No comments about Designing the Nation's Capital: The 1901 Plan for Washington, DC.

1 comments about Designing with Plants: Creative Ideas from America's Best Gardeners (Fine Gardening Design Guides) (Fine Gardening Design Guides).

1. I have a LOT of other gardening books. I really enjoyed this one. New and different ideas about garden design.

No comments about Grading for Landscape Architects and Architects.

No comments about Miniature and Panorama: Vogt Landscape Architects, Projects 2000-06.

3 comments about Designs on the Land: Exploring America From the Air.

1. Most of us who do not fly very often are mesmerized by the aerial views we get out of the tiny portal windows in commercial airliners. "Designs on Land" gives the reader those views without the neck-craning or the other discomforts of flying.

   This book was intended mainly as a photographic recording of the aesthetics and unintentional beauty/coherence of the changes and structures which mankind has brought to pass on this continent. However, I am not a student of landscape architecture or photography. As someone who is conservation-oriented, I found Maclean's photos to be literally jaw-dropping. He is immensely effective at showing the overpowering impact that our species has had on the land.

   Even for those who have no interest in landscapes, design, or the environment this book is still a "can't-put-it-down" coffee table book.

   I give my highest recommendation for anyone and everyone.




2. This the third book I have bought of Alex MacLean's stunning aerial photographs of the American landscape. The other two, `Look at the Land' (1993) and `Across the American Landscape' (1996) were lovely to look at but this latest book with 430 photos is excellent.
   
   MacLean captures the changing American scene beautifully and in pin sharp detail. Unfortunately, none of the photos are dated and many of them appeared in both his earlier books so some of them could be ten years old. The various chapters cover America from above though the concentration is on the man-made environment, including such delights as parking, city grid, pollution, sprawl, abandonment and more. These might seem dreary objects to photograph but MacLean can make a half-full parking lot look exciting and in many cases, when seen from above, so many of these images have a definite abstract art look about them. The agriculture photos, of huge fields stretching into the horizon, must be seen to be believed.
   
   Comprehensive though the coverage is there is one area of the landscape MacLean has not been able to cover, the huge amount of land controlled by the military. Some their activities would make fascinating photos. You might get the impression looking through the pages that open land in the US is fast disappearing but the reality is that the hand of man affects less than ten percent of the nation, the remainder is just open country.
   
   Get this fascinating book if you want to see what the American landscape looks like from a view that most of us will never normally see.
   
   ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click on 'customer images' under the cover.



3. Alex S. MacLean is an architectural geologist with an impressionist's eye for composition and light. He is a pilot and a gifted photographer as well. The consistently fascinating imagery he has has created by fusing all these talents into a rigorous and aesthetically gorgeous body of work is on splendid display within the pages of Designs On The Land which ably demonstrates how uniquely important an aerial vertex is to a complete understanding of human interaction with the planet Earth. I recently drove thousands of miles through the high desert southwest and had a marvelous opportunity to appreciate that landscape from a mostly horizontal vertex. What a revelation to see the same tableaux from above! So much that is only hinted at at ground level reveals itself completely from above. The central thesis of Designs On The Land is that human transformation of the environment is among the most revealing indicators of man's developmental and evolutionary status. By extension, aerial views of the results of man's activities on the land provide a powerful tool for interpreting and understanding this interaction. As with any authentic synthesis, Designs On The Land functions on many levels simultaneously. Most significantly, the images presented in this critically important portfolio are simply beautiful and moving; both compositionally and as sophisticated studies in shadow, light and color. But aside from the captivating imagery, this volume contains a wealth of data that provide for informed consideration of land use protocols, environmental degradation and pollution, and the shifting utilization of land over time, to name but a few of topics taken up here. To quote from the introduction by James Corner, "What one sees from the air, then, are not merely attractive patterns and forms but great metabolic scaffoldings of material transformation, transmission, production and consumption. The country is an enormous working quarry, an operational network of exchange and mobility. To appreciate the essential character of the American landscape, it is first necessary to understand how its appearance is less an evolving expression than it is an activating agent of American ways of life and other material practices...The implicit subjectivity in the content of Alex MacLean's photographs reveals not only the strange working beauty of this busy, ongoing inhabiting of America, but also its potential for modern design and planning to create even more spectacular environments-this time for on the ground reception and effect as well as from the air."

No comments about Grow a Hummingbird Garden: Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin A-167 (Storey Publishing Bulletin, a-167).

No comments about Gardens and Imagination: Cultural History and Agency (Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium Series in the History of Landscape Architecture).

2 comments about Black & Decker Landscape Design & Construction (Black & Decker).

1. This book is a must for anyone planning on building a patio, building a stone wall etc. I has many step-by-step photographs, not drawings!! I find actucal photo's to be much more helpfull, they are true to life where as drawings give you a perfect situation, not very realistic. In short an invaluable reference that you can take into the field with you, and inexpensive too!!



2. This book is easy to read & understand with lots of pictures showing how the work is done. I completed a large brick patio with no prior experience using this book as a guide. The patio turned out great and I impressed all my friends! My only negative point would be that the model in the photo never gets dirty.. a little unrealistic :)

No comments about The London Town Garden, 1700-1840.

2 comments about Landscaping for Privacy (Gardening & Landscaping).

1. Very dated book--the shipper sent this book a full week after the rest of my order arrived. They had misstated the condition of the book _VERY USED. A disappointment.



2. For the price, this book was pretty good. I would have liked to see more pictures of various landscaping techniques, but illustrations would have raised the price. I must admit, there is a fortune of text and drawings that one may bennifit from. So for the price, I give it a 4.