1001 Gardens You Must See Before You Die [Hardcover]

Rae Spencer-Jones (Editor), Elizabeth Scholtz (Preface)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2007

Garden lovers and discriminating travelers will relish this armchair tour of the most beautiful and interesting gardens around the world. Succinct descriptions with stunning color photos showcase the creations of the world's outstanding landscape gardeners, architects, and garden designers. From Spain's famous gardens of the Moorish Alhambra at Granada to San Diego's Healing Garden, created for patients at the San Diego Children's Hospital, this lavishly illustrated guide will delight both lovers of natural beauty and hands-on gardeners. Among the many gardens pictured and described in this beautiful volume are--

In the United States and Canada: Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, Boscobel in New York's Hudson Valley, Williamsburg Gardens in Virginia, Magnolia Plantation and its Gardens near Charleston, South Carolina, Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin in Wisconsin, the Toronto Botanical Garden, Pacific Undersea Gardens in Victoria, British Columbia, and many more. . .

In England: The Japanese Garden in London's Holland Park, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, Shakespeare's Garden in Stratford, London's Victoria and Albert Museum Gardens, and many more. . .

In France: The Gardens of Versailles outside Paris, the Garden of Claude Monet at Giverney, Chateau de Vauville in Cherbourg, and many more. . .

The rest of the world: Boboli Gardens in Florence, Italy, Potsdam Gardens near Berlin, Germany, the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, Japan, and hundreds more.

In addition to photos and a textual description, each entry cites special features such as fountains and architecture, the garden's size in acres, and the names of the garden's designers. The garden descriptions are organized geographically by country. More than 800 breathtaking color photos and illustrations.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This gorgeous volume is like porn for horticulturists. Gardens from all around the world in every possible climate, style and size fill this book to bursting. Here are public spaces everyone knows—like Central Park in New York City, Niagara Parks Botanical Gardens in Canada and Les Jardins des Tuileries in Paris—as well as gardens only the most well-traveled ever get to see; such as Bagh-e Eram in Iran or Jargu Jui Sculpture Park in Romania. Many privately owned, rarely viewed gardens are featured as well, such as Brook Cottage Garden in Oxfordshire, England; Vico Morcote in Ticino, Switzerland; and Rustenberg Farm Gardens in Western Cape, South Africa. Whether one prefers modern sculpture gardens, formal flower gardens or Japanese Zen landscapes, Spencer-Jones's impressive team of 70 photographers, writers and horticulturists have captured them all in concise detail. While some readers might have preferred more and bigger photos (sadly, some entries don't come with pictures at all), most garden lovers will appreciate the comprehensive history, design and climate information that accompanies each entry. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

This beautifully designed if hefty resource serves as the ultimate garden-based vacation-planning guide for lovers of paradise landscapes and flourishing green spaces. Editor Spencer-Jones, along with dozens of contributors, describes 1,001 world gardens in brief essays providing insights into the gardens' engaging history, enchanting stylistic elements, and seasonal spectacles, as well as profiling garden makers and designers from Indian rajahs and Moroccan sultans to Edith Wharton and Claude Monet. Organized by region, the survey brims with vivid anecdotes, useful information, and alluring images. The worldwide panoply of gardens encompasses every style and type of habitat from wet tropical to temperate to arid in naturalistic settings, formal estates, private havens, and botanical wonderlands, as well as examples of such innovations as France's fantastical Les Jardins de L'Imaginaire. Surely the best compendium to date for both the botanically inclined armchair traveler who likes to dream and the intrepid sojourner preparing for a tour. Alice Joyce
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 960 pages
• Publisher: Barron's Educational Series; First Edition edition (February 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764160052
• ISBN-13: 978-0764160059
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.7 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #277,922 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Long on Variety, Short on Details and Images July 4, 2007

By Donald Mitchell HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Before evaluating this book, I must say I'm stunned by the amount of work that must have gone on to identify 1001 excellent gardens around the world and to describe and illustrate them. Thank you, Rae Spencer-Jones, and your 70 contributors for this incredible effort.

