Garden Design attempts to give an overall introduction to an immensely wide subject, touching briefly on the philosophic, historic, and practical aspects. Each is covered in many books devoted to a particular subject, and a selection of them is given in the bibliography.
The extended scope of the second edition is retained. It includes a survey of the landscape elements in urban development, for they are after all an extension of the concept of a garden as a pleasance for civilized living. Added are short comments on wild, woodland, heath, conservation and roof gardens, and the public pressures that are forced on them...
Sylvia Crowe Garden Design has influenced several generations of landscape architects and specialist garden designers since it was first published in 1958. This paperbaack version of the more heavily illustrated third edition, with colour added, will inspire further generations to think about the qualities of their gardens and parks in the context of an increasingly overpopulated and exploited world. Dame Sylvia writes: Gardens are the link between men and the world in which they live...A garden can give two separate pleasures: the pleasure of the growing plant with its individual beauty, and the pleasure of the garden as a whole, as a world to live in and to look at...
With these thoughts n mind, Dame Sylvia briefly describes the qualities of the Mogul, Hispano-Arabic, Sino-Japanese, Italian, French, English and other contemporary gardens, teasing out the princip es of design and qualities we can absorb, and which she then elaborates in greater detail Perhaps the greatest of these and the one most lacking in the average garden today is a sense of unity. It is a quality found in all the great landscapes, based on the rhythm of natural land-form, the domination of one type of vegetation, and the fact that human use and buildings have kept in sympathy with their surroundings. When we say that landscape has been spoilt we mean that it has lost this unity.
Forewords by John Brookes,
Penelope Hobhouse and Michael Laurie
Preface
Introduction
Part 1 HISTORY
1. The Oasis
2. The Sino-Japanese Garden
3. The Hispano-Arabic Garden
4. The Italian Garden
The Villa Lante
5. The French Tradition
Vaux-le- Vicomte
The Jardin Anglais
6. The English Garden
Roman and Medieval Gardens
The Tudor Garden
The French Tradition in England
The English Landscape Garden
Stowe
Nineteenth Century Gardens
Hidcote - The Plantsman’s Garden
7. The Garden Today
Wild Gardens
Woodland Gardens
Heath Gardens
Gardens for Conservation
Roof Gardens
Public Pressures
Part 2 PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN
8. Principles of Design
Unity
Scale
Time
Space Division
Light and Shade
Texture
Tone and Colour
Part 3 MATERIALS OF DESIGN
9. Land Form
10. Plants in Garden Design
Wind Shelter
Seclusion
Shade
Space Division
Hedges
Grouping and Compatibility of Plants
Colour
Trees
Shrubs
Herbaceous Plants
Landscape Architects’Plants
Climbers
11. Water
12. Sculptural Forms
13. Garden Boundaries
14. Ground Pattern
Part 4 SPECIALIZED GARDENS
15. The Private Garden
Tintinhull House
16. The Shared Garden
17. The Linked Park System
Conclusion
Bibliography
List of Colour and Black and White
Plates and Figures
Acknowledgements
Plant Index
Index
