Customer Reviews

1001 Gardens You Must See Before You Die

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

For garden-lovers a 1,000 page book crammed chockfull with gardens the world over is an enticing prospect - though the suggestion you must all see them before you die is a bit fanciful, and symptomatic of the depersonalized, random consumerism of today's "must-see", "must-have" and "must-do" lists. Unfortunately, the book itself is not quite what it could have been. Quantity decidedly triumphed over quality. Photographs are mostly small, often quite crude and grainy, and as often unnaturally, even luridly colored. Many hardly give an impression of a garden at all, but instead focus on detail or architecture. Descriptive entries are brief and superficial. Entries are arranged geographically, from north to south and from west to east, with remarkably confusing results. The accent is very strongly on Europe, the whole of China being despatched in less pages than the Netherlands. If you are looking for a gazetteer to guide you to interesting gardens while planning a travel itinerary, this book might just give you a useful handle. If you are looking for pleasing garden images or indepth information, look elsewhere.

Nice compilation of photos and word summaries of prominent and fairly unknown gardens from across the world. Might be a fun trek to try to see as many of these as you can, however, I doubt you'd get through all of them due to their locations all over the globe. Oh, to dream.... Not all garden summaries have a matching photo. I'd suggest that upon the next publication that the author tries to include photos for all of the gardens noted in the book.

This a great resource book. However DO NOT attempt to use this book as a travel guide...if you want to see the gardens in this book I urge you to do lots of advance planning before you leave home. I bought this book before a trip to Spain 1 1/2 years ago. I went to the tourist information centers in the cities I visited in order to find out where these gardens were. In many cases, these were private gardens not open to the public or the visiting hours were so limited that it was virtually impossible to visit them. One garden in Granada I was steered to correctly. However, when I got there, I discovered it was closed the entire month of August! (I did peer in through the gates). I wish the tourist information had told me that before I ventured out there.

On a recent trip to Rio de Janeiro, I had a similar experience with one of the gardens listed. I did find someone who was familiar with it, but it wasn't open to the casual visitor.

In conclusion, many of the gardens in this book are not open to the casual visitor, so use it with caution. If you do have your heart set on seeing some of these gardens, plan in advance before leaving home.

This was a great Mother's Day gift any gardener would love. Beautiful pictures of gardens around the world.

The gardens featured are arranged by continent, feature a few descriptive paragraphs, and many show a small picture.

Gardeners looking for inspiration... or for that matter garden afficionados just looking for beautiful pictures will probably be VERY disappointed with this inexplicably pint-sized book (8 1/2 by 6 1/2, but extremely thick).
The gardens themselves are generally massive-scale public gardens, and the majority of the pictures are 3" by 5"; giant garden/tiny picture is not a combination I'd have gone with. There are some full-page pictures, but even those seem undersized because of the book's small size and the scale of the gardens pictured. Many of the gardens are not pictured at all, so you're on your own to "must see" them, because airfare isn't included.
A little picture of a little piece of an enormous garden with a few accompanying paragraphs mostly concerned with a very brief garden history equals a brochure; this book is really 1001 brochures handsomely stuck together.

Might be kind of useful as a vague "travel-suggestion type guide," but unfortunately most descriptions don't advise when is the best time to visit the garden beyond telling us that the tulips and rhododendrons bloom in spring, and you probably knew that already.
It earns the one star because sometimes it's nice to sit in an armchair and look at brochures of places you'd like to visit, and because there isn't an option to give zero stars.

This very thick book has beautiful pictures that inspires one to plant a garden & travel the world.

If you love visiting horticultural gardens, or just looking at pictures of gardens, this is a great book to have on hand. I checked it out from the library first and then ended up buying it because I wanted it around as a reference. It's an odd size for a coffee table book, more like a regular sized hardback except quite thick. That's my only "complaint" but otherwise it is a great reference for amazing gardens to visit with lots of gorgeous pictures. I was lucky to get a great deal on a used copy, but it's worth full price.

I read a few reviews of one of the books in this series(natural wonders) and it mentioned the disproportionate number of locations in the European region. So I decided to look at the Table of Contents of some of the other books as well. I can't believe that the few books that I did check, AT LEAST 2/3 of the books are dedicated to this small region! As the reviewer stated, the writer/publisher seems to be entirely too biased. I certainly hope they come out with a less biased version in the future. Otherwise seems like a great idea for a series.