Venetian Gardens by Monty Don (author) & Derry Moore (photographer) (Ebury Publishing, October 2022)

Few world cities hold the romance and historical sweep of Venice. Thousands visit every year - and a mixture of crowds and climate leave it vulnerable, so much so it is often said to be in danger of sinking - but away from the usual tourist haunts around St. Mark's square are exceptional hidden treasures, some 500 gardens, many of them with fascinating stories.

Starting in the heart of the city and working their way out to the Veneto, Monty and Derry celebrate the beauty of these places and tell their unique stories: from a beautiful nunnery garden with a history of exotic animals and a kitchen garden of the historic Foundation to the Madonna church to the estates of famous Venetian families, like the spectacular Giusti Renaissance garden.
With stunning full colour photography throughout, Venice Gardens will give readers new insight into one of the world's most beloved cities - you won't see Venice the same way again.

The Irish Garden A Cultural History by Peter Dale (The History Press, Ireland, Second edition, July 2022)

‘Atmospherically illustrated by Brian Lalor, The Irish Garden wanders into individual gardens, rather than presenting a sweeping chronology.

Strains of Irishness run through these gardens like seams of ore. Seen not just as zones of horticultural bravura, but also as reflections of historical, cultural, political and religious events and values, the gardens accrue an unusual richness of surface and depth of meaning’.

Autobiography of a Garden by Patterson Webster (McGill-Queen’s University Press, July 2022)

'Autobiography of a Garden follows Patterson Webster's twenty-five-year journey as she transforms a beautiful but conventional country property into a 750-acre landscape that challenges what a garden is, or can be. A unique, personal memoir, this book details how a neophyte gardener moved from copying the ideas of other people to learning from them, and finally to striking out on her own. Combining traditions from French and English eighteenth-century gardens with contemporary perspectives, Webster communicates concepts and ideas that underpin the garden's design, sharing a process that evolved over seasons and years. She explores the meaning of creating a garden and the meaning that a garden can create, linking ideas about aging and the passage of time to the reality of growth and death in the landscape and thinking through how art in a garden can reframe questions of memory and our relationship to nature. Using the history of the property as a framework, Webster considers the impact made by those who lived on the land before her: the Abenaki, the early settlers, the cottagers, the farmers, the US southerners who came to Quebec to avoid the summer heat, and the northerners who defeated them in the Civil War. With engaging personal anecdotes, she describes the thinking behind each part of the garden and the examples that guided her, the mishaps and successes she encountered, and her plans for the future. Beautifully photographed and full of inspirational ways of thinking about gardens and gardening, Autobiography of a Garden blends history, horticulture, and art, encouraging readers to make their own surroundings more beautiful and more meaningful.'

Garden as Art Beatrix Farrand at Dumbarton Oaks by Thaisa Way (editor) and Sahar Coston (photographer) (Harvard University Press, July 2022)

Garden as Art illuminates the stewardship of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens, one of the most beautiful gardens on earth. Essays consider its archival significance and its influence on landscape architecture. New photographs by Sahar Coston-Hardy and archival images invite contemplation of the art of garden design and how gardens evolve as works of art.

Rescue and Revival: New York Botanical Garden, 1989-2018 by Gregory Long (Library of American Landscape History, May 2022)

‘By the late 1980s, the New York Botanical Garden was in serious trouble. The staff were poorly paid and balkanized, endowments were depleted, fundraising was inadequate, and visitation had dwindled to an embarrassing level. The grounds were seedy, many of the historic buildings decrepit, and the great conservatory in need of total rehabilitation. The fundamental concept of a botanical garden as an educational institution and museum of plants had been forgotten by all but a few. The once distinguished place, founded in 1891, was in need of a revival. Enter Gregory Long, a new CEO brought in from outside the botanical world with a mandate to rescue it. This is the story of how he did. Twenty years' experience at four major New York cultural institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and New York Public Library, together with an extraordinary energy and imagination, equipped Long with a vision for how to turn things around. He set about recruiting new senior staff, rebuilding the board, reengaging employees, and fundraising on a vast scale. The massive billion-dollar program of renewal, modernization, and expansion he and his staff implemented was realized through four successive strategic plans, resulting in the restoration of the historic landscape, creation of new programming, and construction of many new facilities and gardens. By 2018, NYBG had been re-established as one of the city's major cultural institutions and was recognized as the most important privately funded botanical garden in the world. The account of this decades-long, painstaking yet exhilarating process is engagingly told here through dozens of episodes and many protagonists. As diverse as New York City itself, this cast of characters includes the biologists Edward O. Wilson and Thomas Lovejoy, philanthropists Brooke Astor and David Rockefeller, author Oliver Sacks, Karen Washington and the urban farmers of Bronx Green-Up, Senator Patrick Moynihan, and performing artists Sigourney Weaver and Jessye Norman. The efforts of these and hundreds of others, staff and volunteers, were critical in the rebuilding of this international institution during what now seems a golden age in New York City history. The renaissance of the New York Botanical Garden is a success story that will inspire readers everywhere, from those who steward their own non-profit organizations to those whose lives have been enriched by the beauty and educational impact of this remarkable place’.

