No comments about Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways, and Houses in America.

4 comments about World of Garden Design: Inspiring Ideas from Around the Globe to Your Backyard.

1. This book is very beautifully put together. The pictures are bright and clear. The writings are interesting. Very helpful to to give you ideas for your own garden.



2. This wonderful book takes you on a tour of some of the world's most beautiful gardens and shows you how to bring ideas from them home to your own space. It is divided into geographic areas including Italy, Britain, France, Japan and the tropics. In each section the unique style and methods of the area are explored in detail with page after page of vibrant color photos.

   The adaptation of the garden ideas to the American scene is presented in the "Bringing it Home" section that is part of each regional overview. Here we see how the classical principles of each world region have been applied to a number of noteworthy American gardens. There is also a more in depth look at one special garden, including a complete garden plan in the "Garden Tour" part of each "Bringing it Home" section.

   I like the organization of this book, the history, and the personal touch of the many gardeners and designers that it provides. The book is of excellent quality with outstanding photography. I recommend it to anyone interested in an overview of the fine gardens of the world or in finding exciting ideas for their own garden.




3. Take a meadow's worth of gorgeous photos, throw in more than a potful of great gardening tips, and finish with an abundance of historic and artistic context and you get "World of Garden Design," from the creators of Garden Design Magazine. Enticing images and stellar ideas notwithstanding, I most valued the latter component. Through a thorough tour of history's major gardening styles-- including Italian, English, French, Caribbean and Asian-- and an examination of their signature elements, "World" nicely gathers a number of my passions-- art, design, gardens, history-- into one bountiful eyeful and one great read. Its focus on design, though, is what stands out-- a refreshing antidote to the dozens of gardening books that emphasize the practical at the expense of the magical.



4. I am a recent subscriber to the magazine, so I was drawn to the book by it's truly AMAZING photos. The garden definitions at the beginning of each section were a nice addition, too. I do wish, however, it had just a BIT more content. It is inspiring to leaf through, and dream!

No comments about Capability Brown and the Eighteenth-Century English Landscape.

No comments about Destructive Turfgrass Insects: Biology, Diagnosis, and Control.

No comments about Diplomatic Tours in the Gardens of Versailles Under Louis XIV (Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture).

No comments about Garden Paths: Inspiring Designs and Practical Projects.

2 comments about Gardens of the Arts and Crafts Movement: Reality and Imagination.

1. Fanciful topiary, Kate Greenaway children's books where little girls hold tea parties while wearing adorable smocked dresses, trellis hedges captured in wall paper and woven rugs and tapestries, long grass walkways, pollarded trees and stone garden stairways descending into sunken gardens - settings from `Room With A View' and `Maurice'- the colorful Arts and Crafts Movement was a breath of fresh air following the black tones and claustrophobia of the Victorian Age. Although it rains a good deal in England, you would never know it from the photographs in this lovely volume. Judith Tankard has also included a number of items from her own collection of prints and drawings of from the period known by the French as the Belle Epoch or beautiful era .
   
   GARDENS OF THE ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT were and are a balm for a war-weary heart, developing as they did during the relatively peaceful period following the turbulent 19th century and the years before WWI. What happens if folks put their money into beauty and eschew the ugly? These gardens may seem ornate given the relative poverty of the working classes, but they were open to the public on certain feast days, and served as a place of refinement before public works became the only respite for the poor.
   
   Many of the houses around which the Arts and Crafts gardens are designed are ancient, but contemporary designers like Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson modernized the grounds. Robinson built his gardens at Gravetye Manor around an Elizabethan structure and Jekyll developed Mustead Wood, a mere fifteen acres surrounding a house designed by Edwin Lutyens. Robinson was interested in the "wild garden" and many of his flowers bloomed among the trees or flopped over wooden structures. A fan of bulbs he developed terraced sweeps of daffodils as well as bluebell woods, but for many folks the most beautiful part of Gravetye's grounds was the West garden where tea and China roses adorned pergolas, arbors and trellises. The book includes prints, designs and color photos of the grounds Robinson owned as well as those he designed for others. Jekyll's interest lay in the design of perennial beds.
   
