European Garden Design: From Classical Antiquity to the Present Day

Rating:
Summary: Nice value for money but biased in coverage.
Review: I found this very thick book to be a bargain for its price, however, I must admit I was dissapointed by its content. The author clearly has a special fondness for Italian gardens, and these tend to dominate not only the pictorial aspect, but also the text. It presents itself as a historical, pedagogical essay on Europan garden design, yet I found its discourse biased and not always correct. For example, it claims that Spain never developed a gardening style of its own, yet the Mudejar style (an exquisite mix of Moorish and Gothic styles) has produced the gardens of the Alcazar palace in Seville. This marvel is virtually ignored, dismissed with a bad photo and almost no mention. Similarly, English and Irish gardens, with their lovely touch of romanticism and passion for color, where wild flowers and climbing roses dominate, are given short shrift. Only those examples ressembling or imitating Roman or Italian Renaissance designs (where one finds an over-abundance of sculptures of mythological themes) are given much coverage.

Overall, for a book with pretensions of scholarship and historical depth in European garden design, this is a dissapointment. I don't know if this a result of ignorance from the part of the author, or due to some personal prejudice. A shame for such a wonderful topic.