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’.