Modern Garden Design: Innovation Since 1900

From Europe to South America, from Japan to the United States, this extraordinarily varied survey covers the work of garden and landscape designers whose names are familiar to both lovers and scholars of the modern garden, including Robinson, Jekyll, Jensen, Farrand, Sessions, Mawson, Church, Sorensen, and Jellicoe. It traces the revolutionary change brought about in the postwar period by the Harvard RebelsEckbo, Rose, and Kileyand examines the impact of Noguchi, Burle Marx, and Barragan, among others, as well as the powerful international influence of Scandinavian landscape architects and designers. The garden city is also given attention, from its beginnings in late Victorian Britain, through the Greenbelt towns in the American Midwest, to the contemporary regeneration of urban centers worldwide. A long line of artists and architects of international renown have earned a place in the history of the modern garden, including Monet, Le Corbusier, Wright, Mies van der Rohe, and Gaudi. Land artists such as Michael Heizer, Kathryn Gustafson, Andy Goldsworthy, and Ian Hamilton Finlay have brought new ways of thinking about landscape and the garden into the twenty-first century. This compelling account of the modern garden sets the best-known names in their historical and international context, and assesses the latest and boldest responses to the landscape that surrounds us. It will delight and inform everyone with an interest in gardens and modern culture. 213 illustrations, 121 in color.