Gardens in Perspective is an inspirational and practical sourcebookof some 190 of the world's most beautiful, innovative, and influential gardens, photographed by a world-renowned garden photographer.The gardens, many of which have never been seen before, encompass a wide range of garden styles,including traditional and contemporary, urban and country, minimalist, exotic, natural and minimalist, providing any garden owner with a vast range of design and planting ideas.

Recent decades have seen truly exciting developments in garden design. Not only have many new plants been introduced to Europe and America, but the art of creating and planning a garden has been completely transformed.While not forgetting the basic principles of traditional garden design, garden owners and designers have broken free of former restraints, using their imaginations to create truly inspired new gardens.

Besides being vehicles for the expression of innovative ideas, garden design is also about capturing the "sense of place" of a garden. In Gardens in Perspective Jerry Harpur's exceptional photographs of the world's most exciting and ground-breaking gardens evoke the unique atmosphere of gardens created by such influential designers as Roberto Burle Marx, Topher Delaney, Jacques Wirtz, Steve Martino, Beth Chatto, Piet Oudolf, and Martha Schwartz. The accompanying text elucidates the ethos of each garden, as well as revealing the influence on leading designers of the great gardens of previous centuries such as Villandry, Stourhead, and Vignanello.

The book is divided into chapters on garden style and type - classical and modern, town and country, minimalist and exotic, formal and natural. It also shows the gardens of designers and owners with a particular passion for plants,as well as gardens that convey a sense of illusion and fantasy, and those especially known for their sculpture or other forms of art.

foreword by penelope hobhouse

introduction

contemporary formality

a passion for plants

sensuous minimalism

fantasy & romance

the new naturalism

the exotic look

the garden as art

index

acknowledgments