Influential Gardeners: The Designers Who Shaped 20th-Century Garden Style

by Andrew Wilson

Influential Gardeners reveals the history and development of garden and landscape design in the 20th century by focusing on 56 key personalities who have shaped—and continue to form—today’s taste. In the 20th century, garden and landscape designers in Europe and the United States began to apply the same design principles to smaller private garden or to public spaces as had previously been applied to country estates.

From early stars such as Gertrude Jekyll, Thomas Church, and Geoffrey Jellicoe to pivotal contemporary designers such as Kathryn Gustafson, Peter Walker, and Jacques Wirtz, the garden designers celebrated here put this into perspective.

A knowledge of nature and plants, as well as an aesthetic eye for color, scale, and proportion are all needed by any influential gardener. However, the designers whose work is featured in depth are organized by their prime focus—color and decoration (including Vita Sackville-West and Penelope Hobhouse), plants (including Beth Chatto and Piet Udolph), concept (including Isamu Noguchi and Martha Schwartz), form (including Frank Lloyd Wright and Ted Smyth), structure (including Russell Page and Dan Kiley), texture (including Roberto Burle Marx and Vladimir Sitta), or materials (including Gilles Clément and Topher Delaney). Andrew Wilson’s authoritative text is full of anecdotes and quotes that provide unique insight into each designer’s work, while photographs and plans showcase their masterworks.

With more than 180 glorious photographs of both historic and contemporary schemes, Influential Gardeners is an essential reference book for anyone—whether a practicing garden designer or an enthusiast—who wishes to know more about the “greats” of 20th-century garden and design.

Genres: Gardening

192 pages, Hardcover

First published October 17, 2002

Reviews

[Lloyd Downey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always a sucker for beautiful photographs of gardens and landscapes, I found this book in Geneva and was captivated by it. Admittedly it is in French, and French was never my strong point....although I studied at the feet of the inimitable Wally Parr for two years at junior high. And later attended the Alliance Francais for a number of years......so I can get the gist of the written word. But, to my chagrin, as i started to read the book, it began to dawn on me, that there were an unreasonable number of English landscape gardeners featured and when I consulted the publisher's notes, i realised that it had originally been published in English. (So much for buying in Geneva). But that takes nothing away from the beautiful photographs and the lovely gardens. Still a pleasure to peruse. And I can't claim that I've read every word. But I did enjoy it. One thing rather struck me and that was the age of most of the landscape gardeners featured. The younger ones seemed to be born in about 1946...which would have placed them at about 56 years of age when the book was first published. I guess, this is when a landscape garden hits the peak of their reputation. Their earlier gardens are old enough to have softened and he tress to have grown etc. I must confess, that I'm more attracted to the wild type gardens that to the formal ...or to those composed of stone and sand.But there is plenty of both there in the book. Plus a lot of garden sculpture being featured. I enjoyed it..even if struggling with the French. Five stars from me.

[Alicia]

You gotta know all the whos whos.