The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll - Softcover

Bisgrove, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520226208 ISBN 13: 9780520226203

Publisher: University of California Press, 2000

Synopsis

The English gardens of Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) have influenced good garden design throughout the world. While many of Jekyll's gardens and original plantings have disappeared, and only a handful of her plans are well-known, thousands survive in archives. Richard Bisgrove has selected a representative sample from this remarkable collection, and the designs—including plans for Jekyll's three American gardens as well as for many of her English gardens—have been redrawn by an accomplished watercolorist and relabeled to make them more accessible to the nonspecialist. Together they provide an astonishing record of Jekyll's versatility as a garden designer and of the painstaking attention to detail that she applied to every aspect of her art.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Should there be any doubt that Gertrude Jekyll was among the greatest practitioners of the art of gardening (there isn't, of course), a survey of this book will quickly confirm her almost totemic status in twentieth-century ornamental horticulture." (Wayne Winterrowd, Horticulture, The Magazine of American Gardening )

"[This book] is scholarly, well-written, and based on original research. The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll is the most innovative study of the patron saint of modern gardeners since Jane Brown's pioneering Gardens of a Golden Afternoon appeared ten years ago. . . . [Bisgrove's] is the most detailed and comprehensive analysis ever made of Gertrude Jekyll's gardening." (Charles Quest-Ritson, Gardens Illustrated )

"The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll serves as a living complement to her gardening ideas, indicating the scope and variety her gardening vision could assume. Richard Bisgrove has mined extensive archives for Jekyll's most effective planning schemes, and illustrates them with photographs of her existing gardens. He helpfully divides chapters by types of gardenincluding formal gardens, rose gardens, wild gardens, steps and walks, and sun and shade." (Ann Geneva, Literary Review )

"Gertrude Jekyll is famous the world over as the mother of the lush English garden. . . . The stage is set for an updated revival of the Jekyll cult. Her philosophical commitment to native plants and gardens that incorporate existing heathland and woods makes her environmentally up to date." (Diana Ketcham, New York Times)

"The most comprehensive study I have seen of the garde-making ideas of this astonishingly prolific lady . . . This is a book that can be read cover to cover -- but one to which people will refer time and again over the years." (Arthur Hellyer, Financial Times)

"Richard Bisgrove must now be firmly established as one of our most authoritative, painstaking yet easy-to-read garden historians . . . The writing is a happy combination of scholarship and art . . . readers must be equally delighted with Andrew Lawson's magnificent photographs." (Graham Stuart Thomas, The Garden)

About the Author:

Richard Bisgrove is the director of the Landscape Management program at Reading University. He has designed gardens in Britain and the U.S. and lectures internationally on the history of garden design and on the work of Gertrude Jekyll. He is the author of The Flower Garden (1989) and The National Trust Book of the English Garden (1990).

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0520226208
• ISBN 13: 9780520226203
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192