Grounds for Change: Major Gardens of the Twentieth Century

As the end of the twentieth century approaches, it becomes apparent that the past one hundred or so years have been characterized by a great variety and virtuosity in landscape architecture, which, at the same time, has demonstrated a strange reticence about itself as an art form. This discomfiture with its status among the arts is mirrored in the fact that, until now, there has been no serious book-form examination of modern garden design on an international scope.
Structured around works of the greatest twentieth-century landscape designers of Europe, Great Britain, and the Americas, Grounds for Change sets about correcting this omission. In an impressive disquisition on the origins and development of twentieth-century landscape architecture, Mr. Adams examines the Italianate and Anglophilic urges of designers of the late 1890s and early 1900s, the Cubist and Modernist approaches of the twenties and thirties, and then proceeds right up to recent attempts to evoke beauty through environmentally responsible design.
This is followed by a portfolio of twenty-four gardens, each illustrated with exquisite full-color photographs made especially for this book.