Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Washington Post review: Four gardening books worth giving, December 21, 2009
This review is from: A Clearing in the Woods: Creating Contemporary Gardens (Hardcover)
Four gardening books worth giving
By ADRIAN HIGGINS
The Washington Post
Updated: 12/12/2009 01:45:53 AM PST
The act of gardening is one of life's sweeter journeys; gardening books are journeys, too, sojourns in which the author leads and we follow.
In this electronic age, I can think of no more generous gift than a book, a handheld device that signals its reader's desire to be left alone in a quiet place.
I have found four recently published garden books, diverse in tone and character, to be especially appealing, and any one of them would make a welcome gift this holiday season for the gardener in your life.
· "A Clearing in the Woods: Creating Contemporary Gardens," by Roger Foley (Monacelli Press, $50).
Foley is a Virginia-based landscape photographer whose work has appeared over the years in books, magazines and newspapers. He has spent many hours in some impressive gardens, and this book is a handsome distillation of 26 of them.
It's telling that some of the best-looking gardens have the fewest flowers; they're given form through a strong framework of walls, paths, steps, trees and other structural bones. I have seen Foley at work: He is a quiet presence in the garden, usually early in the morning or in late afternoon, looking for the photographer's most important and elusive ingredient, the right light. But he doesn't just observe; he perceives, and the resulting images capture the singular spirit of his subjects.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A View Over the Garden Wall, June 29, 2010
This review is from: A Clearing in the Woods: Creating Contemporary Gardens (Hardcover)
Roger Foley is both author and photographer of A Clearing in the Woods. An award-winning photographer, the pictures in this book reflect his usual high standard. An added delight is to discover that Foley also is a fine writer. He introduces each garden with a succinct description that gives the reader a clear idea of the garden and the process that went into creating it. Then follows a photographic "essay" of each garden, drawing in the reader so you feel you are there.
With the exception of Longhouse Reserve, a sculpture garden in East Hampton, New York that is open to the public, all twenty-six of Foley's featured properties are private. Hence, this book gives readers a rare opportunity to "see beyond the garden wall" into the cutting edge creations of some of the country's top landscape designers, including Raymond Jungles, Edwina von Gal, Charles Stick, and Oehme, van Sweden & Associates.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chicago Tribune review by Barbara Maheny, February 13, 2010
This review is from: A Clearing in the Woods: Creating Contemporary Gardens (Hardcover)
Come to the Garden, and be Transfixed
What it is: Landscape photographer Roger Foley, who for more than 30 years has collaborated with cutting-edge landscape designers and architects, lays out his lifework in "A Clearing in the Woods," a journey through 26 gardens that range from the raw naturalism of a seaside hillscape to a sculpture garden where a Buckminster Fuller dome rises beside a lily pond. Foley has a gift for making his photos draw you wholly into the garden, and here we are drawn into some unforgettable nooks and vistas.
What makes it armchair-worthy: As you turn from page to page, you forget you are wrapped in the arms of a chair, and instead feel yourself peeking around the bend of a sinuous garden path. You tingle at the chill of a morning's mist rolling across a meadow. Your breath is taken away by the glint of sun on the grasses' edge. It is as if you are entering each and every one of the gardens. You might be inspired to replant a corner of your own back forty, or you might simply imagine you've taken a trip to some of the loveliest gardens you've seen in a long, long while.
One fine line: "Garden photography is not for anyone in a hurry. ... It's only when the objective looking turns into the subjective seeing that a beautiful garden photograph can be made. The seeing of a picture signals an understanding of the spirit of a place, where light and form are distilled through the camera in such a way as to persuade viewers into believing that in a two-dimensional mapping of bits of color on a page, they can feel what it's like to inhabit that space."
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
