Great Gardens of the Western WorldGreat Gardens of the Western World is a sumptuous pictorial treasury of the finest gardens of Europe and America. Selected by Peter Coats, a well-known authority on gardening and landscape architecture, these thirty-eight most beautiful gardens are described and pictured in all their infinite variety and loveliness. Mr. Coats has arranged them in an order roughly corresponding to the dates when they were designed, showing the changing fashions from the sixteenth century to the present day and revealing the effect of the varying climates upon the appearance of the gardens themselves. Not only do we find in this magnificent book superb examples of the great formal gardens of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Russia, but also several of the simpler gardens in England and Holland, where flowers and hedges tend to predominate over the more elaborate vistas of water and statuary. In the United States, gardens have taken the form of natural landscaping as well as that found in the English style of garden, and to many readers these American gardens -- Cypress, Huntingdon, Magnolia, Middleton, Old Westbury, Winterthur and those of Colonial Williamsburg -- will be among the most richly rewarding in the book. The photographs--40 plates in full colour and 350 in monochrome--depict these gardens in all their breathtaking splendour. In addition, there are many documentary drawings and engravings showing how these gardens appeared in previous centuries. These spectacular illustrations combined with the descriptive text, offer the discerning reader an incomparable treasury of the art of garden design. -- Jacket. |
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Alhambra Aranjuez architect architectural azaleas Bagatelle balustrade baroque beauty beech blue Bodnant Bomarzo border BOTANICAL GARDENS built canal castle charming château Chatsworth clipped colour Courances Court courtyard Cypress d'eau decorated delightful Duke Earlshall eighteenth century England façade famous feature flowers foliage formal garden fountains France French Fronteira Gamberaia garden design Generalife green grotto ground grow grown hedges Hidcote horticultural Huntington HUNTINGTON BOTANICAL GARDENS Italian Italy Keukenhof King lake landscape Lanning Roper lawn LEFT Levens Levens Hall lies looks Louis magnificent Magnolia Mainau marble Marlia Middleton moat nearby Nymphenburg palace park parterre path pavilions Peter Peterhof planted pool Powerscourt Queen rare rhododendrons rococo romantic roses Savill Gardens scent Schloss Schwetzingen Scilly shade shrubs side Sissinghurst spring statues stone Stourhead Taranto taste terrace topiary tower trees Tresco tulips Twickel Vaux-le-Vicomte Veitshöchheim Versailles Villa Taranto Villandry visitor walls Williamsburg Windsor Winterthur