Charles Frederick Ball: From Dublin's Botanic Gardens to the Killing Fields of Galllipoli by Brian Willan (Liffey Press, June 2022) 

When Charles Frederick Ball was killed at Gallipoli in 1915 The Irish Times called him ‘one of the best known botanists and horticulturists in Ireland’. Fred Ball (to friends and family) trained in horticulture at Kew Gardens in the UK, moved to Dublin in 1906, became Assistant Keeper at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, and was editor of the journal Irish Gardening. A skilled plant breeder, he could have expected, in time, to succeed Sir Frederick Moore as Keeper of the Botanic Gardens. Instead, he responded to the call to serve king and country, enlisting in the famous 7th Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers.

Napoleon A Life in Gardens and Shadows by Ruth Scurr (Random House, May 2021)

‘Napoleon's gardens range from his childhood olive groves in Corsica, to Josephine's gardens and menageries in Paris, to gardens in Cairo, Rome and on Elba, to the walled garden of Hougoumont at the battle of Waterloo, and ultimately to Napoleon's final garden…… In this innovative biography, as uniquely fitting its subject as Ruth Scurr's applauded portraits of Robespierre and John Aubrey, Napoleon emerges a giant figure made human, seen through the eyes of those who knew him best - close witnesses, rich and poor, famed and obscure - in the shade of his gardens. The result is vivid, multidimensional and haunting, throwing us back in time, so that we see him before us, both as the Emperor hunting for glory and the man in an old straw hat, leaning on his spade. on St Helena, where Chinese labourers built him a summerhouse where he could sit and scan the sea in his final months.’

The English Landscape Garden in Europe by Michael Symes, Historic England (April 2016)

American Gardens by Monty Don (Prestel, Sept, 2020)

'For years, Britain’s much-loved gardener Monty Don has been leading us down all kinds of garden paths to show us why green spaces are vital to our wellbeing and culture. Now, he travels across America with celebrated photographer Derry Moore to trace the fascinating histories of outdoor spaces which epitomize or redefine the American garden. In the book, which complements the BBC television series, they look at a variety of gardens and outdoor spaces at the centre of American history including the slave garden at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate, Longwood Gardens in Delaware, and Middleton Place in South Carolina. Together, they visit verdant oases designed by modernist architects such as Richard Neutra. They delve into urban outdoor spaces, looking at New York City’s Central Park, Lurie Garden at the southern end of Millennium Park in Chicago, and the Seattle Spheres. Derry Moore gives his unique perspective on gardens across the United States, including several not featured in the TV series. These include unpublished photographs of Bob Hope’s Palm Springs home and garden of renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Featuring luscious photography and Don’s engaging commentary, this book will leave you with a richer understanding of how America’s most important gardens came to be designed.'

Architects of an American Landscape: Henry Hobson Richardson, Frederick Law Olmsted, and the Reimagining of America's Public and Private Spaces by Hugh Howard (Black Cat, January. 2022)

‘A dual portrait of America's first great architect, Henry Hobson Richardson, and her finest landscape designer, Frederick Law Olmsted--and their immense impact on America.  As the nation recovered from a cataclysmic war, two titans of design profoundly influenced how Americans came to interact with the built and natural world around them through their pioneering work in architecture and landscape design’.

Royal Gardens of the World: 21 of the world’s most celebrated gardens, from the Alhambra to Highgrove and beyond by Mark Lane (Kyle Books, September 2020)

The book is a sumptuous exploration of 21 of the world’s most celebrated royal gardens, from the delightful Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and the organic, sustainable Highgrove to the rugged, classical Balmoral in the UK.

In mainland Europe you can journey from the formal splendour of Het Loo in the Netherlands and Versailles in France to the Baroque World Heritage Site of the Royal Palace of Caserta in Southern Italy. Further afield still lies the Taj Mahal in India and the Peterhof Palace in Russia.

Each featured garden will include the history, plantings and evolution of the garden as well as plant portraits of key plants and information about the design and layout of each. Countries included are: England, Scotland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, India, Bali and Japan.

'T'his inspiring global selection of royal gardens is a perfect gift for any gardening enthusiast or armchair traveller and takes the reader on a journey of architecturally significant houses and their classic gardens as well as providing planting ideas that range from modest to grand, simple to ornate.'

