Enormous disappoinment.......2007-05-15
I read the glowing reviews and purchased the book - it is a shame that no one mentioned the fact that 75% of the images used to illustrate the book are black and white photos. The book concerns gardens of the 20th century, and was published in the 21st century - someone needs to let the author know that photographic techniques have advanced quite a bit. At the very least it would have been nice to know that the book I was purchasing with over "200 superb photographs" were mostly low contrast black and white images. I suppose I should have paid more attention to the "printed on thick, glossy paper" part of the review as a warning.
A century of beautiful gardens.......2005-09-11
For over a century, Country Life magazine has been documenting the great houses and gardens in England. Their photographic library consists of over 10,000 images - this book presents 200 of them, beginning with the formal bedding gardens of Victorian England and progressing through the Arts and Crafts gardens of the Edwardian era as well as modernist gardens, artists gardens, wild gardens and cottage gardens. The emphasis is on the Arts and Crafts gardens and the influence that Gertrude Jeckyll and Edward Lutyens had on garden design. An entire chapter is devoted to Jeckyll - other chapters cover landscape architects who were influenced by Jeckyll and Lutyens, the popularity of borders, Sissinghurst and Hidcote, the Modernist Garden, Romance and Restraint (following World War II), From Smart to Art (Artist's Gardens) and the final chapter "Making it Over" which discusses how some of the major estate gardens have been saved and restored. The prose is very interesting and informative (although the author can be very opinionated) but the highlight of the book are the remarkable photographs. Most of them are black and white with the exception of a few duotones (of Jeckyll's gardens) and color photos in the last chapter. The book is beautiful, printed on heavy glossy paper and any garden lover will love it.
Customer Reviews:
Totally awesome!.......2007-08-30
I purchased this book several years ago and absolutely LOVED it! A friend borrowed it and now I can't remember which one borrowed it...so I'm purchasing another one for me and one for a dear friend for his Christmas present this year.
Tremendously Attractive & Timeless Design Solution.......2006-05-18
The knot garden, or parterre, can be eye catching, brashly exuberant, romantically nostalgic, or quietly simple and chic. The appeal of the knot garden in timeless and with space often at a premium, a knot garden provides a tremendously attractive design solution.
Knot Gardens and Parterres is divided into two sections. The first unravels the history of this genre from Tudor times and its "curious knot" - to the famous historic patterns of the 17th Century designs for which certain "Sun Kings" are renowned, and beyond to the flamboyance of Queen Victoria's garden affectations.
The second section confidently takes the reader through the design process, plant selection, and future care and maintenance.
It is an exceptional book on the topic. I refer to it frequently. It has served as the inspiration behind several of my designs.
Formal gardeners TAKE NOTE!.......2000-06-15
this is an absolutely wonderful book all about the 'old' art of Knot Gardening. You'll definitely want to read this book to find out all about the history of this fascinating form of gardening and how to create one in your own space! Great photographic examples fill the pages-a definite "must have" for any gardener!
Book Description
The only comprehensive guide to the National Trust's unparalleled collection of gardens, featuring 200 glorious color images of the finest gardens in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Britain's National Trust has the finest collection of gardens ever assembled under one ownership—the greatest in number, diversity, historic importance, and quality. Together, they form the world's most important collection of cultivated plants, distinguished by their beauty, rarity, historical interest, and scientific value. This new edition of
Gardens of the National Trust has been substantially revised to showcase superb new photography and to introduce newly acquired properties. Historically and horticulturally, Stephen Lacey paints a vivid picture of the gardens, with all the major periods represented. Both a practical guide and a rich source of inspiration, the book includes horticultural details, a complete plant list, and a section on the many other Trust gardens to visit. Throughout, splendid color images by the country's leading photographers bring to life the beauty of each garden.
Book Description
The gardens of the great Edwardian landscape designer, captured in all their glory in 200 color and duotone images from the archives of Country Life. Harold Peto (1854–1933) was one of the most celebrated landscape designers of the Edwardian era. A leading exponent of the ultra-romantic Italianate style so fashionable in the first two decades of the 20th century, he was also influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement. Much admired by the likes of Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens, he was recognized as one of the most successful garden designers of his generation and enjoyed a formidable reputation both in England and the South of France. Here, garden historian Robin Whalley's illuminating commentary is brought to life by 200 ravishing photos depicting many of Peto's gardens in their heyday. A splendid volume for garden lovers, designers, and historians.
Book Description
Called "the best single garden book in our language" by Henry Mitchell, this classic includes an encyclopedic listing of the best flowers, trees, and shrubs for the natural garden, illustrated with charming etchings. It presents Robinson's influential ideas on garden design and features. First published in 1883, it went through 15 printings during Robinson's lifetime. This edition represents the definitive 1933 version, with updating by Graham Stuart Thomas to current nomenclature.Published at $35.00 Our last copies available at $17.49
Customer Reviews:
Sacred Gardens............2000-12-31
THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN by William Robinson, was first published in 1883 and republished a number of times afterward. The current version available from Amazon is a reprint of the 15th Edition Robinson edited shortly before he died in the 1930s. This new reprint of the 15th Edition contains the "Botanical Revisions" prepared by Graham Stuart Thomas for the 1984 Edition, as well as a Forward by Henry Mitchell, and an introduction by Deborah Nevins.
The book is set in old style type and contains numerous black and white illustrations--etchings of photos and prints of sketches. Some of them are a bit grainy, but many are not, and even the grainy ones have their good points. The content of each photo is quite interesting, and the sketches provide the "personal" touch one seldom sees in text books these days.
