Encyclopedia of Gardens: History and Design
Encyclopedia of Gardens: History and Design
Published by Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001
Edited by Candice A. Shoemaker.
This is a three volume set, hardbound, measuring 8.5" X 11" and running a total of 1545 pages. It has numerous black and white photographs of the gardens featured within the entries and a section of full-page color plates in each volume.
Entries are mostly for individual famous gardens, landscape architects and botanists, with additional entries for other individuals, for countries and for aspects of garden history and design (such as "Botanic Garden," "Amphitheater/Theater," "Herbs, Medicinal," "Grass," "Color," "Modernism," "Sculpture in the Garden"). All the entries are in a single alphabetic sequence.
Opening the first volume at random, I find myself in the middle of the entry for Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England. This entry is about four (large) pages long and has two half-page photographs of the fountains and pools of this majestic garden, with Blenheim Palace in the background. The entry consists of a rather detailed physical description of the park intermixed with a discussion of its development through history (what parts were added when by whom). It ends with a brief chronological synopsis of the park's development and then a bibliography of six items for further reading about the park.
The introduction acknowledges that the Encyclopedia is Eurocentric, giving the excuse that not much research has been done into gardens in other parts of the world. This may be true, or it may be that such literature is less accessible to the chosen advisers and contributors, and that a fair number of Asian, South American and African contributors could have been, but weren't, sought out. It seems to me that it is rather late in history for a new work on a topic of such global reach to be as Eurocentric as this. There is an entry on China, running eight pages in length, that contains sections on a number of Chinese gardens, but there is no reason that these gardens shouldn't have been given the full treatment with entries of their own in the Encyclopedia's regular alphabetic sequence. Gardens, as manifestations of a civilization's particular relationship with nature, can provide insight into a culture at the time of the garden's creation. This would make a more multicultural and comparative work especially useful.
That said, I have to acknowledge what a nice collection of information about the world of gardens this work represents, and that it would be useful for many purposes.
Just browsing through it can give you the feeling of visiting a relaxing, leafy garden.
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
referencebooks) wrote,
