Amazing Gardens [Hardback]

From the gardens of the Palace of Versailles to London's Kew Gardens, from Monet’s garden in France to the Tivoli Gardens in Rome, from the Japanese garden in Portland, Oregon, to city gardens in Tokyo, Amazing Gardens is a wide-ranging photographic celebration of all types of gardens around the globe.

From the gardens of the Palace of Versailles to Beatrix Potter’s garden in the Lake District, from Monet’s garden in France to the Tivoli Gardens in Rome, from the Japanese garden in Portland, Oregon, to city gardens in Tokyo, Amazing Gardens is a wide-ranging celebration of all types of gardens around the globe. Including formal French gardens and English landscape gardens, famous botanical gardens and little-known curiosities, Iranian and Persian gardens, grand, country house gardens and inner-city gardens, Zen gardens, strolling Japanese gardens and Chinese gardens, medicinal gardens and one poison garden, knot gardens and Roman gardens, the book explores a huge variety of the approaches and uses of gardening around the world over millennia. In telling the stories of these places, the book touches on the lives of the people who worked in them, designed them and owned them – people such as Prince Charles, Capability Brown, Gertrude Jekyll, Edith Wharton and Agatha Christie. Illustrated with more than 200 outstanding colour photographs and expert captions, Amazing Gardens not only champions the splendour of the world’s most magnificent gardens but also reveals many fascinating stories about the history of these places and the people who created them.

From the great temperate landscapes of North America to the deserts of North Africa and the subtropical ecosystems of Asia, Amazing Gardens provides a brilliantly-informed snapshot of many of the greatest and best-known formal gardens from around the globe. In this book, wander the 200 hectares (500 acres) of England’s Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, reputed to have one of the largest and most diverse range of plants in the world; explore New York City’s High Line, where a disused railway track through the city’s Meatpacking District has been turned into a 2.3 kilometre (1.44 mile) elevated park; marvel at Beijing’s Summer Palace, a world heritage site dating from the 12th century, with a layout based on Chinese mythology and arranged according to the ancient principles of feng shui; see the palace complex of the Taj Mahal in Agra, designed in the Mughal style and with gardens planted with roses, narcissi, marigolds and jasmine, offering an intimation of paradise; wonder at the biophilic workspace of the Seattle Spheres, a futuristic office space populated by more than 40,000 plants; and experience the waterlilies and Japanese bridge of Claude Monet’s famous paintings at the great artist’s gardens at Giverny. Illustrated with more than 200 luxuriant images, Amazing Gardens not only champions the splendour of the world’s most magnificent gardens, but also reveals many fascinating stories about the history of these places and the people who created them.

• 200 superb colour photographs from the world’s most spectacular gardens
• Expert text explains the stories behind 100 gardens from all around the globe
• Ranges from royal gardens to botanical gardens, ancient gardens to contemporary gardens