If you are like me, you'll be overwhelmed by the sheer number of gardens. As I looked in every area of the world I've ever visited, I saw or read about gardens that I wished I had known about on prior trips. As an example, the book describes a garden within 10 miles of my home that I've never visited because people have told me that it was nothing special. Since the book has both a fine description and an excellent photograph, I can see that I've been misinformed. I would undoubtedly love this garden and plan to visit it over the weekend.

If you love gardens, you would be foolish not to buy and treasure this book as a resource if you ever travel. Why? You can start with the list of gardens in the areas where you are going and do more research from there to see which ones will be most satisfying to you. I don't know of another alternative place to start for those who want to take garden tours on their own while traveling.

That said, any book that attempts to describe 1001 gardens is going to have a big drawback . . . not much detail about any one garden. In fact, although there are hundreds of images in the book, most gardens don't have any images.

That weakness is compounded by the book being produced in a small page size that resembles Petit Larousse.

Did they miss any good gardens? I don't know, but every garden I've ever visited and enjoyed was in the book. I was surprised, however, to see that the images for those gardens often understated the primary appeal of the gardens. But tastes do differ from person to person.

In examining the photographs, I got the sense that the architecture, natural backdrop, and sculptures had a big influence on what gardens were selected. If that's true (and I wouldn't know unless I visited a few hundred more gardens than I've been to), perhaps this is more a book about outdoor splendor than about plants. That's an impression anyway that the images present. If you are a huge flower lover, please realize that not all of these gardens feature flowers as their main appeal.

The gardens are grouped geographically, beginning in North America and moving east. Not surprisingly, the list is heavy with English and Scottish gardens. If you plan to go the United Kingdom, I suspect this book is even more of a treasure than if you plan to visit the United States. Nevertheless, I'm struck by how many countries are either not represented or barely represented. Clearly, people must garden almost everywhere. I'm not sure what the explanation is.

I was left, however, dissatisfied with the book. I suspect that it would have worked better with some greater attempt to give comparable descriptions of the gardens so that those who have a particular taste in gardens could have sorted out just those of most interest. I also wonder if a project like this one shouldn't be done in electronic form instead of physical form so that size of the overall volume isn't so cost constrained.

I plan to keep a copy, but I'll hope that another edition comes out that does more with the concept.

But in the meantime, I will thank God that this work is available to me. I humbly thank all the contributors for their hard work.

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars If we had all the time in the world... April 23, 2007

By W. Oliver TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I am puzzled by the previous one-star negative review - did the reviewer understand the intent of this book? It is a directory of beautiful gardens throughout the world, not necessarily meant to "inspire" although I am sure that would happen if you actually visited the gardens. As for the photos, I thought they were wonderful. Sure, some are smaller, but they are still outstanding and correctly illustrate the type of garden that it is. And there are plenty of full page photos, usually every 5 pages or so features one. True, not all gardens have photos but the majority of them do.

Each garden profile features a three or four paragraph narrative description accompanied by an info box that identifies the garden designer, owner, garden style, size, climate and location. The gardens featured in this book are arranged geographically from west to east and north to south beginning with North America and ending with Austrailia and New Zealand.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Go figure .... January 7, 2010

By GardenMaster

Format:Hardcover

I'm quite surprised that no earlier reviews mention the fact that this is a very unfortunately organized book! Unlike the "Garden Lovers Guide to ...." series, no introductory annotated maps! There is a Garden Names Index which is useful only if you already know the name of the garden you'd like to learn about! (In which case you probably wouldn't need this book!) You can start looking at European gardens, for instance, (as noted in the Contents) on page 136. As you begin to flip through the section, you'll find a few gardens in Russia, followed by one in Norway, one in Finland and then some in Sweden. If you want to find gardens in France or Germany, keep flipping, keep flipping, keep flipping.... through 220 pages on England .... Altogether more than 600 pages, unindexed, of European gardens.

With locator maps and a region-by-region index, this book might have been useful. To be truly useful, it would have included contact information for the garden visitor.

Unfortunately, it has none of the above. The book's editors must have all been asleep when this one came across the desk!