In one print, taken at Gravetye Manor over 100 years ago, a climbing tea rose clings to a bamboo split-rail post fence surrounded by bush roses. The sunlight reflects from the walkway and warms the flowers and a huge clay pot sitting in a corner. In another photo, pots of 'Chimney Campanula' guard an old Jacobin chest sitting in a hall at Staunton Court. Sketches and photos are used to illustrate flowers all through the last half of the book--a flower dictionary with anectdotal and literary "blurbs" written by Robinson himself.
Mitchell says Robinson "for all practical purposes invented gardening as we know it." Robinson's garden, 'Gravetye Manor' is a hop, skip and a jump from Sissinghurst, but few know of it's existence. Yet, Robinson is the "grandfather" of Sissinghurst, because Gertrude Jekyll who helped Mrs. Nichols design Sissinghurst, was Robinson's disciple. She literally followed in his footsteps and emulated his style.
Robinson found most of the gardens of his day deplorable (19th Century Victorian). Those of the wealthy were modeled after the French and Italian formal plan, loaded with clipped Yews and bedded out every spring with ribbons of color provided by geraniums and marigolds. The walkways were lined with ornate scupture and surrounded by towering "imprisoned" evergreen shrubs and trees including clipped Yews which he loathed. He said these gardens reminded him of graveyards.
His ideal was the cottage garden. He considered the garden a sacred space. He said one had to visit the houses of the poor to find truly beautiful gardens. Henry Mitchell reflecting on this says, "The thing that separates the true gardener from the mere architect or designer (and there is something extremely suspicious in the airs they give themselves nowadays) is that the gardener stands in awe before his violets, while others think of them in terms of [sic] plant materials."
Robinson's ideas grew out of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th Century. His designs and thinking were reflected in the Arts and Crafts movement based on the importance of reconnecting to nature. His contemporaries in thinking were Ruskin, Morris, Stickly, Frank Lloyd Wright, and others we identify with this movement. If you're a Stickly, cantilevered, picturesque kind of person, you'll like this book.
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Tudor and Stuart Gardens (Historic Gardens) (Historic Gardens)
Anne Jennings
Manufacturer: English Heritage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1850749361 |
Book Description
Tudor and Stuart Gardens explores the love of formality that characterised gardening in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the influence of Renaissance culture on British gardens. Intricate knot gardens and parterres, the structural use of topiary and hedges and the period's fascination with non-native plants influenced the evolution of British gardens over the following centuries. This was a time when gardens were used to demonstrate the status, wealth and education of the owner, and the period provides an intriguing perspective on how garden design and plantsmanship reflected social differences and divisions. Tudor and Stuart garden design and planting includes much that can inspire today's gardener, and the book includes tips and advice on how to create elements of these gardens in modern plots, large or small.
Book Description
A glorious record of some of England’s finest lost gardens, preserved in all their former splendor in 160 period photographs.
Customer Reviews:
The land of fantasy and fairy tale.......2006-08-01
Being such a splendid book, my only want is that it should be in colours. The book captures the spirit of each garden with pictures and words and it feels like reading a fairy tale.
It also captures an era lost to us now, of grand houses and parties, ladies in white dresses and men smoking cigars and the act of creating exactly the garden fantasy you want whatever the cost. Some are wild, some are amazing, some ar just beautiful but all very interesting and nostalgic to look upon.
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The Laskett
Manufacturer: Bantam Press, Limited
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Binding: Hardcover
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Edith Wharton
ASIN: 0593050703
Release Date: 2004-02-06 |
Book Description
This is the story of one man and a garden. It is also the portrait of a marriage expressed through the vision and mystery of creating a garden. Neither the author, Roy Strong, nor his wife, the designer Julia Trevelyan Oman, had foreseen this when they eloped and married in 1971. Over thirty years on they find themselves surrounded by the largest formal garden made in this country since 1945, increasingly recognized as one of the most important laid out in the second half of the twentieth century. And yet it was done not only with little money and less labour, but quite unconsciously.
But it is not so much the horticultural triumph that will grip the reader as what this garden on the Welsh Borders in Herefordshire has come to mean in the lives of its creators. Into the Laskett has been etched not only their own biographies but also the many people who crossed their lives and are commemorated within it. That galaxy includes not only garden icons, like Rosemary Verey, Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe and Ian Hamilton Finlay, but figures as varied as the photographer Sir Cecil Beaton, the painter John Piper and the fashion designer Jean Muir. It also enshrines memories of two great Oxford intellectual dynasties, the Omans and Trevelyans, of the great choreographer, Sir Frederick Ashton, of the Prince of Wales and his garden at Highgrove as well as a colourful pageant of minor characters from mole catchers to cats.
The Laskett is the unusual and unique story of someone who, with his wife, has been at the centre of the arts for half a century. A great love affair, a portrait of a marriage, a haunting and human tale of a garden as the domain of ghosts and as the habitat of memory, within its confines can be found both joy and happiness as well as the tears of tragedy. No one who reads this book will put it down unmoved.
Book Description
The varied tastes of the Victorians extended to their gardens and landscapes, and Victorian Gardens describes the wide range of garden designs and planting styles that were created during Victoria's reign. The Victorians' inventiveness and enthusiasm for technology and industrial developments transformed professional British gardening into a sophisticated and skilled profession. Public parks, carpet bedding, kitchen gardens and glasshouse displays are only a few of the era's innovative horticultural contributions that are still enjoyed today. Many of today's gardeners are rediscovering the vibrant planting schemes popular over a century ago and we can learn much from the detailed plant lists and gardening instructions that are recorded in Victorian books and magazines.
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