   Long after these artists were gone their influence was felt in England and other places. The book discusses the origins some of their ideas, as well as the influence of this movement on US gardens. This beautiful book will make a fine addition to your art book collection, and avid gardeners will find a few interesting ideas.



2. Gardens Of The Arts And Crafts Movement: Reality And Imagination by gardening historian and a teacher at Harvard University's Landscape Institute, Judith Tankard (who is also the founding editor of "Journal of the New England Garden History Society) presents a fascinating and informative exploration of landscape design from the late 1800s down to the present. It was this increasingly influential landscaping philosophy that was to redefine the relationship between the garden and the house for upscale property owners. The gardens used as illustrative examples include such legendary designers as William Morris and Gertrude Jekyll. Profusely illustrated in full color and impressively enhanced with an appendix of Arts and Crafts gardens open for visits from the public, Gardens Of The Arts And Crafts Movement: Reality And Imagination will prove a highly prized and seminal addition to personal, professional, academic, and community library Gardening, Landscaping, and Horticultural Studies reference and resource collections.

5 comments about Theme Gardens: Revised Edition.

1. I am not an experienced gardener, and this book showed me what plants to put together to create a look. I also picked up some general principles on gardening, and there were good how-tos for things like creating walkway, etc.



2. For those who want step by step instruction in laying out a particular kind of garden...this book can be most helpful. Various types of gardens are included & plant lists are provided ...some history on each particular garden is also added in some cases.
   
   Writer's style is very approachable & easy to understand...no high & lofty botanical terms to look up in the dictionary.
   
   Author carefully explains various aspects of developing the projects in some cases such as how to build raised beds, prepare soil & building a trellis etc. These additions are there to supplement the ideas put forward by the author in a very effective manner.
   
   I recommend this book on the premise of it's intended purpose...to help people looking to establish a few particular kinds of gardens & suggested layouts. With respect to it's purpose the objective has been met.



3. My 1982 edition of "Theme Gardens" is well-worn, dirt-spattered, and much loved. When I saw a revised edition, I was thrilled, hoping it would illustrate another dozen or so themes. Unfortunately, very little has changed from the first edition; most of the changes I found were in the photos while the text is almost the same, as are all the theme gardens themselves. If Ms. Damrosch writes another book that shows us new themes, I'll buy it, but until then my trusty book from '82 is just fine.
   
   Suggestions for themes:
   A Songbird Garden
   An Elizabethan Herb Garden
   A Reader's Garden
   A Dyer's Garden
   A Red, White, and Blue Garden
   A Biblical Garden



4. Don't waste your time or money. What she wrote in the First Theme Gardens is enough. If you can't find the first one then this is a good book, but as a REVISED and UPDATED Edition the changes were very subtle.



5. This book has become my dear companion over the past 12 years. The plans are beautiful and they have worked well for me, but the general information, and capsules on specific plants CONTINUE to teach me. Each plan is shown in three views, for color and growth covering spring, summer, and fall. As I contemplate my new Cape Cod location, and my mother's shady retreat in Ohio, I draw out my own plans this way now. My husband bought me Theme Gardens in 1988, and it has helped me grow from a complete novice in California to a skilled amateur in New Jersey, especially with perennials. I planted the Secret Garden, and every spring I think, that Barbara Damrosch really made this great! I am buying a copy for my mother, a hesitant gardener, and together we will plant another.

1 comments about Mughal Gardens (Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium Series in the History of Landscape Architecture).

1. An excellent book with great photos of many places almost impossible for Americans to visit. A delightfully well written text. Great book on a subject far too little has been written about.

2 comments about Color by Design: Planting the Contemporary Garden.

1. Color by design is the best book on the subject I have read. A different and complex approach on using color and its effect on the human eye, mind and spirit.



2. An innovative and creative approach to designing with colour. The use of Clive Nichol's stunning photos of Hadspen Garden combine perfectly with the witty and informative text of Nori and Sandra Pope, who are also the gardeners at Hadspen. The publishers are to be congratulated for producing a book that will change the direction of garden book design.