Spirit of Place: The Making of a New England Garden by Bill Noble (Timber Press, July 2020)

‘‘How does an individual garden relate to the larger landscape? How does it connect to the natural and cultural environment? Does it evoke a sense of place? In Spirit of Place, Bill Noble helps gardeners answer these questions by sharing how they influenced the creation of his garden in Vermont. He explores the history of New England gardens and how they were shaped by a rugged landscape, harsh climate, and European ideas about design and plantsmanship. Throughout, Noble reveals that a garden is never created in a vacuum, but is rather the outcome of an individual’s personal vision combined with historical and cultural forces. Sumptuously illustrated, this thoughtful look at the process of garden-making will inspire home gardeners everywhere to leverage the history and site of their own landscape to create a truly spirited place’.

Persian Gardens and Pavilions by Mohammad Gharipour (I.B. Tauris July 2020)

‘From Timur’s tent in Samarqand to Shah ‘Abbas’s palace in Isfahan and Humayun’s tomb in Delhi, the pavilion has been an integral part of Persianate gardens since its earliest appearance at the Achaemenid garden in Pasargadae in the sixth century BC. Here, Mohammad Gharipour places both the garden and the pavilion within their historical, literary and artistic contexts, emphasizing the importance of the pavilion, which has hitherto been overlooked in the study of Iranian historical architecture…………..’

The Dumbarton Oaks Anthology of Chinese Garden Literature by Alison Hardie (Ex Horto: Dumbarton Oaks Texts in Garden and Landscape Studi, May 2020)

‘The Dumbarton Oaks Anthology of Chinese Garden Literature is the first comprehensive collection in English of over two millennia of Chinese writing about gardens and landscape. Its contents range from early poems using plant imagery to represent virtue and vice, through works from many dynasties on both private and imperial gardens, to twentieth-century prose descriptions of the reconstruction of a historic Suzhou garden. Most passages have been translated for this publication. A number of previously published translations, some of which are now hard to find, are also included.

'The anthology is divided into nine chapters: five chronological, covering the pre-Qin period to the Qing dynasty; and four thematic, on rocks and flora, the evolution of a single site (Canglang Pavilion in Suzhou), gardens of the mind, and the interplay between garden and landscape as seen through Mount Tai and West Lake. An introductory essay positions Chinese gardens and garden literature in their cultural context. Care has been taken to translate plant names as accurately as possible given the limitations of the sources, and the anthology includes a glossary of translated names, Chinese names, and binomials.’

A Garden for All Seasons by Kate Markert (Rizzoli International Publications, April 2020)  ‘captures Marjorie Post’s garden landscape, set on twenty-five acres in Washington, D.C. Working with prominent landscape architects Umberto Innocenti, Richard Webel, and Perry Wheeler, Post envisioned a setting with a diverse and fascinating array of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, offering something to see in every season…………Readers will find inspiration in the newly commissioned photography, while historic images bring context to the beautiful landscape.’

Villas and Gardens of the Renaissance by Lucia Impelliso & Dario Fusaro (Mondadori Electa, Nov 2019)
‘The book illustrates ten locations of extraordinary artistic and architectural interest, conceived by prominent Italian families and dynasties as urban villas or country houses centred around the pursuit of entertainment and leisure. These lavishly decorated and frescoed palaces are adorned with handcrafted furniture and works of art and surrounded by gardens that retain their original layout to this day a very rare feature. An historical text introduces each property, giving an overview of its origins’.

Nature Into Art: The Gardens of Wave Hill by author Thomas Christopher & photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo (Timber Press, Oct 2019)
‘Nature Into Art will enchant and inspire you to practice the Wave Hill way of gardening.’
This book explores the world-renowned Wave Hills public gardens situated in the Bronx, an iconic space which ‘boasts a classic horticultural craftsmanship unrivalled among other public gardens in the United States’. The book explores ‘the different areas of the garden-the flower garden, the shade border, the wild garden, the conservatory, and more……and is filled with stunning, ethereal photography by Ngoc Minh Ngo.

The Blue Garden: Recapturing an Iconic Newport Landscape by Arleyn A Levee (D Giles Ltd, Sept. 2019).
This book charts the decline and rebirth of a 100 year old garden in Newport, Rhode Island.
‘Originally designed in collaboration with the garden’s original owner by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr, and the Olmsted firm–founded by his father, the great landscape architect responsible for Central Park, New York City–it has now been brought back to life.
The Blue Garden skilfully interweaves the garden’s design and social history, and stories of its founders and the Olmsted firm, with historical photos, original drawings and sketches, and images of the restored garden from 2015. This is a timeless and inspiring account of the devoted patrons, skilled artisans and great designers behind the creation and revival of a masterpiece, made possible by the vision of a devoted patron, and the relevance of historic preservation of gardens in the 21st century’.

Japanese Gardens – a bilingual guide by Shozo Tanaka (June 2019)
‘Written in both English and Japanese, this unique handbook teaches an appreciation of Japanese gardens and introduces many famous gardens from Kyoto to Tokyo. Not only is this book an invaluable guide for those planning to visit Japan, but also a great gift for anyone interested in Japanese culture’.

