Oxford Public Library

Rescuing Eden, preserving America's historic gardens, photographs by Curtice Taylor ; text by Caroline Seebohm

eng

illustrations

no index present

non fiction

Rescuing Eden

899226130

photographs by Curtice Taylor ; text by Caroline Seebohm

preserving America's historic gardens

From simple 18th- and early 19th-century gardens to the lavish estates of the Gilded Age, the gardens started by 1930s inmates at Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay to the centuries-old camellias at Middleton Place near Charleston, South Carolina -- Rescuing Eden celebrates the history of garden design in the United States, with 28 examples that have been saved by conservationists and private owners, and opened to the public. The United States has a rich tradition of landscape design, with gardens on a scale that rivaled the great gardens of Europe, but in the absence of specific institutions dedicated to their preservation, many of these "ephemeral collaborations between man and nature" were lost -- during the wars, economic depressions, and social upheavals that swept the country in the mid-20th-century, or to creeping development and urban sprawl. The surviving gardens presented here were selected for the drama of their original creation and rescue and for their historical and horticultural importance. Discover The Kampong in Miami, Florida, planted with hundreds of tropical rarities from Southeast Asia by plant explorer Dr. David Fairchild; Barnsley Gardens in Georgia, one of the few antebellum gardens surviving in the South, planted with 200 varieties of roses; the Lynchburg, Virginia garden created by Harlem Renaissance poet and civil rights activist Anne Spencer; the eccentric Ladew Topiary Gardens, with 15 garden rooms and a topiary foxhunt; the Belle Epoque grandeur of the Untermyer Garden in Yonkers, New York; and many others across the country, in Kentucky, Texas, Michigan, Maine, Rhode Island, and California. Each garden has been specially photographed by landscape and garden photographer Curtice Taylor, and introduced with text from design historian Caroline Seebohm

Middleton Place, Charleston, South Carolina -- Moffatt-Ladd House and Garden, Portsmouth, New Hampshire -- William Paca House and Garden, Annapolis, Maryland -- Barnsley Gardens, Adairsville, Georgia -- Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire -- Blithwold Gardens, Bristol, Rhode Island -- Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut -- Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville, Florida -- Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory, Detroit, Michigan -- The Fells, Newbury, New Hampshire -- Untermyer Park and Gardens, Yonkers, New York -- Filoli, Woodside, California -- Greenwood Gardens, Short Hills, New Jersey -- Historic Deepwood Estate and Gaiety Hollow, Salem, Oregon -- The Kampong, Miami, Florida -- The Gardens of Alcatraz, San Francisco, California -- Innisfree Garden, Millbrook, New York -- Anne Spencer Garden, Lynchburg, Virginia -- Ladew Topiary Gardens, Monkton, Maryland -- Yew Dell Botanical Gardens, Crestwood, Kentucky -- Lotusland, Santa Barbara, California -- Garland Farm, Bar Harbor, Maine -- Madoo Garden, Sagaponack, New York -- Peckerwood Garden, Hempstead, Texas -- Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden, Bishopville, South Carolina -- Hollister House Garden, Washington, Connecticut -- Montrose, Hillsborough, North Carolina -- Charles Richards Garden, Great Wass Island, Maine -- A life in the garden -- Gardens to visit