3 comments about Dream Pools & Gardens.

1. Well, I am totally a picture person, and I found this book to be astonishing, I loved almost every pool I saw, there was some gardening pictures, but not that many, but i was personally looking for pools, that's probably why they titled it "POOLS and gardens". But if you love pictures and seeing other people's interpretations of beautiful scenery and living dreams, then i assure you that you will love this book!



2. Dream Pools and Gardens does not supply any intelligible narrative and merely bombards the mind with image after image of mind-boggling pools. Was that the book's original purpose and goal? I certainly hope so.



3. I eagerly awaited the arrival of this book. Unfortunately, I found it to have little garden information, pictures which lacked good perspective and a narrative which was weakly written and included only sketchy details. "Reflections on Pools" is a much better book.

1 comments about Landscaping: A Five-Year Plan.

1. Wonderful book. It has saved me money, time and heartache. The author knows what he is talking about and talks straight from the shoulder. He is very sympathetic to those who are beginners and doesn't try to impress you with esoteric knowledge. I had the first printing copy and lost it. The library had two copies and they were both stolen. Thank God for the reprint.

2 comments about The Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gardening (American Society of Landscape Architects Centennial Reprints series).

1. A great re-print of one of the best documents about the landscape design aspect of the Prairie School. Vernon's introduction contains well-researched information about this important aspect of a significant American regional design expression.



2. The Prairie Spirit In Landscape Gardening is a reprint of a classic treatise first published in 1915, about a uniquely American style of landscape design - the "prairie style." Black-and-white photographs of designs for Chicago's Graceland Cemetery and Midwestern landscapes by Walter Burley Griffin and Warren H. Manning complement an informative text that has stood the test of time as a hallmark of American landscape gardening cultural trends. An extensive introduction to the new edition rounds out this remarkable and enduring work, The Prairie Spirit In Landscape Gardening is a welcome and strongly recommended addition to personal, professional, academic, and community library landscaping and gardening supplemental reading lists and reference collections.

No comments about On Other Grounds: Landscape Gardening and Nationalism in Eighteenth-Century England and France (S U N Y Series, Margins of Literature).

1 comments about Garden.

1. This book is rather ambitious in scope, and unfortunately, it doesn't deliver.

   In his introduction the author indicates that he intends to look at gardens of the Western world from the Middle Ages to the present day and to look at how "the individual can express himself" in his garden space. The text is very enlightening and accessible but, while viewing the elaborate and often immense landscapes of chateaux and castles, one doesn't get the impression that he can replicate anything remotely close in his own backyard.

   In terms of scope, Pizzoni devotes only 4 pages to North American gardens, ignoring entirely the estates of the great industrialists' homes (eg Ford, Vanderbilt, Busch, Hearst). He also ignores the enormus influence Asian, especially Japanese gardens had on (at least ordinary) 20th Century gardeners.

   Finally, I was very disappointed with the production value of the book. There are too many small, black-and-white photos and far too many of the color photos were very poor quality. Many were grainy or out-of-focus and generally remind one of the guidebooks peddled outside the gates of European landmarks. It's final transgression is its lack of an index.

   The text really is well-done, though, and the author often can't be blamed for the production values, so because I can't give it 2.5 stars, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and give it 3.

No comments about Perfect Plant, Perfect Garden: The 200 Most Rewarding Plants for Every Garden.

No comments about Home garden magazine's minimum maintenance gardening handbook.

1 comments about Mary Miss.

1. While it may be true that to experience most sculptors's work one must see it in person, it couldn't be truer of Mary Miss. (As an aside, Miss believed the massive earthworks by Michael Heizer and Robert Smithson were better appreciated in aerial photographs.) A pioneer of public art and contemporary sculpture, she has created work that one may (indeed be invited to) peer into, climb upon, descend into, walk through, and see from various angles. Since most of her work is outdoors and/or site-specific, this book which is the first monograph to cover her entire career to date may be the best way to view her work without going out to find it. Some of her most well-known projects are no longer extant and only available in photographs.
   
   As this multi-authored and well-illustrated (mostly in black and white) book demonstrates, Miss's work is well-thought-out, theoretically informed without employing an esoteric visual language, and visually engaging. Her work has done much to establish public art as a well-respected category of contemporary art, while avoiding the monumentality or novelty of other artists who create work for the public realm. But while her best work recreates a site anew without altering it much, some of it risks invisibility so subtle is it.
   
   Her early work in the mid-sixties and seventies identifies her artistic origins in the post-minimalist milieu of Robert Morris and Eva Hesse. But from the beginning she is creating large-scale public projects. Her photo-collages are an interesting lesser-known aspect of her oeuvre. Before she begins a project, she photographs the proposed site then cuts up the pictures and reassembles them into a collage (Matta-Clark did this as well). These "photo/drawings," as she calls them, are meant to elaborate on her experience of the site, "describ[ing] something other than what is being represented," and inform the finished piece.
   
   Miss's other work is organized into sections on outdoor and indoor projects and urban proposals, bringing the reader up to her recent 2001 proposal, "Moving Perimeter: A Wreath for Ground Zero," an intriguing but unrealized alternative to the protective barricades surrounding the World Trade Center disaster/construction site. This project underscores the artist's approach to her work in general, which is to engage the viewer (or, in this case, mourner or visitor) in a pre-existing site.
   
   The book was designed in collaboration with the artist and she provides commentary for most of her projects. There are four essays in the book, including an informative and well-written overview of her public projects by architectural historian Daniel Abramson and a previously published short essay on her photo/drawings by Sandro Marpillero. There is also a reprint of Miss's influential 1984 essay, "On a Redefinition of Public Sculpture," with a new introduction by Miss.

No comments about Willem de Kooning: Garden in Delft.

No comments about Making a Middle Landscape.