Architectural Gardens is a portfolio of lushly illustrated landscapes in California wine country--each project a lesson in the alchemy of garden design. Digging deeper than the typical monograph, each of the ten projects by Lucas and Lucas in Architectural Gardens includes a design narrative, detailed captions, site plan, top ten plant list, and design lessons that readers can apply to their own gardens. It also includes a roundup of the firm's favorite plants best suited to different types of properties (woodland settings, traditional estates, and country retreats, for example) and employed for different purposes (such as screening, drought tolerance, punch of color, fast growth).
A collection of Hunt's essays, many previously unpublished, dealing with the ways in which men and women have given meaning to gardens and landscapes, especially with the ways in which gardens have represented the world of nature "picturesquely".
The elements of garden architecture—paths, walls, gates, fences, terraces, sheds, lighting, furniture, waterworks, and art—together form the backbone of any well-designed garden. In this beautifully illustrated and accessible book, legendary landscape architect James van Sweden explains how to design and build a garden like a professional. He leads his readers on a tour through some of his most exquisitely designed gardens—in the country, in the city, in the suburbs, and by the shore. “When it comes to planning a comfortable and rewarding garden,” van Sweden writes in his Introduction, “the challenges that confront the owner of an estate or a weekend cottage are often substantially the same. The principles and techniques used for organizing a large site work equally well in a more modest setting.” Each case study highlights a particular architectural element, breaking it down into practical ideas that any gardener can apply to his or her own garden or yard. The book includes dozens of detailed schematic drawings that can be used to build many of the elements described by the author, along with an extensive, illustrated glossary. Architecture in the Garden is sure to inspire you with its many practical ideas on how to domesticate your landscape and design an outdoor space that suits your taste as well as your lifestyle.
In a time of climate change and mass extinction, how we garden matters more than ever: “An outstanding and deeply passionate book.” —Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals Plenty of books tell home gardeners and professional landscape designers how to garden sustainably, what plants to use, and what resources to explore. Yet few examine why our urban wildlife gardens matter so much—not just for ourselves, but for the larger human and animal communities. Our landscapes push aside wildlife and in turn diminish our genetically programmed love for wildness. How can we get ourselves back into balance through gardens, to speak life's language and learn from other species? Benjamin Vogt addresses why we need a new garden ethic, and why we urgently need wildness in our daily lives—lives sequestered in buildings surrounded by monocultures of lawn and concrete that significantly harm our physical and mental health. He examines the psychological issues around climate change and mass extinction as a way to understand how we are short-circuiting our response to global crises, especially by not growing native plants in our gardens. Simply put, environmentalism is not political; it's social justice for all species marginalized today and for those facing extinction tomorrow. By thinking deeply and honestly about our built landscapes, we can create a compassionate activism that connects us more profoundly to nature and to one another.
The first major illustrated monograph in many years on the history of gardens, landscape design, and architecture, focusing on both the Western and Eastern traditions and their influences. Ambitious in scope and lavishly illustrated, this book surveys every period in garden design and landscape architecture, from classical antiquity and the medieval cloisters to the latest trends in modern design. Captured here are two millennia of garden history--the most comprehensive garden photo documentary ever undertaken by a single author. From the Roman gardens at Hadrian's villa to the modern work of landscape architects, historical and contemporary gardens are showcased with special attention to the relationship between gardens and houses. The informative text reveals the evolutions, transformations, influences, and trends that characterize these beautiful landscapes, putting into context their aesthetic appeal. Gardens are unique, reflecting the landscape, flora, and climate of their environments as well as the heritage, history, architectural styles, and influences of society. From the fountain gardens of Persia to the prairie-style gardens currently popular, from the Zen gardens of Buddhist temples to the Impressionist gardens in Giverny, the huge variety of gardens is a testament to our age-old desire to tame and refashion nature. This gorgeously photographed book will captivate travelers and garden admirers alike and inspire gardeners with ideas for design, horticulture, and use.
