topical concerns in theoretical, historical, philosophical, and practice-related research in landscape architecture - research that reflects our relationship with what has traditionally been called 'nature'. It does so at a time when questions about the use of global resources and understanding the links between human and non-human worlds are more crucial than ever. The twenty-five chapters of this edited collection bring together significant positions in current landscape architecture research under five broad themes - History, Sites and Heritage, City and Nature, Ethics and Sustainability, Knowledge and Practice - supplemented with a discussion of landscape architecture education. Prominent as well as up-and-coming contributors from landscape architecture and adjacent fields including Tom Avermaete, Peter Carl, Gareth Doherty, Ottmar Ette, Matthew Gandy, Christophe Girot, Anne Whiston Spirn, Ian H. Thompson and Jane Wolff seek to widen, fuel, and frame critical discussion in this growing area. A significant contribution to landscape architecture research, this book will be beneficial not only to students and academics in landscape architecture, but also to scholars in related fields such as history, architecture, and social studies.

Richmond Park is the largest Royal Park in London, covering an area of 2,500 acres. From its heights there is an uninterrupted view of St Paul's Cathedral, 12 miles away. The royal connections to this park probably go back further than any of the others, beginning with Edward I in the thirteenth century, when the area was known as the Manor of Sheen. The name was changed to Richmond during Henry VII's reign. In 1625 Charles I brought his court to Richmond Palace to escape the plague in London and turned it into a park for red and fallow deer. His decision, in 1637, to enclose the land was not popular with the local residents, but he did allow pedestrians the right of way. To this day the walls remain. In 1847 Pembroke Lodge became the home of the then Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, and was later the childhood home of his grandson, Bertrand Russell. However, Richmond Park emerges from its historical record as a place that has seen many changes in fabric and detail and yet remains the embodiment of a medieval deer park. It is a palimpsest, retaining subtle clues to each period in its history.

Much has been written about London's terraced houses with their simple dignity, their economical use of space, and their sense of comfort and human scale. Yet the small gardens that lie before or behind the houses in this great city have until now been overlooked. In this groundbreaking account of the development of the private garden in London, eminent garden historian Todd Longstaffe-Gowan provides a delightful remedy to the oversight. Recognizing the contribution of modest domestic gardens to the texture of eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century London, Longstaffe-Gowan explores in full detail the small gardens, their owners, and their significance to the development of the metropolis. Some two hundred illustrations enhance this rich and fascinating discussion.

Town gardening was conventionally maligned as a trifling pursuit conducted within inhospitable and infertile enclosures. This view changed during the eighteenth century as middle class Londoners found in gardening activities an outlet for personal enjoyment and expression. This book describes how gardening affected the lives of many, becoming part of the ritual of the daily round and gratifying material aspirations.

In the heart of London, beside the Thames not far from the site of the world famous flower show, there is another magical garden. It has been there for over three hundred years and is now the calmest corner, and the most valuable four acres of freehold, in fashionable SW3. It has been the scene of some of the most important developments in the history of horticulture, medicine and twentieth-century agriculture. This book tells its fascinating story.

While most of the existing literature on community gardens and urban agriculture share a tendency towards either an advocacy view or a rather dismissive approach on the grounds of the co-optation of food growing, self-help and voluntarism to the neoliberal agenda, this collection investigates and reflects on the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of these initiatives. It questions to what extent they address social inequality and injustice and interrogates them as forms of political agency that contest, transform and re-signify 'the urban'. Claims for land access, the right to food, the social benefits of city greening/community conviviality, and insurgent forms of planning, are multiplying within policy, advocacy and academic literature; and are becoming increasingly manifested through the practice of urban gardening. These claims are symptomatic of the way issues of social reproduction intersect with the environment, as well as the fact that urban planning and the production of space remains a crucial point of an ever-evolving debate on equity and justice in the city. Amid a mushrooming over positive literature, this book explores the initiatives of urban gardening critically rather than apologetically. The contributors acknowledge that these initiatives are happening within neoliberal environments, which promote -among other things - urban competition, the dismantling of the welfare state, the erasure of public space and ongoing austerity. These initiatives, thus, can either be manifestation of new forms of solidarity, political agency and citizenship or new tools for enclosure, inequality and exclusion. In designing this book, the progressive stance of these initiatives has therefore been taken as a research question, rather than as an assumption. The result is a collection of chapters that explore potentials and limitations of political gardening as a practice to envision and implement a more sustainable and just city.

