In this informative volume, Dr Shirley Rose Evans explores the lives of two of the most prominent designers of the nineteenth century, designers who have left their distinctive mark on buildings and gardens throughout the British Isles. William Andrews Nesfield and William Eden Nesfield, father and son, were inspired by the beauty and romance of the past, and both played important roles in the nineteeth-century revivals of the Jacobean, Renaissance and Gothic styles. The Nesfields produced horticultural and architectural designs for wealthy and influential landowners, winning important public commissions at Kew Gardens and the Prince Consort's Kensington museum complex. Shirley Rose Evans covers the education of both men and the evolution of their aesthetic sensibilities in detail. William Andrews Nesfield's early life in Durham, his military training and his travels in Canada and Europe fed his fascination with Renaissance proportion and the pre-Revolutionary French parterre-de-broderie, a design of intricate and highly artificial bedding that was to become his signature. His son flourished in the artistic milieu in which he was raised, but his main passion was for Gothic detailing. Both were highly accomplished painters, and Nesfield Senior's watercolours were lauded by John Ruskin. This illustrated volume will be of great interest to enthusiasts of the remarkable work of the Nesfields in particular, or of Victorian design in general. Dr Shirley Rose Evans taught for many years in Shropshire, but she and her husband now live in Cornwall. The Nesfields have been the subject of her research for many years and she has written and spoken about them extensively. Dr Evans has also been involved in the conservation and restoration projects of prominent gardens including those at Regent's Park in London, working closely with The Royal Parks agency, and at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland. "At last we have a definitive study of the most influential landscape gardener of the Victorian period. Shirley Rose Evans' brilliant monograph combines meticulous scholarship with analytical site investigation to establish Nesfield as a practitioner of rare innovation." Professor Timothy Mowl, F.S.A., Professorial Research Fellow in History of Architecture & Designed Landscapes, Humanities Research Institute, University of Buckingham. "Shirley Rose Evans' long-awaited study of the Nesfields launches them into the limelight at last; her warm-hearted and colourful family saga of war and peace, of dutiful soldiering unleashed into passions for watercolours, decorative gardening and architecture reveals the humanity of these Victorian taste-makers." Jane Brown, author of "The Pursuit of Paradise, Lancelot 'Capability' Brown 1716-83" and "A History of the Garden at Buckingham Palace."