Georgian landscape gardens are among the most visited and enjoyed of the UK's historical treasures. The Georgian garden has also been hailed as the greatest British contribution to European Art, seen as a beautiful composition created from grass, trees and water - a landscape for contemplation. But scratch below the surface and history reveals these gardens were a lot less serene and, in places, a great deal more scandalous.Beautifully illustrated in colour and black & white, this book is about the daily life of the Georgian garden. It reveals its previously untold secrets from early morning rides through to evening amorous liaisons. It explains how by the eighteenth century there was a desire to escape the busy country house where privacy was at a premium, and how these gardens evolved aesthetically, with modestly-sized, far-flung temples and other eye-catchers, to cater for escape and solitude as well as food, drink, music and fireworks. Its publication coincides with the 2016 tercentenary of the birth of Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, arguably Britain's greatest ever landscape gardener, and the book is uniquely positioned to put Brown's work into its social context.

A glorious celebration, this landmark book is an exploration of the greatest gardens, parks and landscapes in Britain, with stunning photography accompanied by insightful text from leading garden historians and conservators. It is lovingly curated by The Gardens Trust, a prominent UK conservation charity dedicated to preserving, studying and spotlighting historic gardens. Arranged chronologically, it covers around 60 individual gardens, specially selected to give a broad historical overview of British garden design from the Early Modern Period up until the Millennium. Each chapter also includes an intruiging essay, exploring the wider changes in social context, taste and style in each period. Entries include: • Elizabethan splendour at Kenilworth Castle. • Spectacular landscapes by Capability Brown at Alnwick Castle and Chatsworth. • Birkenhead Park, the Victorian inspiration for New York's Central Park. • The classic cottage garden created by Margery Fish at East Lambrook, Somerset. • Ian Hamilton Finlay's modern Scottish masterpiece, Little Sparta. Go on a voyage of garden discovery with this beautiful book, and learn more about the gardens and landscapes that are a much-loved part of our shared national story.

Heritage gardens create huge management headaches. How does one preserve a garden designed for the enjoyment of the few when the advent of the many grinds it away to nothing? The answer, as presented in Heritage Gardens is a subterfuge: preserve the illusion of the created environment as originally conceived, but adjust it using more durable materials: plants and designs which require less cultivation. Of all the problems facing the heritage industry today, the managment of gardens and landscape environment create some of the greatest difficulties. This book seeks to provide some of the answers.

maps out how the garden is perceived, designed, used, and valued

"This is a major work and, I think, Hunt's best. . . . Once picked up, the book cannot be put down, for it is an exciting exegesis of the continuing Italian influence upon English garden art."—Country Life

Using a rich assortment of illustrations and biographical sketches, Peter Martin relates the experiences of colonial gardeners who shaped the natural beauty of Virginia's wilderness into varied displays of elegance. He shows that ornamental gardening was a scientific, aesthetic, and cultural enterprise that thoroughly engaged some of the leading figures of the period, including the British governors at Williamsburg and the great plantation owners George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, William Byrd, and John Custis. In presenting accounts of their gardening efforts, Martin reveals the intricacies of colonial garden design, plant searches, and experimentation, as well as the problems in adapting European landscaping ideas to local climate. The Pleasure Gardens of Virginia also brings to life the social and commercial interaction between Williamsburg and the plantations, and examines early American ideas about gracious living. While placing Virginia's garden tradition within the larger context of that of the colonial South, Martin tells a very human story of how this art both influenced and reflected the quality of colonial life. As Virginia grew economically and culturally, the garden became a projection of the gardener's personal identity, as exemplified by the endeavors of Washington at Mount Vernon and Jefferson at Monticello. Martin draws upon both pictorial representations and the findings of modern archaeological excavations in order to recapture the gardens as they existed in colonial times.

The Education of the Eye examines the origins of visual culture in eighteenth-century Britain, setting out to reclaim visual culture for the democracy of the eye and to explain how aesthetic contemplation may, once more, be open to all who have eyes to look.