Step into innovative little gardens of Eden created on small terraces and city rooftops, as well as out in the suburbs and countryside. As our lifestyles become more sustainable, so does the way we interact with the outdoors. Today's gardeners aim not only to create decorative outside spaces but also to give something back. No matter what size your patch is, it's easy to create diverse and rich environments for plants and insects, or grow your own vegetables or fruits. This book presents spaces that are more imaginative, diverse, and sustainable. Learn how to grow food in the city, get creative with native plants, and design greener corners within urban areas. The Gardens of Eden looks at fascinating examples around the world, teaching what you can do for nature while revealing what a garden can do for you.
"Though an old man," Thomas Jefferson wrote at Monticello, "I am but a young gardener." Every gardener is. In Gardening in Eden, we enter Arthur Vanderbilt's small enchanted world of the garden, where the old wooden trestle tables of a roadside nursery are covered in crazy quilts of spring color, where a catbird comes to eat raisins from one's hand, and a chipmunk demands a daily ration of salted cocktail nuts. We feel the oppressiveness of endless winter days, the magic of an old-fashioned snow day, the heady, healing qualities of wandering through a greenhouse on a frozen February afternoon, the restlessness of a gardener waiting for spring. With a sense of wonder and humor on each page, Arthur Vanderbilt takes us along with him to discover that for those who wait, watch, and labor in the garden, it's all happening right outside our windows.
Historical profiles of the major planned communities of early twentieth-century Long Island. Edited by SPLIA’s former director, Dr. Robert B. MacKay, Gardens of Eden is an exploration of a distinct type of suburban development that proliferated across the region before zoning regulations were developed to manage land use in New York City and its environs. While the onset of suburbia on Long Island is often believed to be a post-World War II phenomena, it actually began a half century earlier when greater affluence, improved railroad service, and new methods of financing made the dream of country living a greater reality for a growing urban middle class. Luminaries such as Grosvenor Atterbury, Charles W. Leavitt Jr., and Frederick Law Olmsted designed dozens of high-end, carefully conceived communities on New York’s Long Island. Touted as an antidote to the complexities of urban living, these “residential parks” were characterized by significant investment in landscaping and infrastructure and employed concepts introduced by the Garden City movement in England. Gardens of Eden covers the history and development of more than twenty of these remarkable communities and the colorful, at times unscrupulous personalities behind them—like Plandome, designed “for teachers only,” and the Metropolitan Museum’s Munsey Park, where all the streets were named for artists—with writings from their most knowledgeable historians. Other featured communities include: Garden City, Forest Hills Gardens, Long Beach, Great Neck Estates, Brightwaters, Montauk Beach, Prospect Park South in Brooklyn, and many more. About the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities SPLIA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to understanding, celebrating, and preserving Long Island’s cultural heritage. Founded in 1948, SPLIA engages its mission through a variety of activities that include interpreting historic houses, creating exhibitions and educational programs, providing preservation advisory services, and publishing works that explore the history of architecture and design on Long Island.
A bucket list tour of Europe’s private gardens Acres of white-blooming garden rooms on the island of Mallorca. A seven-tiered wonder of stone, plants, and water above Germany’s Rhine River. The Garden of Cosmic Speculation in a quiet Scottish valley. These sumptuous landscapes are just three of the fifty destinations you’ll visit on this exclusive tour of Europe’s most beautiful private gardens. From Belgium to Ireland, Scandinavia to Wales, Carolyn Mullet is your guide through intimate retreats normally off-limits to visitors. Short profiles introduce the intriguing owners and rich histories of each garden and the land they inhabit. Among the featured gardens are works of eminent designers such as Tom Stuart-Smith, Andy Malengier, and Louis Benech. Whether you love exploring faraway places or creating your own landscape haven at home, Adventures in Eden is the ideal armchair getaway—glimpses into personal garden artistry that are sure to spark inspiration.
