Product Description

Beautiful color photographs of the very best gardens in England and Wales.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #57085 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

About the Author
Ursula Buchan is an award-winning garden journalist and author of more than twenty years' experience. She writes regularly on gardens for the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator and has published twelve books, including the best-selling RHS Garden Book (with David Stevens) and two collections of her journalism, Good in a Bed and Better Against a Wall. As well as being a distinguished garden photographer - he holds the Royal Horticultural Society's Gold Medal for photography - Andrew Lawson is a painter, a passionate and knowledgeable gardener, and the author of six successful books, including Plants for All Seasons and The Gardener's Book of Colour, both published by Frances Lincoln. His photographs have illustrated numerous books, among them titles by Rosemary Verey, Roy Strong and HRH The Prince of Wales. Recent books include Little Sparta (again published by Frances Lincoln).

Customer Reviews

An indispensable book for English garden lovers
Most of gardens of the world can be put into two major categories: formal gardens and naturalistic gardens. The formal gardens are represented by Egyptian gardens, Persian gardens, Islamic gardens, Italian gardens, French gardens, and some American gardens, etc. The naturalistic gardens are represented by some famous English gardens, Chinese gardens, and Japanese gardens, etc.

If you mention English gardens, most people will think of large areas of lawns, trees, garden architecture, lakes and sky. These are the basic elements of a typical English landscape garden.

"The English Garden" covers not only the typical and well-known English landscape gardens, but also formal garden layout ("formal bones"), country gardens, kitchen gardens and contemporary gardens, influences from abroad, as well as garden ornament, plant materials such as English roses, etc.

Ursula Buchan and Andrew Lawson wrote: "All gardens, if they can be described as such, have ultimately to do with the desire of their maker to control their surroundings." They continued to discuss the various periods of English gardens including the Roman period when the early formal gardens dominated and the Landscape Movement period when geometric forms were intentionally rejected. They also discussed knot gardens and parterres, Medieval courtyard gardens, the Arts and Crafts style, the cottage gardens and the New Naturalism.

"The English Garden" is one of the most comprehensive books on English gardens open to visitors. It has 240 pages and over 300 color interior photographs. It is an indispensable book for English garden lovers.

Gang Chen, Author of "LEED AP Exam Guide" & "Planting Design Illustrated." LEED AP, AIA

Expected more
For the price (even at Amazon's discount) I expected the photos to be a better quality, perhaps a little glossy too. The photos are beautiful but they actually look better on line when you view Amazon's peak inside. In the book the pictures look like the copies I get from an in-jet printer of my old family photos. Not as sharp and clear as the original.

If you are looking for inspiration and excellent instructions on how to create an English Garden then I recommend Ursula's other book- "The Ultimate Garden Book For North America."

This one is a great coffee table book. You and your guests will enjoy looking at it once in a while. There are phtotos on almost every page. However, I don't think it will be very useful if you want to update or create a new room in your garden.

At the end of each chapter there is a list of gardens in England that you can visit for the particular theme.

The Chapters are titled as follows:

1. Formal Bones (60 pages)

2. Floral Exuberance (52 pages)

3. The Landscape Tradition (30 pages)

4. The Country Garden (36 pages)

5. Gardening with Nature (26 pages)

6. Influences from Abroad (22 pages)

7. Ornament in the Garden (32 pages)

8. Water, Water Everywhere (30 pages)

9. The English Rose (20 pages)

10. The Kitchen Garden ( 28 pages)

11. The Contemporary Garden (28 pages)

Notes (20 pages)

Beautiful and inspiring
I bought this book at a discounted price.

In my view, it offers very good value for money. Not only Andrew Lawson's photograph are very inspiring, but the entire book is meant to intruduce the reader to the idea that an English Garden can be much more varied and original than the conventional "idea" of garden most of us have.
Several types of garden are described, from more traditional to very modern ones, from relatively modest to sumptuous, and also focusing on the use of particular elements like, say, water.

I found most interesting (for English residents) that the book is mainly focused on gardens open to visitors. This makes the beauty and glory of such places truly, because physically, "accessible" to the reader, more accessible in fact than the book could ever achieve.

I do not have many books on gardens, I like them but they are not one of my main interests. Still, this and another book I have bought on the subject are enough to plunge me in the world of gardens everytime I feel like it, with great personal satisfaction. The fact that I did not feel the need to look for additional books is the testimony that I have already found what I was looking for.

Whilst I do not know whether this book would completely satisfy the expert or avid connoisseur, in my eyes it certainly addresses all the needs of the non-specialised reader, providing a pleasant experience both in the text and in the (beautiful) photographs.