American Home Landscapes: A Design Guide to Creating Period Garden Styles

Horticultural historian Adams (Restoring American Gardens) and landscape designer Burchfield survey six periods of American garden design and provide readers with guidelines and resources for creating period gardens. The authors begin with a discussion of different historical approaches and describe the differences between site preservation, rehabilitation, restoration, and reconstruction. They outline strategies for doing historic landscape research and provide dozens of valuable resources, including online sources. For each of the six periods covered, ranging from 17th-century colonial style to contemporary eco-gardening, the authors give guidance on architectural styles and materials, landscape features, case studies, and, in what will undoubtedly be most appreciated by the amateur gardener, a list of plants in common cultivation at the time. The plant lists have been organized by geographic region and have been culled of any plants that have been identified as invasive in recent years. All of this practical, straightforward guidance is combined with hundreds of historic photographs, drawings, and site plans that together form a visual history of Americans' private gardens. 307 color and black-and-white illustrations throughout.(May)