Book reviews
Reviews of books on most aspects of gardens and garden history appear in Garden History. Read extracts from some recent reviews
Book Reviews
There is a full range of reviews of books on most aspects of gardens and garden history in our journal
Garden History. Excerpts from the most recent are posted here (the issue number appears at the end of each excerpt).
Mavis Batey, David Lambert and Kim Wilkie, INDIGNATION!: the Campaign for Conservation ( London , Kit-Cat Books, 2000), 64pp., £6.50 (pbk), ISBN 0-9538-8970-X
Annabel Downs (ed.), Peter Shepheard (Redhill, Landscape Design Trust, 2004), 160pp., illustrated in colour and black and white, £25.00 (pbk), ISBN 0-9518-3777-XSir Peter Shepheard CBE PPRIBA PPILA died in April 2002 in his 89th year, his career garlanded with design and academic honours here and in America , where he had taught for more than 30 summers at the University of Pennsylvania . He left a scattered legacy, including 40 hours of conversational reminiscences taped by his sometime employee, landscape architect and journalist Annabel Downs, who has skilfully edited this monograph. Her sympathetic goadings of the essentially modest Sir Peter, and the ensuing trawl for drawings, notebooks, files, films and tapes for the Landscape Institute archive, while everyone’s memories were fresh, will delight future historians. (
Garden History, 31:2)
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John Henderson, The Roman Book of Gardening (London, Routledge, 2004), 152 pp., illustrated in black and white, £17.99 (pbk), ISBN 0-4153-2450-5
The title of this book immediately suggested that the author had written about Roman gardens, based primarily on tangible evidence of an archaeological, artefactual and pictorial nature. Perhaps, as an archaeologist who studies Roman gardens, this was a hasty assumption, because that is not what this book is about. Henderson did not intend to write a treatise on gardens, because, as he puts it, ‘there are plenty of fascinating studies on Roman gardens’. Instead, he has compiled Roman literary sources from the late first century BC to the fifth century AD on gardening, and it is these texts, in verse and prose, that are the core of the book. (
Garden History, 31:2)
John M. Clarke, London’s Necropolis: A Guide to Brookwood Cemetery (Stroud, Sutton, 2004), 300pp., illustrated in black and white, £30.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-7509-3513-8
Cemeteries have histories that are worth recording, although that fact has only recently been reluctantly and incredulously recognized. John M. Clarke has been investigating the vast Brookwood Cemetery near Woking , Surrey , since 1976 (almost too late), and has previously published a useful booklet on
The Brookwood Necropolis Railway (1983/8). Now he has done a splendid job (as far as is possible) in giving us a history of The London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company and its Surrey cemetery, the largest in the world when it opened in 1854. (
Garden History, 31:2)
Brent Elliott, The Royal Horticultural Society: A History 1804–2004 (Chichester , Phillimore, 2004), 432 pp., illustrated in colour and black and white, £50.00 (hbk), ISBN 1-8607-7272-2 The launch of this book appropriately took place at Hatchard’s, the well-known bookshop in Piccadilly, where two centuries ago the President of the Royal Society, a banker, two royal gardeners, a nurseryman and two wealthy amateur gardeners gathered to consider the formation of a society to improve the current state of horticulture. Named the Horticultural Society of London, it eventually metamorphosed into the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), with a membership today of nearly 350,000. (
Garden History, 31:2)
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Patrick Bowe, Gardens of the Roman World ( London , Frances Lincoln , 2004), 170pp., illustrated in colour, £35.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-7112-2387-4
Garden history scholarship is not in general a lucrative publishing venture – except, perhaps, when accompanied by fine and expansive illustrations. The danger, so often, is of falling between the two stools of dry scholarship and coffee-table book. In
Gardens of the Roman World, Patrick Bowe and publishers Frances Lincoln have negotiated the dilemma skilfully, and the result is a good general introduction to Roman gardens with a truly gorgeous collection of illustrations. (
Garden History, 31:2)
Sandra Berresford, Italian Memorial Sculpture 1820–1940: A Legacy of Love ( London , Frances Lincoln , 2004), 256 pp, 450 illustrated in colour, £40.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-7112-2384-X It is too late to recommend this book as a Christmas gift, but it does contain a more stunning set of photographs than any recent coffee-table book. Its subject is too little known in this country: the monumental sculpture of Italian cemeteries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These cemeteries, and above all the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan , are the world’s best outdoor sculpture galleries; and the history of nineteenth-century sculpture is distorted by the absence from the textbooks of names such as Giovanni Battista Villa, Giulio Monteverde and Leonardo Bistolfi. (