A “certainly weird . . . strangely wonderful . . . [and] often irresistible” search to find the real Garden of Eden (The New York Times Book Review). Where, precisely, was God’s Paradise? St. Augustine had a theory. So did medieval monks, John Calvin and Christopher Columbus. But when Darwin’s theory of evolution changed our understanding of human origins, shouldn’t the desire to put a literal Eden on the map have faded away? Not so fast. This “gloriously researched, pluckily written historical and anecdotal assay of humankind’s age-old quixotic quest for the exact location of the Biblical garden” (Elle) explores an obsession that has consumed scientists and theologians alike for centuries. To this day, the search continues, taken up by amateur explorers, clergymen, scholars, engineers and educators—romantic seekers all who started with the same simple-sounding Bible verses, only to end up at a different spot on the globe: Sri Lanka, the Seychelles, the North Pole, Mesopotamia, China, Iraq—and Ohio. Inspired by an Eden seeker in her own family, “Wilensky-Lanford approaches her subjects with respect, enthusiasm and conscientious research” (San Francisco Chronicle) as she traverses a century-spanning history provoking surprising insights into where we came from, what we did wrong, and where we go from here. And it all makes for “a lively journey” (Kirkus Reviews).
A lovingly photographed tour of internationally renowned writer Umberto Pasti's famous hillside garden in Morocco. Italian writer and horticulturist Umberto Pasti's passion for the wild flora of Tangier and its surrounding region led him to create his world-famous garden, Rohuna, where he has transplanted thousands of plants rescued from construction sites with the aid of men from the village. Planted between two small houses is the Garden of Consolation: a series of rooms and terraces with lush vegetation, some rendering homage to the paintings of Henri Rousseau, others inspired by invented characters. Surrounding the Garden of Consolation are the Wild Garden and a hillside devoted to the wild flowering bulbs of northern Morocco, where indigenous species of narcissus, iris, crocus, scilla, gladiolus, and others bloom. With its stunning vistas and verdant fields, Rohuna is a garden of incomparable beauty with the mission to preserve the botanical richness of the region. Captured here in detail by celebrated photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo, the poetic beauty of this special and unique place is lovingly rendered for all the world to see and share.
Explores the conviction that paradise existed in a precise although unreachable earthly location. Delving into the writings of dozens of medieval and Renaissance thinkers, from Augustine to Dante, this title presents a study of the meaning of Original Sin and the human yearning for paradise.
Seeking Eden promotes an awareness of, and appreciation for, Georgia’s rich garden heritage. Updated and expanded here are the stories of nearly thirty designed landscapes first identified in the early twentieth-century publication Garden History of Georgia, 1733–1933. Seeking Eden records each garden’s evolution and history as well as each garden’s current early twenty-first-century appearance, as beautifully documented in photographs. Dating from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, these publicly and privately owned gardens include nineteenth-century parterres, Colonial Revival gardens, Country Place–era landscapes, rock gardens, historic town squares, college campuses, and an urban conservation garden. Seeking Eden explores the significant impact of the women who envisioned and nurtured many of these special places; the role of professional designers, including J. Neel Reid, Philip Trammel Shutze, William C. Pauley, Robert B. Cridland, the Olmsted Brothers, Hubert Bond Owens, and Clermont Lee; and the influence of the garden club movement in Georgia in the early twentieth century. FEATURED GARDENS: Andrew Low House and Garden | Savannah Ashland Farm | Flintstone Barnsley Gardens | Adairsville Barrington Hall and Bulloch Hall | Roswell Battersby-Hartridge Garden | Savannah Beech Haven | Athens Berry College: Oak Hill and House o’ Dreams | Mount Berry Bradley Olmsted Garden | Columbus Cator Woolford Gardens | Atlanta Coffin-Reynolds Mansion | Sapelo Island Dunaway Gardens | Newnan vicinity Governor’s Mansion | Atlanta Hills and Dales Estate | LaGrange Lullwater Conservation Garden | Atlanta Millpond Plantation | Thomasville vicinity Oakton | Marietta Rock City Gardens | Lookout Mountain Salubrity Hall | Augusta Savannah Squares | Savannah Stephenson-Adams-Land Garden | Atlanta Swan House | Atlanta University of Georgia: North Campus, the President’s House and Garden, and the Founders Memorial Garden | Athens Valley View | Cartersville vicinity Wormsloe and Wormsloe State Historic Site | Savannah vicinity Zahner-Slick Garden | Atlanta
An analysis of the development of the botanical garden in Europe as an attempt to recreate the Garden of Eden includes discussions of the history of the famous gardens in Paris, Oxford, and Uppsala.
