Foreign Trends in American Gardens addresses the influence of foreign, designed landscapes on the development of their American counterparts. Including essays from an array of significant scholars in landscape studies, this collection examines topics ranging from the importation of Western and Eastern styles of design and theoretical literature to the adaptation of specific plant types. As the variety of topics and influences discussed demonstrates, the essence of American gardens defies simple definition. Examining the translation, imitation, adaptation, and naturalization of stylistic trends and horticultural specimens into American gardens, the book also dwells on the juxtaposition of the foreign and the native. The volume’s contributors consider the experiences both of immigrants, who contributed through their writing, planting, and design efforts to enhance the character of regional gardens, and of Americans, who traveled abroad and brought back with them a passion for naturalizing exotics for scientific as well as aesthetic reasons. The complexity of American gardens—their combination of the historic and the modern, and of foreign cultures and local values—is also their most distinctive characteristic.

An engaging tribute to America's grand era of private estate gardens and their illustrious owners, this book sweeps across the country to present over 500 of the nation's most exquisite gardens and the people who built them. In addition to a wealth of horticultural details, we learn of the garden-maker's flamboyant private and public lives--of the gossip, parties, dreams, politics, and economic one-upmanship of the period. 280 illustrations, 130 in full color.

American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century is the second of three authoritative volumes of garden history by Ann Leighton. This entertaining book focuses on eightenth-century gardens and gardening. Leighton's material for the book was drawn from letters, journals, invoices, and books of men and women who were interested in the plants of the New and Old World. Throughout the book are illustrations and descriptive listings of native and new plants that were cultivated during the eighteenth century. - Description by University of Massachussets Press.

Provides photographs and information about thirty private gardens in the United States, including layout and setting, and information about the gardeners. The book also provides ideas for adapting some of the details from these gardens for use in your own.

Follies in America examines historicized garden buildings, known as "follies," from the nation's founding through the American centennial celebration in 1876. In a period of increasing nationalism, follies—such as temples, summerhouses, towers, and ruins—brought a range of European architectural styles to the United States. By imprinting the land with symbols of European culture, landscape gardeners brought their idea of civilization to the American wilderness. Kerry Dean Carso's interdisciplinary approach in Follies in America examines both buildings and their counterparts in literature and art, demonstrating that follies provide a window into major themes in nineteenth-century American culture, including tensions between Jeffersonian agrarianism and urban life, the ascendancy of middle-class tourism, and gentility and social class aspirations.

Finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction A New York Times Editors' Choice Selection The untold story of Hamilton’s—and Burr’s—personal physician, whose dream to build America’s first botanical garden inspired the young Republic. On a clear morning in July 1804, Alexander Hamilton stepped onto a boat at the edge of the Hudson River. He was bound for a New Jersey dueling ground to settle his bitter dispute with Aaron Burr. Hamilton took just two men with him: his “second” for the duel, and Dr. David Hosack. As historian Victoria Johnson reveals in her groundbreaking biography, Hosack was one of the few points the duelists did agree on. Summoned that morning because of his role as the beloved Hamilton family doctor, he was also a close friend of Burr. A brilliant surgeon and a world-class botanist, Hosack—who until now has been lost in the fog of history—was a pioneering thinker who shaped a young nation. Born in New York City, he was educated in Europe and returned to America inspired by his newfound knowledge. He assembled a plant collection so spectacular and diverse that it amazes botanists today, conducted some of the first pharmaceutical research in the United States, and introduced new surgeries to American. His tireless work championing public health and science earned him national fame and praise from the likes of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander von Humboldt, and the Marquis de Lafayette. One goal drove Hosack above all others: to build the Republic’s first botanical garden. Despite innumerable obstacles and near-constant resistance, Hosack triumphed when, by 1810, his Elgin Botanic Garden at last crowned twenty acres of Manhattan farmland. “Where others saw real estate and power, Hosack saw the landscape as a pharmacopoeia able to bring medicine into the modern age” (Eric W. Sanderson, author of Mannahatta). Today what remains of America’s first botanical garden lies in the heart of midtown, buried beneath Rockefeller Center. Whether collecting specimens along the banks of the Hudson River, lecturing before a class of rapt medical students, or breaking the fever of a young Philip Hamilton, David Hosack was an American visionary who has been too long forgotten. Alongside other towering figures of the post-Revolutionary generation, he took the reins of a nation. In unearthing the dramatic story of his life, Johnson offers a lush depiction of the man who gave a new voice to the powers and perils of nature.