The 'Garden of England', 'The High Weald', these are phrases that describe a 70-year-old Area of Outstanding National Beauty in Southern England. Among these dramatic landscapes and ancient woodlands stand many castles, mansions and cottages, ringed with orchards, meadows, drifting flowers and horticultural exotica. Featured gardens range from grand landscapes to works of glorious eccentricity, Arts and Crafts green rooms to postage stamp-sized plots of ingenuity. Wilderness weaves into floral genius, while native and exotic species stand side-by-side - all within the unique climate of the English garden. Including chapters on English Parks, Arts and Crafts Gardens and Woodland Gardens, Where the Wildness Pleases - The English Garden Celebrated pays homage to English horticultural excellence and tells the gripping stories behind some of our most breath-taking landscapes. This book also features a handy Who's Who of designers, gardeners, plant hunters and nurserymen, and a brief guide to English playing greens - cricket, bowling, croquet and tennis. This is a welcome guide for anyone interested in visiting this astonishingly beautiful part of the country, or those thinking of buying a plot.

Welcome to the joys of nineteenth century gardening and design! The Victorians were masters of combining geometric formality and bright, formal, seasonal bedding to create lush, exuberant outdoor living spaces. This delightful book presents Victorian gardening style and design using beautiful landscapes lavish with carpet beds, topiary, statuary, sundials, marble and stone walkways, as well as classical architectural ruins, fountains, and pools. Many restorations and recreations of Victorian gardens are highlighted, including Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight (Queen Victorias country home), Biddulph Grange in Staffordshire, and Down House in Kent (home to Charles Darwin). Authentic Victorian writings, design instructions, and illustrations guide the modern gardener on how to shape up, Victorian style. Gorgeously illustrated with over 200 beautiful color photographs plus illustrations, diagrams, and layouts of restorations and recreations, this book is sure to inspire and give the reader confidence to experiment. All who enjoy looking at and working in beautiful outdoor spaces will find this book irresistible.

Water lilies are inextricably linked to the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome, Egypt and the Far East, where they were highly valued, just as precious metals or gemstones, their properties were thought to be medicinal, spiritual and purely aesthetic; they have been represented in architecture, printed textiles, religious paintings and illustrations, cited in mythology, folklore, mysticism and the creative imagination. This volume meticulously records our enduring love affair with the most beautiful and exotic of plants, the water lily. It is a comprehensive and detailed account of their introduction into European culture, largely through the passion and devotion of one man, Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac (1830-1911), whose lifelong work in the field of propagation, cultivation and commercialization of water lilies inspired a generation of horticulturists, artists and poets to create the words and images that are deeply embedded in our culture today. Claude Monet, for example, used lilies from Latour-Marliac's nursery to create his garden in Giverny. The work Latour-Marliac did gave rise to development of specialist lily nurseries and growers across Europe and North America; in fact, Latour-Marliac's nursery still exists today, owned by Robert Sheldon, an American who shared Latour-Marliac's passion for water lilies and water gardening and has been the force behind the nursery's continued success today.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Do you dare delve into the thorny undergrowth? Why do jasmine flowers make you more sexually alluring? When is an apple not an apple? Are trees the tallest plants? What could I grow on Mars? This book answers hundreds of intriguing questions about flowers, plants, and trees for which you thought you'd never find an answer--such as why are some plants edible and some poisonous? And why are there large teardrops on the petal grooves inside a Crown Imperial flower? There are answers to suit those with mythic poetic traits and plenty to satisfy seriously scientific minds. The lives and loves of plants and trees attract scrupulous observation, while we also learn about plants and trees that feature in record books--the tallest, widest, longest, heaviest, smallest, deepest. Then there is the choosing of names--smart binomial nomenclature that celebrates their shape, color, breeder, or discoverer; or common names that echo their rural habits or coarsely interpreted characteristics. Authoritative and entertaining, this book, containing around 250 questions and answers by garden specialist Caroline Holmes, is for everyone who has ever been curious about things that grow.