The Garden, Elements and Styles

The definitive reference guide to garden design, its rich history, and the creative art of gardening – a luxuriously illustrated A-Z compendium of more than 200 garden elements, styles, features, and ornaments for gardeners around the globe

With its easy-to-use A-Z format, The Garden examines over 200 modern and historical garden styles, features, types and ornaments, with definitions and informative descriptions and more than 500 spectacular images. This accessible, inspirational book is perfect for both amateur gardeners and specialists alike.

Its entries, written by garden expert and historian Toby Musgrave – author of Phaidon’s bestselling book The Gardener’s Garden – range from Allée, Borrowed Landscape and Coastal Garden, to Minimalism, New Perennial Planting, Pool, Vista and Xeriscape Garden and form a unique, illustrated ‘glossary’ for gardeners, featuring more than 400 gardens, both public and private, iconic and lesser known.

Examples include spaces such as the Baroque gardens of Versailles and rarely published tropical courtyards from contemporary designers, alongside artist creations such as Frida Kahlo’s courtyard in Mexico and Derek Jarman’s coastal garden in Dungeness, England. Alongside the work of private garden owners and makers, the book also showcases the work of emerging and eminent designers, including Andrea Cochran, Emily Erlam, Raymond Jungles, Dan Pearson, and Piet Oudolf.

Whether creating an English cottage garden or tending a Japanese Zen landscape, the range and beauty of The Garden will inspire gardeners and garden lovers everywhere as never before.

Editorial Reviews

‘Lushly illustrated with some of the world’s most glorious gardens.’ – Financial Times, How to Spend It

‘The greatest gardens from 3,500 years of history.’ – Sunday Telegraph

‘An excellent reference book for designers, gardeners and garden lovers. Great photographs combined with informative texts covering everything from Allée to Zeitgeist.’ – Annie Guilfoyle, garden designer and co-founder of Garden Masterclass

‘[A] bible of all that is garden.’ – Grazia

‘A fabulous reference title and source of inspiration.’ – Gardens Illustrated
– From the Publisher

04/01/2023

From allée to zeitgeist, Musgrave’s (The British Garden) compendium is an open invitation to explore gardens through a highly accessible lens. While students and professionals can use the dictionary to look up an auricula theater or learn about carpet bedding, generalists can simply read the book, dipping in and out as interest guides them, delighting in the images and text. The more than 200 entries are brief but packed with detail. Rather than solely defining a term, Musgrove places it into context and uses photos to expand upon concepts. For example, the entry on xeriscape gardens defines the Greek source of the word, explains it, details how such gardens have developed, outlines the impacts of climate change on their necessity, provides several notable examples, and includes three images to highlight their range, all while pointing readers to a related term, gravel gardens, discussed earlier in the work. Although addressing garden history, Musgrove does not include entries that reflect the work of enslaved people, and listings of colonial gardens focus largely on design. VERDICT The reference use of the title will be high, but consider buying it for the circulating collection too, for this is a work that readers will pore over.–Neal Wyatt
– Library Journal