1 comments about Penelope Hobhouse's Gardening Through the Ages: An Illustrated History of Plants and Their Influence on Garden Styles-From Ancient Egypt to the Pres.

1. Every page is packed with color plates and useful (fun) information on gardening.
   Contents:
   * The origins of Gardening in the West
   * The Gardens of Islam
   * The Medieval Gardens of Christendom
   * Botanists, Plantsmen and Gardens of Renaissance Europe
   * The Gardens of the Italian Renaissance
   * The Origin and Development of French Formality
   * The Eighteenth-century English Landscape
   * Expansion and Experiment in the Nineteenth Century
   * The twentieth Century: Conservation of Plants in Gardening
   
   If you are a Brother Cadfael fan you will appreciate the section on "Medieval Gardens of Christendom."

No comments about Digital Land: Integrating Technology into the Land Planning Process.

No comments about 10 Preserving Modern Landscape Architecture.

No comments about Representing Landscape Architecture.

1 comments about Culinary Gardens: From Design to Palate.

1. This book is a great idea, but lacks the particulars needed to actually do the gardens it outlines. Specific dimensions are missing in the individual designs. The knot garden for example gives an overall dimension ... but you just sort of have to guess how big the circles and paths are and how large the corner beds are.
   
   There's no real indication how many plants to use, so developing a shopping list and thus a cost estimate is a nothing but a guess.
   
   Plant locations on the design are indicated by varying shades of often similar colors. One design for example has 7 shades of greens. It's impossible to tell which green is which plant in the design.
   
   The majority of the book is devoted to descriptions of the various plants and rambling history or other material on the different garden types. There are few tips on how to actually construct the design. Like how do you lay out a perfect circle of plants? When should you do the shaping and pruning, the harvesting, and when should the plants go in the ground for the best look of the particular garden? Most of the plant descriptions do not include light requirements or other such practical considerations. In short, a good idea, very poorly executed. Advanced and intermediate gardeners won't really need a book like this, and beginners will just be frustrated.
   
   The best part of the book are the recipes, which salvages an otherwise mediocre book, and earns it three stars instead of one.

No comments about A Guide to the National Road (The Road and American Culture).

2 comments about The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll.

1. I now the gertrude jekill in my trip on London, in this moment visit you page and the best price for this , buy this .
   she is the best gardening in europe, this books it is one I like to much other .
   this is real beauty and magnifics.
   thanks for your help me in this eleccions .
   sorry for my inglish



2. As a serious midwestern home gardener who owns many gardening books, I was extremely pleased with this book. There is much valuable information in the way of photographs and writings. Gertrude Jekyll was doing 100 yrs ago, what modern landscapers claim they invented--that is, low maintenance, informal looks. The combination of her informal plantings applied to formal settings makes a wonderfully interesting contrast. Add to that her artistic genius, and these gardens are truly awe-inspiring.

No comments about Gertrude Jekyll at Munstead Wood: Writing - Horticulture - Photography - Homebuilding.

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

1 comments about Sowing Empire: Landscape and Colonization.

1. Those of us who have been south of the United States know parts of Latin America fit a stereotype of how tropical countries look. In my case, the stereotype's from old black-and-white movies on television and foreign films. In Latin America, I found the lush greenery I was expecting to find. What I didn't know was quite a bit of it wasn't native. Instead, much of what I thought of as typically tropical was brought in from somewhere else. That's why today's Latin America has bamboo, bougainvillea, citrus, hibiscus, mango, oleander, poinsettia, sugarcane and tamarind!
   
   When did this happen? Jill Casid pinpoints the SOWING EMPIRE activities of the 18th century. During that time, England and France built rival empires in the Caribbean. The English in Jamaica and the French in Saint-Domingue quickly controlled labor, land, technology, trade and transportation. How? They moved things, plants and people around in ways tying Caribbean colonies to the English and French mother countries. They brought some equipment to cut down forests, clear land, and build roads and plantations. African slave labor did the rest. Everything was held in place by non-native plantings and plantation landscaping.
   
   Sugarcane from Java and Tahiti became big cash crops for the Caribbean. Elm, lemon and oak trees lined roads and marked off plantations. Gardens grew and town markets sold apples, artichokes, beans, cabbage, carrots, celery, cucumbers, figs, lettuce, melons, onions, peas, radishes, strawberries, and turnips. None of all this was native.
   
   Successful plantation owners also owned land in their native countries. They hired landscapers to clear these lands, plantation-style, for artificial lakes and such non-native greenery as banana, cherry and pineapple trees. The most famous English landscaper was Lancelot Brown. Colonial landowner, imperial fortune-holder, and English title-holder became one through the Caribbean sugarcane trade. So Brown tried to mix foreign and familiar, non-native and native so comfortably it was as if the English landscape always looked that way. But the result was the same as in the colonies. Having money meant changing the landscape and planting costly non-native greenery. It also meant ordinary people lost their land and their forest and water rights.
   
   The writing style's a bit academic. But the author organizes the facts, the examples and her interpretations well. She includes helpful diagrams, as well as telling art from the times. It's interesting how beautifully non-native plants fit into the Caribbean. It's also interesting how scientists, planters and landscapers became so sure of what should be grown when, where and why. The book's history. But its concerns can still be timely. For don't we worry about what to grow when and where? In our case, though, isn't the why more in terms of current and future diversity and well-being?