Influential Gardeners : The Designers Who Shaped 20th-Century Garden Style

Rating:
Summary: A coffee table book
Review: This is a beautiful coffee table book: large format with luscious photography. The writer has focussed on the people who influenced garden design in the twentieth century, from Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Sackville-West to designers who are only now hitting their stride. He concentrates on designers from Western Europe and North America and he has grouped the 56 designers by different aspects of garden design - for example, planting, form and texture.

I have to admit I'm not a fan of the self-consciously self-important school of garden design. Of course a beautiful garden requires careful planning, but if the finished result smacks you in the face with geometric shapes and larger-than-life hard structures then I might call it a piece of art, but I wouldn't call it a garden. O.K, I'm prejudiced, but I'd run screaming from some of the gardens in illustrated in this book.

That said, the writer is knowledgeable; he has selected his subjects carefully and arranged them in logical sequence. His introductory comments to each section of the book are comprehensive and concise.