"A comprehensive history of the parks and gardens of Russia, spanning a thousand years from the first Byzantine-influenced gardens in the tenth century AD, through to the present day".--BOOKJACKET.

A guided tour of London's public squares, community and allotment gardens, front gardens and window boxes - and the myriad and monumental public parks, from the grand formality of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to the wild heathland of Hampstead and the commons.

The spectacular transformation of Paris during the 19th century into a city of tree-lined boulevards and public parks both redesigned the capital and inspired the era’s great Impressionist artists. The renewed landscape gave crowded, displaced urban dwellers green spaces to enjoy, while suburbanites and country-dwellers began cultivating their own flower gardens. As public engagement with gardening grew, artists increasingly featured flowers and parks in their work. Public Parks, Private Gardens includes masterworks by artists such as Bonnard, Cassatt, Cézanne, Corot, Daumier, Van Gogh, Manet, Matisse, Monet, and Seurat. Many of these artists were themselves avid gardeners, and they painted parks and gardens as the distinctive scenery of contemporary life. Writing from the perspective of both a distinguished art historian and a trained landscape designer, Colta Ives provides new insights not only into these essential works, but also into this extraordinarily creative period in France’s history.

Jens Jensen was one of America's greatest landscape designers and conservationists. Using native plants and "fitting" designs, he advocated that our gardens, parks, roads, playgrounds, and cities should be harmonious with nature and its ecological processes--a belief that was to become a major theme of modern American landscape design. When Jensen died in 1951 at the age of 90, the New York Times called him "the dean of American landscape architecture." In Jens Jensen: Maker of Natural Parks and Gardens, Robert E. Grese evaluates Jensen's work against the background of landscape design traditions that included Andrew Jackson Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted, as well as earlier movements in Europe. Grese examines Jensen's part in the Chicago cultural renaissance that occurred just prior to World War I, a movement that brought social reform, a new understanding of ecology, organic trends in architecture, and great strides in American literature. Drawing on Jensen's writings and plans, interviews with people who knew him, and analyses of his projects, Grese presents a clear picture of Jensen's efforts to enhance and preserve "native" landscapes. Jens Jensen worked with some of the leading architects of his day--Sullivan and Wright among them--so many of his projects involved the extravagant estates of wealthy entrepreneurs in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and elsewhere. But Jensen also worked on schools, parks, playgrounds, hospitals, institutional homes, and government buildings. Long before environmental activists took over the idea, he foresaw the need to preserve the dunes, forests, prairies, and wetlands native to the Middle West. He championed the network of forest preserves around Chicago, protection of the Indiana Dunes (now a national lakeshore), the state park system in Illinois, and numerous parks in Wisconsin. Jens Jensen: Maker of Natural Parks and Gardens offers a compelling look at Jensen's visionary work and remarkable career.

Whether located in the heart of a metropolis such as Chicago or on sprawling fields in the countryside, sculpture parks and gardens have become increasingly popular destinations for art and nature lovers alike. These art parks offer visitors a unique opportunity to interact with large-scale works designed for quiet contemplation in natural landscapes. Art Parks is the first comprehensive guide to North America's most important outdoor sculpture parks. Parks are divided into chapters thematically and by region, with four maps that locate parks within each geographic area. Each of the fifty-seven locations—from large-scale parks in the countryside to small urban gardens and corporate sculpture collections—is described in detail and beautifully photographed. With its handy flexibind format, it is equally at home in the traveler's backpack or on the sculpture lover's side table.

The parks that surround England's Windsor Castle were established in the Middle Ages for the protection of the royal deer. With the assistance of documents in the Public Record Office and the Royal Archives, and works of art in the Royal Collection, Jane Roberts has created an extensive and beautifully illustrated history of this royal acreage. 200 color & 300 b&w illustrations.

Provides an illustrated tour of over thirty gardens in the Washington D.C. area, profiling such sites as Dumbarton Oaks, Rock Creek Park, the Smithsonian Gardens, and Mount Vernon.