Japanese Gardens: a personal journey by Monty Don (author) and Derry Moore (photographer (Two Roads, illustrated edition, May, 2019)
‘In this very personal and lyrical exploration of both the traditional and the modern aspects of Japanese gardening, Monty Don takes a look at the traditions and culture which inform some of the most beautiful gardens from all over Japan, from Kenroku-en to the Zen gardens of Tokyo and the historic beauty of Kyoto.

The Art of the Japanese Garden by David Young & Michiko Young (New edition, March 2019)
‘A well-written and beautifully illustrated reference book intended for a broad audience. It is a great book for becoming acquainted with the topic of Japanese gardens.’ –Landscape Architecture

100 Japanese Gardens by Stephen Mansfield (Tuttle Publishing, 19 March 2019)
‘100 Japanese Gardens is an ambitious attempt to profile the finest gardens in Japan, while also highlighting lesser known, but equally accomplished landscapes in less-visited parts of the country. A celebration of Japanese landscape design, this book features gardens from Kyoto and Tokyo, as well as from the sub-arctic island of Hokkaido and the semi-tropical islands of Okinawa.’

Gardens of the Alhambra by Dr Maria del Mar Villafranca-Jimenez & Dr Juan Domingo-Santos. ‘This is the first comprehensive book on the subject for over 90 years, and is unlikely be superseded for many years to come. Lavishly illustrated with commissioned photography, specially commissioned plans and previously unpublished archive material, the book is written by the world’s leading experts including the former director of the site Maria del Mar Villafranca, and head of Granada University’s architecture department Professor Juan Santos.’

Gardening Across the Pond: Anglo-American Exchanges, from the Settlers in Virginia to Prairie Gardening by Richard Bisgrove.
‘Richard Bisgrove explores four centuries of transatlantic influences, from the Tradescants, plant-hunting in seventeenth century Virginia, to the prairie landscapes of the 2012 London Olympic Park, and attempts to answer that thorny question – is the English cottage garden an American invention?’

Italian Gardens of Lake Como by Lucia Impelluso & Dario Fusaro

Green Escapes: The Guide to Secret Urban Gardens by Toby Musgrave

Saving Central Park: A History and a Memoir by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers

Gardens of Style: Private Hideaways of the Design World by Janelle McCulloch
This lavishly illustrated book explores the gardens of fashion and interior designers, and demonstrates not only how they have been influenced by botanicals in their fashion creations and interior designs but have applied their creativity to their own gardens.

Japan’s Master Gardens: Lessons in Space and Environment by Stephen Mansfield

Public Parks, Private Gardens – Paris to Provence by Colta Ives

Paradise Gardens: the world’s most beautiful Islamic gardens by Monty Don and Derry Moore

Gardens of the High Line: Elevating the Nature of Modern Landscapes by Piet Oudolf (July 2017)

Available in both Paperback and for Kindle this book offers an in-depth view into the planting designs, plant palette, and maintenance of New Yorks’ High Line.

‘It reveals a four-season garden that is filled with native and exotic plants, drought-tol­erant perennials, and grasses that thrive and spread. It also offers inspiration and advice to home gardeners and garden designers looking to recreate its iconic, naturalistic style.

Featuring stunning photographs by Rick Darke and an introduction by Robert Hammond, the founder of the Friends of the High Line, this large-trim, photo-driven book is a must-have for anyone who appreciates the nature of design’

The Gardens of Japan by Helena Attlee & Alex Ramsay (April 2017)

Japanese Gardens and Landscapes 1650 -1950 by Wybe Kuitert (Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture, April 2017)

New Nordic Gardens: Scandinavian Landscape Design by Annika Zetterman (March 2017)

A Garden for All Seasons: Marjorie Merriweather Post's Hillwood by Kate Markert (Rizzoli International, April 2021)

'A Garden for All Seasons captures Marjorie Post's garden landscape, set on twenty-five acres in Washington, D.C. Working with prominent landscape architects Umberto Innocenti, Richard Webel, and Perry Wheeler, Post envisioned a setting with a diverse and fascinating array of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, offering something to see in every season. Thirteen acres of formal gardens extend from the house's terraces and porches in a progression of outdoor rooms.

Each of these spaces, meant to complement the mansion's interior rooms, encourages an intuitive flow from the French parterre to the rose garden, onto the Friendship Walk and the vast Lunar Lawn, location of many of Post's legendary entertainments.

Readers will find inspiration in the newly commissioned photography, while historic images bring context to the beautiful landscape. Although she was in residence at Hillwood only in the spring and fall, Post designed the gardens to flower in all seasons. Today, they are even more glorious all year round for the myriad visitors to the property.'