Crisp hornbeam hedges lining a country drive and throwing geometric shadows on the gravel below. Decadent cascades of fragrant wisteria spilling over a stone pergola. Rustling leaves along an allée of delicate crepe myrtle trees. Waving blossoms of roses, sage, and hydrangeas—along a salty shoreline. Edmund Hollander Landscape Architects creates gardens filled with unexpected textures, colors, and sounds meant to appeal to all the senses, inviting us to truly live in the landscape. This volume presents dozens of gorgeous estate gardens throughout the Northeast, approached thematically; individual sections reveal how components such as gateways, paths, pool terraces, bosques and groves, walls, and borders contribute to lush garden rooms, windblown seaside gardens, calming meadow gardens, intricate formal gardens, and shady tracts of woodland. Over 300 color photographs of beautiful properties in the Hamptons, Connecticut, and upstate New York provide glimpses of the best garden design happening today while breaking down its ideas for the home gardener. Evocative text by New York Times and Landscape Architecture columnist Anne Raver details how the firm works to envelop visitors in landscapes that feel entirely whole: plantings near architecture create a dynamic entry progression; hardscape features that lead out into a broader garden gradually cede to more natural, living elements; pools are surrounded by gracious swaths of flowers that bloom in sequence as the season progresses to provide privacy for bathers and a sense of quiet seclusion. The ideas presented here will help owners of gardens of every size enjoy their land to the fullest.
A call for landscape architects to leave the office and return to the garden. Addressing one of the most repressed subjects in landscape architecture, this book could only have been written by someone who is both an experienced gardener and a landscape architect. With Overgrown, Julian Raxworthy offers a watershed work in the tradition of Ian McHarg, Anne Whiston Spirn, Kevin Lynch, and J. B. Jackson. As a discipline, landscape architecture has distanced itself from gardening, and landscape architects take pains to distinguish themselves from gardeners or landscapers. Landscape architects tend to imagine gardens from the office, representing plants with drawings or other simulations, whereas gardeners work in the dirt, in real time, planting, pruning, and maintaining. In Overgrown, Raxworthy calls for the integration of landscape architecture and gardening. Each has something to offer the other: Landscape architecture can design beautiful spaces, and gardening can enhance and deepen the beauty of garden environments over time. Growth, says Raxworthy, is the medium of garden development; landscape architects should leave the office and go into the garden in order to know growth in an organic, nonsimulated way. Raxworthy proposes a new practice for working with plant material that he terms “the viridic” (after “the tectonic” in architecture), from the Latin word for green, with its associations of spring and growth. He builds his argument for the viridic through six generously illustrated case studies of gardens that range from “formal” to “informal” approaches—from a sixteenth-century French Renaissance water garden to a Scottish poet-scientist's “marginal” garden, barely differentiated from nature. Raxworthy argues that landscape architectural practice itself needs to be “gardened,” brought back into the field. He offers a “Manifesto for the Viridic” that casts designers and plants as vegetal partners in a renewed practice of landscape gardening.
A treasure trove of measured drawings and photographs, this volume depicts wood fences, gates, and small garden houses of New England. Several of these elegantly detailed constructions were built between the Revolutionary War and 1825, and many of them no longer exist. Restorationists and preservationists will find this collection a valuable resource.
From their early use as protective shelter to the felling of thousands of trees to harvest wood and create farmland, to more recent attempts at conservation, trees remain one of mankind's greatest resources. But aside from their purely practical uses, trees are appreciated for their beauty and have long served as important elements in designed landscapes. Tree Gardens is the first book to focus on what author Gina Crandell calls the "largest living architectural structures"—masses of trees that form expressive spaces on sites all over the world. Each case study—from the grand park at Versailles, to New York City's 9/11 Memorial Forest—explains how the scale, context, species, and spacing of trees on a particular site establish its expressive structure. Featuring engaging text and beautiful images, this much-needed book combines useful how-to aspects of tree planting with theoretical discourse on tree garden design and will be an important resource for students, landscape architects, and horticulturists alike.