Garden History, 31:2)
Ken Worpole, Last Landscapes: The Architecture of the Cemetery in the West ( London , Reaktion, 2003), 223pp., illustrated in colour and black and white, £22.00 (pbk), ISBN 1-8618-9161-X Last Landscapes urges that the cemetery — as a unique cultural space basic to our human identity and history — be reinstated to its meaningful place in the urban geography of the twenty-first century. Today’s public, Ken Worpole contends, has not ‘abolished’ death, but rather it is the architects and landscape designers who have neglected the aesthetics of commemoration. (
Garden History, 31:2)
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Brenda McLean, George Forrest Plant Hunter ( Woodbridge , Antique Collectors Club, 2004), 239 pp., £29.50 (hbk), ISBN 1-8514-9461-8
George Forrest Plant Hunter will appeal to a wide range of readers. As with most in the Antique Collectors series, it is scholarly yet very readable and beautifully produced, with evocative, often poignant, original photographs, interspersed with crisp contemporary images. It tells the story of perhaps the most intrepid and successful of British plant collectors. (
Garden History, 31:2)
David Stuart, Dangerous Garden: The Quest for Plants to Change Our Lives ( London , Frances Lincoln , 2004), 208pp., £25.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-7112-2265-7
This is an interesting book about the history of medical botany, detailing both the advantages and the numerous pitfalls that have accompanied the use of plants upon the human body throughout time. Woven through that narrative is the history of how those plants were collected, traded and farmed. We soon learn that no medicinal plant that works is free of side-effects: healing plants were often double-edged swords. (
Garden History, 31:2)
Phebe S. Goodman, The Garden Squares of Boston (Hanover and London , University Press of New England , 2003), 224 pp., £16.70 (pbk), ISBN 1-5846-5298-5
Whilst the garden square might have originated in England , for centuries it has been transplanted to a range of countries across the globe. In North America , squares were deployed in the town plan of Philadelphia from 1682, and they subsequently proliferated in the layout of several cities on the eastern seaboard, including Savannah (from 1733), Boston (from 1782), New York (from 1803) and Baltimore (from 1827). (
Garden History, 31:2)
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Graham Stuart Thomas, Recollections of Great Gardeners ( London, Frances Lincoln , 2003), 256 pp., illustrated in black and white, £15.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-7112-2288-6
Recollections of Great Gardeners was Graham Stuart Thomas’s final book, published posthumously, after his death in April 2003, having just celebrated his 94th birthday. His selection of ‘Great Gardeners’ features the 20th century and spans the middle years when Thomas himself was already a well-known and much sought-after figure. A remarkable man and a brilliant and eminently knowledgeable horticulturist and plantsman, he had had a passionate devotion to gardening for over 80 years of his life. (He was also Vice-President of the Garden History Society.) (
Garden History, 31:1)
Jeremy Burchardt, The Allotment Movement in England, 1793–1873 (Woodbridge , Boydell, 2002), 287 pp., £45.00 (hbk),
ISBN 0-8619-3256-0
The Allotment Movement in England contains one illustration, the frontispiece: it is of a man digging up potatoes while a young woman holding a child looks on. Beyond lies the rear of a small cottage and outhouses — symbols of the domesticity it was hoped allotments would promote. This illustration also served as frontispiece to the 1835 edition of the
Labourer’s Friend Magazine, the organ of the movement for allotments promoted by London professionals and various members of the rural gentry and aristocracy. Plebian and agrarian, thus, as the author Jeremy Burchardt wryly notes, the antithesis of the picturesque, allotments were rarely depicted in the nineteenth century. (
Garden History, 31:1)
Joan Morgan and Alison Richards , The New Book of Apples, 2nd edn ( London , Ebury, 2002), 316 pp., 32 colour paintings by Elisabeth Dowle and illustrated in black and white, £35.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-0918-8398-9
The fact that
The Book of Apples was not reviewed in
Garden History when it was first published in 1993 is perhaps not surprising. Maybe the second edition entitled
The New Book of Apples sounds like an even less likely candidate. Do not be misled, this is an important book for garden historians and historic gardens alike. (
Garden History, 31:1)
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Kate Colquhoun, A Thing in Disguise: The Visionary Life of Joseph Paxton ( London , HarperCollins, 2003), 307 pp., illustrated in colour and black and white, £19.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-0071-4353-2
In 1935, Violet Markham, granddaughter of Sir Joseph Paxton (1803–65), published
Paxton and the Bachelor Duke; and in 1961, Dr George F. Chadwick (late of the Landscape Institute) wrote his magisterial and scholarly account of Paxton’s works. Since then, a great deal has appeared about many Paxton topics, and both books urgently need to be brought up to date. This new biography therefore is very welcome. (
