No comments about Dumbarton Oaks.

No comments about Landscape Design Documentation: Strategies for Plan Checking and Quality Control.

No comments about Capability Brown.

2 comments about Rodale's Landscape Problem Solver: A Plant-By-Plant Guide.

1. What an informative book! Now I know why the chipmunks were digging up my bulbs, but not eating them. I found out what was making the notches on my lily of the valley (weevils) and what to do about it. I learned I should prune back my ajuga and give winter protection for the azaleas and rhododendrons. I also found out what the strange growths were on the azaleas.
   This book covers hundreds of plants with a description, planting tips, and most common diseases and treatment. Being Rodale, the treatment is the most environmentally friendly way to solve your landscape problem.



2. This book provides easy to find solutions to your disease and insect problems. It is organized by plant common names, and there is loads of information on pests and problems associated with each plant named. I only wish there were a larger variety of less common plants. But most common ornamentals are included.

1 comments about This Meager Nature: Landscape and National Identity in Imperial Russia.

1. Ely's elegant prose drew this reader, who knows little of Russia, into a new landscape and illuminated the ways it was seen (and not seen) by its nineteenth century inhabitants. Although I was familiar with references to the Russian landscape in literature, I knew nothing of the Russian landscape painters of the nineteenth century. Ely introduces this fascinating subject and guides one through the work of such painters as Shishkin and Vasil'ev (with fine illustrations) to an appreciation of the way they saw and painted their native land. He then links this to a developing sense of national identity in the Russia of this period.
   I was particularly interested in what this suggests about the role of a nation's landscape in its national myth, in the role it plays as a source of common pride in one's country and the ways we choose to portray specific features of our landscape to ourselves.
   A good read from start to finish.

3 comments about A Quest for Life: An Autobiography.

1. Ian McHarg has written an autobiography that informs while successfully capturing his bold character. Ian McHarg minces no words. He recalls the incident where he gave public testimony claiming that highway engineers seem to "have a deep insecurity as to their masculinity which can only be appeased by mutilating nature", among other similar ventures.
   This autobiography informs us how a person of such outspokenness has emerged and gained respect. His childhood outside Glasgow, Scotland at the city's edge where homes met nature made him realize, at an early age, the advantages of an environment outside of blocks of treeless tenement homes. Possessing neither an undergraduate degree nor a high school diploma, he entered Harvard's graduate program in Landscape Architecture by telegraphing them and requesting that arrangements be made for his arrival and entrance into their school. He repaid his department by becoming Student Council Chairman and pushing through a resolution of no confidence in his department. Upset that the Landscape Architect faculty focused on designing gardens for the wealthy, Ian McHarg became an advocate that landscape architecture is for all. Further, he would argue, we all should respect nature.
   People familiar with projects where Ian McHarg had a hand will appreciate learning about his eventful life. Among the projects where Ian McHarg was involved include Baltimore's Inner Harbor, the creation of 110 more acres in Manhattan through landfill, the first Earth Day, and his milestone book "Design with Nature". Many credit "Design with Nature" as a major force in creating legislation requiring ecological considerations when planning construction.
   People unfamiliar with Ian McHarg's work will appreciate reading of his life's struggles, from combat in World War II, fighting tuberculosis four decades ago when survival rates were much lower, and founding the Landscape Architecture program at the University of Pennsylvania with no faculty, no office, and no students. A fascinating person has written an excellent book.



2. Ian McHarg is both famous and infamous. Well-known among environmentalists, ecologists, landscape architects and designers, he is Peck's bad boy, even persona non grata, to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, developers, numerous (all?) corporate executives, governmental officials (all levels), and a few university departments. No one believes McHarg to be a benign force, and his autobiography testifies to his lifelong snappish testiness. Born in Scotland on November 20, 1920, he grew up in the thrall of nature and became a Naturist (sic). His long, active, and productive career as a "nature-intoxicated" landscape architect is recorded in this detailed solo cantata, a well-deserved forte encomium of one man's dedication to his own odyssey, his quest for life. It will be a surprise if this tome fails to become a rallying point for future ecological revolutions, for future Earth Days, for a Cult of the Living Gaia. McHarg is 18 months younger than I. Many of us "American" GIs of WWII who grudgingly served a mere 3 or 4 years (1942-1945) must stand aside for our European brothers. McHarg, along with uncounted fellow Brits and other allies, served in sometimes hellish combat conditions for six or seven years, a long period out of young lives. McHarg's account of his war experiences are alone worth reading his story, told in dramatic, gripping terms. Come to realize, so is the entire book. McHarg's besetting sins are his arrogance and his conceptual pugilism. On the other hand, his modus vivendi, that determined his astoundingly productive successes, are his arrogance and conceptual pugilism. As he fights for the right, he generally is right-not exactly a social or political asset. Recipient of numerous academic and civic honors, he includes an impressive bibliography of his publications and works. Design with Nature (1969) is his other important book-to date. A tenacious survivor, he no doubt will yet fire off another volley worth hearing. (Reviewed by Allan Shields in Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol 15 No 2, Winter 1999-2000. Copyright © by Allan Shields.)



3. Ian McHarg is the founder of the field of environmental design, a branch of or approach to Landscape Architecture. His book "Design With Nature" opened the eyes of a generation of planners and architects to the possibilities of environmentally sane design and planning. McHarg's autobiography makes a wonderful read for anyone who read and loved "Design With Nature". And is is a first class read! He has never been a man who pulled his punches, and this book is full of hilarious stories of his run-ins with the establishment. I loved it!

1 comments about Poa Annua: Physiology, Culture, and Control of Annual Bluegrass.

1. At long last, a fine book on the most complex species we manage on golf courses. Vargas and Turgeon do a great job of defining Poa annua and then exploring management and control. This book ranks right up there with Dernoden's book on creeping bentgrass. A must-have for anyone who manages Poa annua greens and/or attempts to control it on any fine turf.

No comments about Hard landscape in concrete.

No comments about The Illustrated Natural History of Selborne.

1 comments about The Art of Landscape Detail: Fundamentals, Practices, and Case Studies.

1. "The lexicon of landscape architectural design literature has a wonderful new addition in The Art of Landscape Detail.......with this book, the critical literature of the field has taken another solid step forward" Deborah Dalton, ASLA Landscape Architecture Magazine, February 2000