Kiftsgate Court, perched on the northern edge of the Cotswolds Hills in Gloucestershire, is a garden composed of many different scenes. Some elements - the bluebell wood, the clipped hedging and the rose border, with its famously huge Kiftsgate rose - are traditionally English, but there are also areas of Italianate planting and terracing, and others where a mixture of perennials, roses and rare and exotic shrubs thrive side by side. Equally remarkable is the fine balance between continuity and gentle evolution that the visitor finds at Kiftsgate. This is largely because the garden has belonged to the same family since its creation 100 years ago. Three women have tended Kiftsgate, each one its driving force for a third of a century, and each building on the legacy of the previous generation. In 1919 Heather Muir and her husband, Jack, bought the house, which stands on a relatively narrow plateau from which a bank plunges 100 feet. Heather gave Kiftsgate its structure, laying out the semi-formal gardens by the house, planting the tapestry hedge and rose garden, and terracing the banks. In 1954 Heather was succeeded by her daughter, Diany Binny, who extended and developed her mother's planting, made more borders and paths, and refashioned the White Sunk Garden. Since the late 1980s Diany's daughter, Anne Chambers, has been at the helm, further modernizing the garden and its planting, creating new areas of interest, and opening more often to the public. As Robin Lane Fox, who has written the foreword, comments: `There is nowhere else in Britain that has such a family tradition of planting and dedication ... It is intimate but many-sided, evolving but with roots in a remarkable past.' This beautiful new book - the first dedicated to Kiftsgate - is structured in two main parts. For the first, `The History', Vanessa Berridge has had exclusive access to the Kiftsgate archive, which contains not only family photographs but also letters from their gardening friends, helping us to understand why and how Heather, Diany and Anne have gardened. Among the circle of friends and acquaintances who feature are Lawrence Johnston of Hidcote Manor (Kiftsgate's neighbour); Vita Sackville-West, the creator of Sissinghurst Castle Garden; and the horticulturalist Graham Stuart Thomas, gardens adviser to the National Trust. The second part of the book takes the reader on an extended tour of the garden, illustrated by the glorious photography of Sabina Ruber. The tour concludes with notes on Kiftsgate's signature plants and Anne Chambers's personal reflections on this, one of the great gardens of England.

Gathers twenty-eight contributions from transdisciplinary experts across six continents and twenty countries, including USA, UK, Italy, Finland, Mexico, Columbia, Jamaica, Turkey, Japan, Pakistan, India, South Korea, China, Thailand, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, Lithuania, Germany and Canada Features illustrated global case studies with examples of current cultural landscape practices Divided into five thematic parts covering the evolution of cultural landscape practice, current trends, challenges and future progression.

Compiling nine authoritative essays spanning an extensive academic career, author Kenneth R. Olwig presents explorations in landscape geography and architecture from an environmental humanities perspective. With influences from art, literature, theatre staging, architecture, and garden design, landscape has come to be viewed as a form of spatial scenery, but this reading captures only a narrow representation of landscape meaning today. This book positions landscape as a concept shaped through the centuries, evolving from place to place to provide nuanced interpretations of landscape meaning. The essays are woven together to gather an international approach to understanding the past and present importance of landscape as place and polity, as designed space, as nature, and as an influential factor in the shaping of ideas in a just social and physical environment. Aimed at students, scholars, and researchers in landscape and beyond, this illustrated volume traces the idea of landscape from the ancient polis and theatre through to the present day.

Emerging Landscapes brings together scholars and practitioners working in a wide range of disciplines within the fields of the built environment and visual arts to explore landscape as an idea, an image, and a material practice in an increasingly globalized world. Drawing on the synergies between the fields of architecture and photography, this collection takes a multidisciplinary approach, combining practice-based research with scholarly essays. It explores and critically reassesses the interface between representation - the imaginary and symbolic shaping of the human environment - and production - the physical and material changes wrought on the land. At a time of environmental crisis and the 'end of nature, 'shifting geopolitical boundaries and economic downturn, Emerging Landscapes reflects on the state of landscape and its future, mapping those practices that creatively address the boundaries between possibility, opportunity and action in imagining and shaping landscape.

