How women changed the American landscape from planting war victory gardens to saving the redwoods, beautifying the highway to creating horticultural standards. In 1904, Elizabeth Price Martin founded the Garden Club of Philadelphia. In 1913, twelve garden clubs in the eastern and central United States signed an agreement to form the Garden Guild. The Garden Guild would later become the Garden Club of America (GCA), now celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2013. GCA is a volunteer nonprofit organization comprised of 200 member clubs and approximately 18,000 members throughout the country. Comprised of all women, GCA has emerged as a national leader in the fields of horticulture, conservation, and civic improvement. As an example, in 1930, GCA was a key force in preserving the redwood forests of California, helping to create national awareness for the need to preserve these forests, along with contributing funds to purchase land on which they stood. The Garden Club of America Grove and the virgin forest tract of Canoe Creek contain some of the finest specimens of the redwood forests. The Garden Club of America is a centennial celebration of strong women who nurtured the country, helped spread the good word of gardening, and continue to plant seeds of awareness.

Available in English for the first time, Imperfect Garden is both an approachable intellectual history and a bracing treatise on how we should understand and experience our lives. In it, one of France's most prominent intellectuals explores the foundations, limits, and possibilities of humanist thinking. Through his critical but sympathetic excavation of humanism, Tzvetan Todorov seeks an answer to modernity's fundamental challenge: how to maintain our hard-won liberty without paying too dearly in social ties, common values, and a coherent and responsible sense of self. Todorov reads afresh the works of major humanists--primarily Montaigne, Rousseau, and Constant, but also Descartes, Montesquieu, and Toqueville. Each chapter considers humanism's approach to one major theme of human existence: liberty, social life, love, self, morality, and expression. Discussing humanism in dialogue with other systems, Todorov finds a response to the predicament of modernity that is far more instructive than any offered by conservatism, scientific determinism, existential individualism, or humanism's other contemporary competitors. Humanism suggests that we are members of an intelligent and sociable species who can act according to our will while connecting the well-being of other members with our own. It is through this understanding of free will, Todorov argues, that we can use humanism to rescue universality and reconcile human liberty with solidarity and personal integrity. Placing the history of ideas at the service of a quest for moral and political wisdom, Todorov's compelling and no doubt controversial rethinking of humanist ideas testifies to the enduring capacity of those ideas to meditate on--and, if we are fortunate, cultivate--the imperfect garden in which we live.

Larry Lederman takes readers on a privileged photographic tour through the Rockefeller family gardens in the Hudson Valley and Maine. The Rockefeller family is synonymous with great wealth, extraordinary philanthropy, and exceptional stewardship of unspoiled landscapes. In their private world, the Rockefellers have created extraordinary gardens. Over the course of a century, their grounds have matured and evolved to reflect the layered visions of three generations of the Rockefeller family. At Kykuit in the Hudson Valley, John D. Rockefeller valued broad expanses of lawns with a noble forest of evergreens at the perimeter. His son—John D. Rockefeller Jr.—molded this landscape into a more formal Beaux-Arts garden design. This garden was later enhanced by Nelson A. Rockefeller’s addition of an extensive collection of twentieth-century sculpture, which is still in place today. In The Rockefeller Family Gardens, photographer Larry Lederman gives readers unprecedented access to the two Kykuit gardens—the expansive Beaux-Arts–style garden and a little-known Japanese garden, brought to life by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller. This book also takes readers inside the garden at Eyrie, the family summer retreat in Seal Harbor, Maine. There, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller collaborated with noted designer Beatrix Farrand to design a walled garden inspired by Asian aesthetics at the perimeter and filled with traditional perennials. Lederman’s photographs capture the beauty of these gardens in all seasons, focusing on the geometry of the designs and the color and light that animates them. This tour through the spaces is accompanied by text from Todd Forrest of the New York Botanical Garden, Cassie Banning of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden, and Cynthia Bronson Altman of Kykuit to provide commentary on the design and plant materials featured in this captivating collection of photos.

Raised at an exclusive boarding school in New York, Meg Davenport is shocked to discover upon her father's death that he was not a successful businessman, but one of the most talented thieves of the Gilded Age, and decides to seize the chance to build her own future.

A compelling story about the decline and rebirth of a 100 year old garden.

An inspirational and insightful look at contemporary Brazilian garden design and the influence of famed designer Roberto Burle Marx. Brazilian Roberto Burle Marx was indisputably one of the greatest garden and landscape architects of the twentieth century. His projects, almost all of which were in his native country and highlighted its rich local flora, influenced gardens and landscapesand other design disciplinesaround the world. Given the richness of Brazil's great tradition of modernism and the lushness of its tropical landscape, it is perhaps only because of its distance that so little is known about contemporary gardening thereuntil now. Presenting over thirty new gardens and landscapes located across the country, from the coast to the hills, from the cities to the jungle, New Brazilian Gardens offers an exciting overview of current practice by designers who are hardly known outside its borders. The gardens are grouped into four sections: Water, Planting, Abstraction, and Sculpture. Each project is presented in detail, with descriptions, plans (including plant lists), and photographs. An introduction considers the evolution of the Brazilian garden since the Colonial period and examines Burle Marx's influence in the light of current trends. 267 color illustrations.

A handy, accessible guide to creating your own paradise plot where you can forage throughout the year Anna Locke condenses years of hands-on experience to walk you through the skills and techniques you need to design and plant a delicious, useful, and thriving garden in town or country that is also a haven for wildlife as well as for humans. She encourages us to see our gardens as part of a bigger, local food strategy that can help to generate abundance, health and resilience. This book provides: An overview of organic gardening techniques--great for the beginner A basic, accessible guide to designing your garden Insights into how to plant guilds and choose what is right for your space Valuable information on how 'weeds' can become harvests A choice of nutritious, seasonal plants for any sized plot Techniques to grow maximum food with minimal work Practices that reconnect you with Nature and enhance well-being Money saving tips to make a forager's garden available to anyone! The Forager's Garden demonstrates one of the easiest and most enjoyable ways possible to grow and harvest food.

This title tells the story of James Pulham & Son, the eminent family of Victorian and Edwardian landscape artists who specialised in the construction of picturesque rock gardens, ferneries, follies and grottes. The book covers more than four generations of the family business that was responsible for terracotta garden ornaments.

"A complete tour through the development and production of the hit animated miniseries Over the Garden Wall, this volume contains hundreds of pieces of concept art and sketches"--