A Bittersweet Heritage: Slavery, Architecture and the British Landscape by Victoria Perry (C. Hurst & Co Publishers, August 2022)

‘The 2020 toppling of slave-trader Edward Colston's statue by Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol was a dramatic reminder of Britain's role in trans-Atlantic slavery, too often overlooked. Yet the legacy of that predatory economy reaches far beyond bronze memorials; it continues to shape the entire visual fabric of the country. Architect Victoria Perry explores the relationship between the wealth of slave-owning elites and the architecture and landscapes of Georgian Britain. She reveals how profits from Caribbean sugar plantations fed the opulence of stately homes and landscape gardens.

Trade in slaves and slave-grown products also boosted the prosperity of ports like Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow, shifting cultural influence towards the Atlantic west. New artistic centres like Bath emerged, while investment in poor, remote areas of Wales, Cumbria and Scotland led to their 're-imagining' as tourist destinations: Snowdonia, the Lakes and the Highlands.

The patronage of absentee planters popularised British ideas of 'natural scenery'--viewing mountains, rivers and rocks as landscape art--and then exported the concept of 'sublime and picturesque' landscapes across the Atlantic. A Bittersweet Heritage unearths the slavery-tainted history of Britain's manors, ports, roads and countryside, and powerfully explains what this legacy means today.’

Temporary Gardens by Raffaella Sini (Taylor and Francis, May 2022)

The last 30 years have seen a surge in temporary gardens. The flexibility and new challenges invested in non-permanent landscapes has made them a creative and stimulating testing ground for professionals and impromptu designers. Raffaella Sini examines the historical evolution of the genre, exploring theory, narratives, and strategies informing 80 temporary gardens built in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore, and the United States.

Key topics include:

• temporary gardens in 1970s avant-garde art and 1980s public art;
• temporary gardens as opportunities to work with live processes, practice
• inclusion, and explore concepts of social justice and ecology;
• temporary gardens to redefine the vocabulary of garden design; and
• temporary gardens in tactical urbanism.

The book comprehensively decodifies the full range of ephemeral gardens: uprooted, mobile, itinerant, movable, postmodern, installation, exhibited, conceptual, theme, pop-up, guerrilla, grassroots, meanwhile, interim, provisional, activist, community, and parklet.

Beyond physical duration, time-focused design in gardens affects the entire process of conceiving, building, experiencing, and managing green spaces; using short-term formats, anyone can invent, trial, and experiment in a condensed experience of landscape.

 Garden History: A Very Short Introduction by Gordon Campbell (Very Short Introduction series, February 2019)

‘One of the nicest little books I’ve had in my hands for ages...it is the overall sweep of the book that impresses’ (Gillian Mawrey, Historic Gardens Review)

A Glossary of Garden History by Michael Symes ‘An essential tool for the garden historian’

The Oxford Companion to Gardens edited by Geoffrey and Susan Jellicoe; Patrick Goode, & Michael Lancaster (Oxford University Press, 1986, 1991).

Bibliography of British and Irish Gardens by Ray Desmond (St Paul’s Bibliographies, 1984).

British Gardeners: A Biographical Dictionary by Miles Hadfield (Zwemmer, 1980).

A History of Gardening in 50 Objects by G.M.F. Drower (Third edition, The History Press, May 2021)

‘George Drower takes fifty objects that have helped create the gardening scene we know today and explores the history outside spaces in a truly unique fashion. With stunning botanical and archive images, this lavish volume is essential for garden lovers.’

The Artist and the Country House: A History of Country House and Garden View Painting in Britain 1540-1870 by John Harris, (Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1979).

The Landscape of Man by Geoffrey and Susan Jellicoe, (Thames & Hudson, 1992).

The Generous Gardener: Private Paradises Shared by Caroline Donald
Author Caroline Donald gardening editor of The Sunday Times, shares the stories, in words and pictures, of more than forty private gardens, including those belonging to Jim Carter and Imelda Staunton, Jilly Cooper, William Christie, Harrison Birtwistle, Kelly Brook, Natasha Spender, Catherine FitzGerald and Dominic West, Julian and Isabel Bannerman, Penelope Hobhouse, Bob Flowerdew, Roy Lancaster, Luciano Giubbilei, and Dan Pearson.

An Economic History of the English Garden by Roderick Floud (Allen Lane, Nov 2019)
This new book ‘is the first to address seriously the question of how much gardens and gardening have cost, and to work out the place of gardens in the economic, as well as the horticultural, life of the nation. It is a new kind of gardening history’. The author considers garden designers since the seventeenth century ‘as both artists and businessmen – often earning enormous sums by modern standards, matched by the nurserymen and plant collectors who supplied their plants. He uncovers the lives and rewards of working gardeners, the domestic gardens that came with the growth of suburbs and the impact of gardening on technical developments from man-made lakes to central heating……….. It reveals the connections of our gardens to the re-establishment of the English monarchy, the national debt, transport during the Industrial Revolution, the new industries of steam, glass and iron, and the built environment that is now all around us. It is a fresh perspective on the history of England and will open the eyes of gardeners – and garden visitors – to an unexpected dimension of what they do’.