HIGHGROVE: A GARDEN CELEBRATED is a commemoration of the beautiful, mature gardens planned and planted by The Prince of Wales over thirty years ago. The gardens at Highgrove evoke intense emotion. In January, the dramatic light and early snowdrops of the Stumpery are exquisite; the glistening emerald lawns and tree blossoms in Spring lift the spirits with a promise of what is to come; in Summer, the longed-for delphiniums in the Sundial Garden stand proudly to attention and dramatic leaf colours welcome Autumn to the Arboretum as the harvesting in the Kitchen Garden begins. In Winter the structural elements of the garden have their moment of glory as the year comes to a close and the cycle of the seasons continues. Lavishly illustrated with photographs that capture both the light and detail of this magisterial space, this beautiful book will delight and inspire gardeners of every level. It is an exquisite celebration of garden design, passion and inspiration.

Expanding Disciplinarity in Architectural Practice presents an argument for the role of an architect as a generalist with a particular ability to bring spatial intelligence to bear on the significant issues of planning, settlement, and identity. The book draws on strategy and planning, landscape, infrastructure, urbanism, historical conservation, and interpretation, architecture, and the creative reuse of existing structures to encourage you to incorporate a holistic approach to your designs. Tracing a series of projects developed by his practice 5th Studio, author Tom Holbrook argues the critical importance of involving spatial practitioners in large scale strategies and designs to combine interdisciplinary thinking and concrete experience of buildings. The book incorporates interviews with prominent figures in the field of architecture, eleven UK case studies, and over 200 beautiful illustrations including the author's own award-winning designs. With twenty years of evolving practical experience, together with associated research, teaching, and writing, Holbrook shows you how a participatory infrastructure creates a crucial bridge between strategic thinking and the reality of the built environment. This book is a must-read for professionals seeking to incorporate broader design strategy into their practice.

In this beautiful book, which features numerous full-page color photographs, Carlos March, a businessmen and nature-lover, relates the story of his garden in Altarejos, located in the foothills of the Sierra Morena, to the north of the Province of Seville. Surrounded by wild mountain pastureland, among rocks and slate slopes replete with rock roses and holm oaks, this spectacular garden in Altarejos is stocked with three hundred varieties of roses and more than four hundred species of trees, bushes and covering plants. After thirty-five years of careful work, this garden represents a prime example of balance and respectful integration with regard to the environment. The history of its creation and its meticulous and ongoing development, together with its achievements, successes and failures, also tells the story of its creator, in his capacity as a nature-lover, gardening enthusiast, hunter and photographer.

Japan is often called the land of flowers. This book gives an account of those flowers that occur in the country which are most remarkable for their beauty and profusion and which are most typically Japanese. There are also pages on landscape gardening.

Memory is seldom explored through the experience of geographically mobile, racialized populations. Whilst the relationships between the political value of landscape and national memory have previously been written through, there has been little mention of postcolonial, 'diasporic' racialized citizens. Using both visual and material culture, this book examines the value of 'landscape and memory' for postcolonial migrants living in Britain. It uses memory to examine how postcolonial citizenship in Britain is experienced - through remembered citizenships of 'other' geographies abroad. By reflecting on the cultural landscapes of British Asian women, the book reveals social-historical narratives about migration, citizenship and belonging. New spaces of memory are presented as mobile and as politically charged with meaning as the more formal spaces of memorialization. The book offers a refiguring of race memory as being critical to English heritage and postcolonial politics and makes an important contribution to the writings on memory, race and landscape.

While historical and protected landscapes have been well studied for years, the cultural significance of ordinary landscapes is now increasingly recognised. This groundbreaking book discusses how contemporary cultural landscapes can be, and are, created and recognised.

The book challenges common concepts of cultural landscapes as protected or special landscapes that include significant buildings or features. Using case studies from around the world it questions the usual measures of judgement related to cultural landscapes and instead focuses on landscapes that are created, planned or simply evolve as a result of changing human cultures, management policy and practice.

Each contribution analyses the geographical and human background of the landscape, and policies and management strategies that impact upon it, and defines the meanings of 'cultural landscape' in its particular context. Taken together they establish a new paradigm in the study of landscapes in all forms."