Garden History, 31:1)
Maureen Carroll, Earthly Paradises: Ancient Gardens in History and Archaeology ( London , British Museum Press, 2003), 144 pp., illustrated in colour and black and white, £15.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-7141-2768-X
There have been several books on the evolution of gardens lately, e.g. Penelope Hobhouse,
The Story of Gardening (London, Dorling Kindersley, 2002), but in general they tend to concentrate on later periods, with less information on the earlier gardens that provided the inspiration for the development of an art of gardening and which are equally important. Therefore, this is a welcome book devoted to the wide range of these gardens of Antiquity. The time span covered by
Earthly Paradises is from the second millennium BC to the mid-first millennium AD. (
Garden History, 31:1)
Richard Aitken and Michael Looker (eds), The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens (Victoria, Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Garden History Society, 2003), 697 pp., illustrated in halftone, £40.00. ISBN 0-1955-3644-4
The Oxford Companion to Gardens is well known as a work that takes the entire world, and all of recorded history, as its province. For the first time, there is now an
Oxford Companion to a specific part of the world — and a part with only two centuries of documented garden-making. And yet this book is nearly the same size as its more comprehensive predecessor. Are there further regional or national companions being prepared to a similar standard to make the chronicle of gardens available in greater detail? (
Garden History, 31:1)
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Gaston Bekkers, Designed Dutch Landscape: Jac. P. Thijsse Park ( Amsterdam : Architectura & Natura, and Woodbridge : Garden Art Press, 2003), 84 pp., illustrated in colour and black and white, £15.00 (pbk), ISBN 9-0715-7085-1
Jac. P. Thijsse Park , Amstelveen , south of Amsterdam , is the best known example of the Dutch phenomenon of the
heem park. These parks, and Thijsse Park in particular, are now seen as inspirational examples of naturalistic landscape design, drawing many visitors to view their beautiful displays of native wildflowers. Until now, anyone wishing to discover more about the parks and their development has had no readily available source in English. This publication fills that gap, being the first book in English (with a simultaneous Dutch and English text) devoted solely to Thijsse Park . (
Garden History, 31:1)
Frederick Eden , A Garden in Venice [ London , Country Life, 1903], repr. with a Postface by Marie-Thérèse Weal ( London , Frances Lincoln , 2003), 152 pp., illustrated in black and white, £20.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-7112-2005-3
This attractive reprint marks the centenary of the first publication of Frederick Eden’s
A Garden in Venice. The thick matt paper, wide margins, illuminated chapter openings, Victorian ‘mediaeval’ woodcuts and dark, slightly fuzzy photographs of the garden recapture both the appearance and character of the original. The text is highly romanticised — as highly coloured as a Canaletto painting. Depending on their taste, readers will either float through it as its invalid author floated through Venice without the jarring pain of a Bath chair or will founder in it as if in the silt of the mud bank on which the garden developed. (
Garden History, 31:1)
D. Fairchild Ruggles, Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain( Philadelphia , Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 275 pp., illustrated in blackand white and colour, US$65.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-2710-1851-8 Surely
Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain , with its black-and-white images and coarse line drawings, does little credit to the wonders hidden beneath a fairly uncompromising cover. However, rather like a Muslim woman slowly revealing herself as she unveils, the text gradually enchants the reader. Indeed, the book is a fine and clear-sighted essay that in a most original fashion strives to understand the complex relationships that have led to the creation of the Muslim gardens seen in Spain today. These relations do not restrict themselves to the gardens proper, but encompass both architecture and landscape in a unique ensemble. (
Garden History, 31:1)
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Gwynneth Reynolds and Diana Grace, Benton End Remembered: Cedric Morris, Arthur Lett-Haines and the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing (London, Unicorn, 2002), 160 pp., illustrated in colour and black and white, £25.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-9062-9069-4
It is obvious that the art school at Benton End and, in particular, its two hosts, Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines, touched the lives of a great number of people, many of whom returned often to the house to renew their acquaintance. Their influence, wit and enthusiasm for life is celebrated in the series of recollections gathered from a wide range of people to form this book.
