The Architecture of Western Gardens: A Design History from the Renaissance to the Present Day

Honorable Mention, 1992 Garden Globe Awards sponsored by the Garden Writers Association of America.

The Architecture of Western Gardens presents an international tour of garden design from the Renaissance to the present. As object and as literature, it is a sumptuous and unprecedented resource. The more than seventy essays by scholars from Europe and America all commissioned for this book - and over 650 illustrations raise the standard of garden literature to a new level. The result is an invaluable compendium that will serve as a fundamental starting point for exploring the many expressions of the place where nature and culture, project and diversion, work and pleasure meet.

Organized chronologically, the essays and illustrations make up a mosaic of the garden in the Western world. The humanist garden in Renaissance Italy, the concepts of the "Sublime" and the "Picturesque," mazes, grottoes, and other curiosities, city parks, American land art, and even Disneyland are among the topics treated. Discussions of characteristic aspects of history and theory are followed by analyses of individual gardens as paradigms of their type: the Hortus Palatinus in Heidelberg, the Parc Monceau in Paris, the Park Guell in Barcelona, Stowe in England, and many more.

The illustrations are a model of how iconography can function as text. They include ground plans meticulously redrawn from original archival material to provide precise information on the scale and nature of many of the projects, as well as a wealth of drawings, reconstructions, paintings, and photographs.

Could it be that the expulsion from the Garden of Eden left humankind eternally searching to re-create the lost place? In these 70 essays the learned authors seek to identify and explain this quest from the Renaissance to the present: to define and explore the relationship of nature and society, culture and creativity, labor and diversion within the framework of garden design and use. Chronologically ordered, the detailed sections offer a historical perspective followed by specific examples of gardens as a reflection of society, either as images of its tastes or visions of its aspirations. The illustrations, including many archival drawings, provide access to the precision of garden planning as well as a glimpse of actual gardens. There are short bibliographies after each essay, but no overall reference guide; the diversity of theme may make this impossible. Expensive (and heavy) but well worth both burdens, this is a major resource in the field.
- Paula Frosch, Metropolitan Museum of Art Lib., New York
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.