Lives of the Great Gardeners

October 17, 2016
Times of London gardening columnist Anderton (Discovering Welsh Gardens) pays homage to gardeners throughout history in this wonderfully illustrated book. The 40 biographies, which cover 500 years of gardening around the world, plow cleanly through the lives and work of each gardener. Anderton’s subjects are varied; he covers Dutchmen and Scotsmen and Asians; sculptors and scholars; and Penelope Hobhouse, Gertrude Jekyll, and Beth Chatto. The gardeners are grouped into four inventive chapters: “Gardens of Ideas,” “Gardens of Straight Lines,” “Gardens of Curves,” and “Gardens of Plantsmanship.” This organization springs from the author’s intelligent comprehension of the big garden picture. He includes contextual cross-references and, before each biography, lists events (often odd ones) from the gardeners’ birth and death years. Anderton’s style, erudite and whimsical, delightfully dominates: “Le Notre was no writer and, to our great loss, left little behind except a few plans. And, of course, Versailles.” The nearly 250 illustrations balance Anderton’s words in a sprightly and convivial marriage.

February 1, 2017
Brief biographies of the lives and creativity of 40 great gardeners are used to illustrate the history and philosophy of four principles on which gardens were and are developed. Each category (ideas, straight lines, curves, and plantsmanship) includes a series of 912 gardeners from the historical to the contemporary. Gardens of Ideas features the longest time line, starting with ancient Chinese gardens and continuing to the modern, conceptually inspired garden. Geometric gardens started to be developed when people began controlling nature in earnest. Gardens of Straight Lines also control people and lead from one place to another. In the modern context, gardeners started to use repeating parallel curves. Another hundred years after the straight-lined gardens came into fashion, more sweeping curves on the grand estates of Europe began their evolution to become the Gardens of Curves. The plant collectors of the nineteenth century needed Gardens of Plantsmanship to show off their finds. The contemporary equivalent is a naturalistic desert garden. The author's selection of gardeners includes the famous (Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Law Olmsted, Claude Monet) and less commonly recognized names (Wen Zhengming, Andre le Notre, William Robinson, Edna Walling). Each of these gardeners both led and represented the aesthetic of his or her generation. For added context, there is a small block of important historical events that happened in each gardener's lifetime. From this compilation of great gardeners, modern landscape architects and designers and home gardeners can learn some of the history and development of their art and craft.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)