A Sustainable Future: Urban Parks and Gardens by Philip Jodidio (Prestel, January. 2022)

‘For centuries the garden has served as a central element in Muslim culture. The new or restored gardens created by AKTC, seen in this fascinating book, show how these urban oases are catalysts for positive economic, social and cultural change. They encourage ethical ideals of stewardship, ecology, and beauty in the built environment. Numerous authors first trace the history of Islamic gardens and help clarify the environmental and design ethos of Islam. Texts also explain the beneficial sociological and economic impact of urban gardens and parks. Succeeding chapters identify thirteen specific projects that illustrate these principles. There are historic sites, such as Humayun’s Tomb Garden in Delhi and Timur Shah Mausoleum in Kabul; contemporary locations, including the National Park of Mali, and Al Azhar Park in Cairo; and settings that celebrate cultural and multi-cultural identities, such as Aga Khan Garden in Alberta, Canada and a city park Khorog, Tajikistan. Each chapter offers colour photographs, plans, and texts about the sites and their environment, and each project demonstrates how green spaces bring people of different backgrounds together to provide places for reflection, spirituality, education and leisure. Together these achievements demonstrate how parks and gardens can enhance economic, cultural, and general well-being’. 

The Doctor's Garden Medicine, Science, and Horticulture in Britain by Clare Hickman (Yale University Press, January 2022)

As Britain grew into an ever-expanding empire during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, new and exotic botanical specimens began to arrive within the nation's public and private spaces. Gardens became sites not just of leisure, sport, and aesthetic enjoyment, but also of scientific inquiry and knowledge dissemination. Medical practitioners used their botanical training to capitalize on the growing fashion for botanical collecting and agricultural experimentation in institutional, semipublic, and private gardens across Britain. This book highlights the role of these medical practitioners in the changing use of gardens in the late Georgian period, marked by a fluidity among the ideas of farm, laboratory, museum, and garden. Placing these activities within a wider framework of fashionable, scientific, and economic interests of the time, historian Clare Hickman argues that gardens shifted from predominately static places of enjoyment to key gathering places for improvement, knowledge sharing, and scientific exploration.

London is a Forest by Paul Wood (Quadrille Publishing Ltd, May 2019)
‘Through these paths that meander through the urban forest, author Paul Wood explores its geography, its past and future, and looks at the remarkable variety of life supported in this unique metropolitan ecosystem. From the edge lands to the beating heart of the clamorous 21st century megacity, a wealth of arboreal details, history, legend and anecdotes will be revealed along the way. You’ll discover some of the species found here, and the people who have helped to shape this remarkable environment over many centuries.’

Garden Miscellany: An Illustrated Guide to the Elements of the Garden by Suzanne Staubach (Timber Press Sept. 2019)
‘Gardens across the globe come in many sizes and styles, but they share a remarkable number of similar components. Suzanne Staubach revels in this connection in A Garden Miscellany. In short essays meant to be dipped in and out of, Staubach shares the history, evolution, and contemporary use of all the parts and pieces that make up a home garden–from borders, compost bins, and decks to pergolas, roof gardens, statues, and troughs. You’ll learn that fairy gardens have their roots in the Tang dynasty, the difference between an arbor and a pergola, how geometry plays a role in garden design, what a ha-ha is, and much more. Featuring bold and whimsical illustrations by Julia Yellow and filled with interesting facts and anecdotes, A Garden Miscellany is a must-have for gardeners, plant lovers, and the naturally curious everywhere.’

How to Read Gardens: A Crash Course in Garden Appreciation by Lorraine Harrison – another pocket-sized book in the ‘How to Read...…’ series

Bandstands: Pavilions for music, entertainment and leisure (Historic England, 2018) 

In 1833, the Select Committee for Public Walks was introduced so that 'the provision of parks would lead to a better use of Sundays and the replacement of the debasing pleasures.' Music was seen as an important moral influence and 'musical cultivation … the safest and surest method of popular culture', and it was the eventual introduction of the bandstand which became a significant aspect of the reforming potential of public parks.

Music in public spaces, and the history and heritage of the bandstand has largely been ignored. Yet in their heyday, there were over 1,500 bandstands in the country, in public parks, on piers and seaside promenades attracting the likes of crowds of over 10,000 in the Arboretum in Lincoln, to regular weekday and weekend concerts in most of London's parks up until the beginning of the Second World War. Little is really known about them, from their evolution as 'orchestras' in the early

Pleasure Gardens, the music played within them, to their intricate and ornate ironwork or art deco designs and the impact of the great foundries, their worldwide influence, to the great decline post Second World War and subsequent revival in the late 1990s. This book tells the story of these pavilions made for music, and their history, decline and revival.

