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A review by tonstantweader
Gardenlust: A Botanical Tour of the World's Best New Gardens by Christopher Woods
5.0
Gardenlust is one of those gorgeous picture books that people can get lost in for hours. Featuring fifty gardens, from the austere to the madcap, restrained formalism and exuberant naturalism, the only rule seems to be there are no rules. The gardens range from less than ½ an acre to around to more than a thousand acres. There are private gardens and massive public gardens including a garden that is just beginning to be developed, it’s planned completion in 2037.
It is not just the variety of gardens, though, that make Gardenlust different than your average garden book. These gardens have a new sensibility. There is a modern sensibility in most of them that takes into consideration things like sustainability and water conservation and some even challenge our concept of what is a garden like Gibbs Farm which is acres and acres of grassland populated by livestock and giant sculptures or the Landschaftspark garden planted on an industrial ironworks with the pipes and ladders and buildings remaining, just set off with plants, bushes, and trees.
I read through Gardenlust more than once and then looked for the gardens on Google, searching for more pictures because they were so beautiful and many of them unlike the usual garden. I have always loved gardens and Portland’s Japanese Garden, Chinese Garden, Rose Test Garden, and Rhododendron Garden are some of my favorite things in the city. The book is visually appealing, generously illustrated. To give you an idea of how lovely it is, I brought it along to Thanksgiving at my friend’s house and someone was constantly looking through it and even talking about getting their own copies. My one complaint is that it is heavy, too heavy for arthritic hands, so I had to get out a pillow to rest it on while I read. Otherwise, it’s everything I could ask for in a garden book.
I received a copy of Gardenlust from the publisher through LibraryThing.
Gardenlust at Timber Press | Workman Publishing
Christopher Woods on Linked In
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2018/11/24/9781604697971/
It is not just the variety of gardens, though, that make Gardenlust different than your average garden book. These gardens have a new sensibility. There is a modern sensibility in most of them that takes into consideration things like sustainability and water conservation and some even challenge our concept of what is a garden like Gibbs Farm which is acres and acres of grassland populated by livestock and giant sculptures or the Landschaftspark garden planted on an industrial ironworks with the pipes and ladders and buildings remaining, just set off with plants, bushes, and trees.
I read through Gardenlust more than once and then looked for the gardens on Google, searching for more pictures because they were so beautiful and many of them unlike the usual garden. I have always loved gardens and Portland’s Japanese Garden, Chinese Garden, Rose Test Garden, and Rhododendron Garden are some of my favorite things in the city. The book is visually appealing, generously illustrated. To give you an idea of how lovely it is, I brought it along to Thanksgiving at my friend’s house and someone was constantly looking through it and even talking about getting their own copies. My one complaint is that it is heavy, too heavy for arthritic hands, so I had to get out a pillow to rest it on while I read. Otherwise, it’s everything I could ask for in a garden book.
I received a copy of Gardenlust from the publisher through LibraryThing.
Gardenlust at Timber Press | Workman Publishing
Christopher Woods on Linked In
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2018/11/24/9781604697971/