Benton End Remembered mainly recalls the latter years and the old age of the two artists around whom everyone circulated, but the creative and bohemian atmosphere of the school of painting and drawing comes across repeatedly in the memories of the contributors. (
Garden History, 31:1)
Sue Shephard, Seeds of Fortune: A Gardening Dynasty ( London , Bloomsbury , 2003), 300 pp., illustrated in colour and black and white, £18.99 (hbk), ISBN 0-7475-6066-8
From the late 18th to the mid-20th century, the Veitch nurserymen pushed back the frontiers of horticulture. They were active in the fields of plant hunting, publishing, exhibiting and training, as well as developing a commercially successful empire and supporting the great horticultural institutions of the day. It is therefore surprising that apart from a series of articles in
Garden History there has been no publication on the Veitch family and its achievements. (
Garden History, 31:1)
Simon Swaffield (ed.), Theory in Landscape Architecture: A Reader ( Philadelphia , University of Pennsylvania Press , 2002), 267 pp., illustrated in black and white, £19.50 (pbk), ISBN 0-8122-1821-3
This book is not primarily a text dealing with historic themes, but with actual ones, destined for students of landscape architecture. The editor is Professor of Landscape Architecture in New Zealand , but the publication in intended for an American audience. It mainly contains extracts from publications published between 1950 and 1998 in English, mostly in the USA , and most are US authors except for some from Britain (Geoffrey and Susan Jellicoe, Nan Fairbrother, Denis Cosgrove, Alan Ruff) and one from France (Bernard Lassus). Simon Swaffield added a preface, introductions to its six parts and a conclusion as well as notes, credits and an index. (
Garden History), 31:1
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Charles A. Birnbaum and Robin Karson (eds), Pioneers of American Landscape Design (New York , McGraw-Hill, 2000), 486 pp., illustrated in colour and black and white, US$60.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-0713-4420-9 This is another a milestone in American landscape research. After decades where the only American landscape designer known to the larger public was Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) with publications reinforcing this fact, there is now finally a volume that redresses the balance. A burgeoning interest in American landscape architecture had been visible from the early 1990s, with publications dedicated to individual landscape architects and to trends in landscape architecture. (
Garden History, 31:1)
Clemens Alexander Wimmer and Iris Lauterbach, Bibliographie der vor 1750 erschienenen Gartenbücher (Nördlingen, Alfons Uhl, 2003), 278 pp., illustrated in black and white, €98.00 (hbk), ISBN 3-9215-0329-9 This is the first bibliography of German horticultural literature before 1750, a kind of equivalent to Blanche Henrey’s bibliography in Great Britain . It has been long overdue, especially as there was a bibliography of works published after 1750 as long ago as the mid-nineteenth century: Friedrich Jacob Dochnahl’s Bibliotheca hortensis ( Halle , 1861)! Yet, this gap has now been filled. (
Garden History, 31:1)
Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream , 2 edn trans. and intro. by Joscelyn Godwin ( London , Thames & Hudson, 2003), xix + 476 pp., original woodcuts illustrated in black and white, £20.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-500-51104-7
This is a scholarly translation into English (for the first time) of a work that is justifiably regarded by bibliophiles as one of the most beautiful and famous books ever printed. Originally published in Venice in 1499, the work is an erotic story of love and beauty narrated in the form of a dream. It contains wonderful descriptions and illustrations of imaginary architecture and gardens of the most fantastical nature and is embellished with the most extensive series of large woodcuts ever produced for an Italian book of this period. (
Garden History, 31:1)
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Timothy Mowl, Historic Gardens of Gloucestershire ( ISBN 0-7524-1956-0) and Historic Gardens of Dorset ( ISBN 0-7524-2535-8) (Stroud and Charleston , SC , Tempus, 2002), both 192 pp., illustrated in colour and black and white, £16.00 (pbk), ISBN 0-7524-2535-8
Dr Timothy Mowl, of the Department of History of Art, University of Bristol , is an enterprising and entertaining writer who, like Alexander Pope, eschews dullness. His two latest handsomely produced and decently designed books are part of a nation-wide series of county-by-county studies in which the author sets out to prove that ‘the gardens of England ’ is an unhelpful generalization, for each county possesses gardens with distinct characters of their own. (
Garden History, 31:1)
David Dewing (ed.), Home and Garden: Paintings and Drawings of English, Middle-class, Urban Domestic Spaces 1675 to 1914 , exh. cat. (London, Geffrye Museum, 2003), 208 pp., illustrated in colour, £20.00 (pbk), ISBN 1-872828-09-4; £40.00 (hbk), ISBN 1-872828-08-6
Home and Garden is the catalogue of a small and charming exhibition that explores the representation of English, urban, middle-class homes and gardens in paintings and drawings. The exhibition was held at the Geffrye Museum in
London ’s East End — a museum which makes the study of English middle-class homes and gardens its area of special interest. (
Garden History, 31:1)
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