Tea Gardens by Twigs Way, (Amberley Publishing 15 October 2017).
This is another in a series of books produced by Twigs Way for the Britain’s Heritage Series
“Wonderfully illustrated with evocative contemporary images, this book charts the rise of tea gardens, their origins in earlier spa gardens, their distinctive style, their furnishings and accoutrements,  their sad decline and triumphant return in the twenty-first century. It also includes a list of tea gardens that can be visited today.”

Natural Selection: a year in the garden (Guardian Faber, May, 2017) by Dan Pearson.

‘In Natural Selection, Dan Pearson draws on ten years of his Observer columns to explore the rhythms and pleasures of a year in the garden. Travelling between his city-bound plot in Peckham and twenty acres of rolling hillside in Somerset, he celebrates the beautiful skeletons of the winter garden, the joyous passage into spring, the heady smell of summer’s bud break and the flaring of colour in autumn.

Pearson’s irresistible enthusiasm and wealth of knowledge overflow in a book teeming with tips to inspire your own space, be it a city window box or country field. Bringing you a newfound appreciation of nature, both wild and tamed, reading Natural Selection is a deeply restorative experience.’

A Walk in the Park: The Life and Times of a People’s Institution (Vintage paperback, 2017), by Travis Elborough. ‘Travis Elborough excavates the history of parks in all their colour and complexity. Loving, funny and impassioned, this is a timely celebration of a small wonder that – in an age of swingeing cuts – we should not take for granted'

London’s Street Trees: A Field Guide to the Urban Forest (May 2017), by Paul Wood, a Trustee of the London Wildlife Trust

Allotments by Twigs Way (Britain’s Heritage Series, April 2017)

You Should Have Been Here Last Week: Sharp Cuttings of a Garden Writer by Tim Richardson (The Pimpernel Press Oct. 2016)

This latest book by Tim Richardson, creator of the Chelsea Fringe, contains some of his most influential and provocative columns as well as articles and essays on specific gardens, places and landscape themes.

War Gardens: A Journey Through Conflict in Search of Calm by Lalage Snow
Working in many of the world’s most dangerous war zones: Afghanistan, Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Kashmir, the West Bank; freelance war correspondent and photographer Lalage Snow has encountered many testimonies to the triumph of the human spirit in adversity, a celebration of hope and beauty: a war garden. In Kabul, the royal gardens are tended by a centenarian gardener, though the king is long gone; in Camp Bastion, bored soldiers improvise tiny gardens to give themselves a moment’s peace; on both sides of the dividing line in Jerusalem families tend groves of olives and raise beautiful plants from the unforgiving, disputed landscape.
“War Gardens is a surprising, tragic and beautiful journey through the darkest places of the modern world, revealing the ways people make time and space for themselves and for nature even in the middle of destruction. Illustrated with Lally Snow’s own award-winning photography, this is a book to treasure.”

The English Folly: The Edifice Complex by Gwyn Headley & Wim Meulenkamp (Historic England, June 2020) 

 Folly builders were not as we are. They never built what we now call follies. They built for beauty, utility, improvement; it is only we, struggling after them with our imperfect understanding, who dismiss their prodigious constructions as follies. Follies can be found around the world, but England is their spiritual home. Having written the definitive books on follies in Great Britain, Benelux and the USA, Headley & Meulenkamp have turned their attention to the folly builders themselves, people so blinded by fashion or driven by some nameless ideology that they expended great fortunes on making their point in brick, stone and flint. Most follies are simply misunderstood buildings, and this book studies the motives, characters, decisions and delusions of their builders’.

Led by the Land: Landscapes by Kim Wilkie (Pimpernel Press Ltd, Nov, 2019)
NEW EDITION (previous edition 2012)
‘This updated version of Kim Wilkie’s his classic book, Led by the Land, has been expanded to include fresh thoughts on farming and settlement and new projects, both huge and intimate, from the designs for new cities in Oman and England to the Swansea Maggie’s Centre, and from plans for London’s Natural History Museum grounds to the sculptural setting of a furniture factory in Leamington Spa……… With some 200 photographs and drawings, including many plans and specially commissioned aerial photography of several major works, this book offers not only a rich account of an unusual talent, but also an optimistic vision for our future.’

The Artist’s Garden: How Gardens Inspired Our Greatest Painters by Jackie Bennett (White Lion Publishing Oct 2019). ‘The Artist’s Garden features up to 20 gardens that have inspired and been home to some of the greatest painters of history. These gardens not only supplied the inspiration for creative works but also illuminate the professional motivation and private life of the artists themselves – from Cezanne’s house in the south of France to Childe Hassam at Celia Thaxter’s garden off the coast of Maine…… The relationship between artist and garden is a complex one’.

In the Gardens of Impressionism by Clare AP Willsdon, Reprint edition, Thames & Hudson (January 2016)

 

Miss Willmott's Ghosts: the extraordinary life and gardens of a forgotten genius by Sandra Lawrence (Blink Publishing, May 2022)

Ellen Ann Willmott was a remarkable woman whose achievements in horticulture, botany, landscape architecture, photography and more, should have made her one of the most well-known trailblazers of her age. Yet, both posthumously and within her lifetime, she instead became known as a bitter, cantankerous and eccentric miser, and her reputation has been forever stained by the image of her maliciously seeding other people's gardens with thorns.

The beginnings of this prickly myth can be traced back to her conspicuous absence at what should have been the pinnacle of her career: the Royal Horticultural Society's inaugural Victoria Medal of Honour Award ceremony, at which she was due to be one of only two female recipients. Universally interpreted as the rudest of snubs, nobody has ever stopped to question why Ellen wasn't there, or if she was really as difficult and mean as she has been portrayed ever since.

Author, Sandra Lawrence, has been granted unparalleled access to her archives, and with it has uncovered the secrets behind this thorniness. This is a book with it all: gossip, sisters, rivalry, squandered inheritance, forbidden love, bad marriages and, at the heart of it all, trailblazing talent.

English Garden Eccentrics – Three Hundred Years of Extraordinary Groves, Burrowings, Mountains and Menageries by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, April 2022)

'In his new book, English Garden Eccentrics, renowned landscape architect and historian Todd Longstaffe-Gowan reveals a series of obscure and eccentric English garden-makers who, between the early seventeenth and the early twentieth centuries, created intensely personal and idiosyncratic gardens. They include such fascinating characters as the superstitious antiquary William Stukeley and the animal- and bird-loving Lady Read, as well as the celebrated master of Vauxhall Gardens, Jonathan Tyers, who created at his home at Denbies one of the gloomiest and most perverse anti-pleasure gardens in Georgian England. Others built miniature mountains, shaped topiaries, displayed exotic animals, excavated caves and assembled architectural fragments and fossils to realise their gardens in a way that was often thought to be excessive.

Napoleon A Life in Gardens and Shadows by Ruth Scurr (Random House, May 2021)

‘Napoleon's gardens range from his childhood olive groves in Corsica, to Josephine's gardens and menageries in Paris, to gardens in Cairo, Rome and on Elba, to the walled garden of Hougoumont at the battle of Waterloo, and ultimately to Napoleon's final garden…… In this innovative biography, as uniquely fitting its subject as Ruth Scurr's applauded portraits of Robespierre and John Aubrey, Napoleon emerges a giant figure made human, seen through the eyes of those who knew him best - close witnesses, rich and poor, famed and obscure - in the shade of his gardens. The result is vivid, multidimensional and haunting, throwing us back in time, so that we see him before us, both as the Emperor hunting for glory and the man in an old straw hat, leaning on his spade. on St Helena, where Chinese labourers built him a summerhouse where he could sit and scan the sea in his final months.’

Gardens in My Life: The Favourite Gardens of World-famous Landscape Designer Arabella Lennox-Boyd by Arabella Lennox-Boyd (Apollo, April 2021)

‘Arabella Lennox-Boyd is one of the foremost garden designers in the world. She has created some of the country's most stunning private gardens, in addition to commissions for the Serpentine Sackler Gallery and projects for Sting and Sir Terence Conran.

Looking back over her extraordinary career, Arabella takes us on a tour of the gardens that have had a particular interest or meaning to her. She describes the inspirations that led to the final design and plant combination. Famed for her herbaceous borders and a passionate collector of plants and shrubs, Arabella imparts her expert wisdom on planting and offers practical advice on landscaping.’

Mavis Batey: Bletchley Codebreaker, Garden Historian, Conservationist, Writer by Jean Stone (Matator, March 2020)

Mavis became an important figure in conservation, becoming President of the Garden History Society, which, under her watch, became an academic society and campaigning force for the protection of landscapes, parks, and gardens of historic interest. She also lobbied Parliament, fighting threats of encroachment and misuse of land. Acts of Parliament were passed, English Heritage was established, and grants were introduced. Historic gardens became officially recognised as essential components of European culture and her National Register of Historic Gardens came to fruition. Mavis’s passion was writing and she wrote many books.’ 

Shades of Green: My Life as the National Trust’s Head of Gardens by John Sales
Walled Gardens by Jules Hudson 

Lives of Great Gardeners by Stephen Anderton (Thames & Hudson Ltd December 2016)

This new book explores the contribution of gardeners from four garden perspectives:   Gardens of Ideas, Gardens of Straight Lines, Gardens of Curves, and Gardens of Plantsmanship. The work of a variety of gardeners is considered “Some have been aristocratic amateur gardeners, others professional designers with an international practice. Some have come to garden-making from sister arts such as sculpture or painting; some have been hands-on nurserymen or botanists. What they all have in common, no matter where or when they were born, is the ability to take an idea and develop it in a new manner relevant to their times.”

Great British Gardeners: From the Early Plantsmen to Chelsea Medal Winners by Vanessa Berridge (Amberley Publishing, 2018)