How to Read Gardens is the essential guide for garden lovers and visitors alike. Visiting gardens has never been more popular but not many of us understand what we are looking at when strolling through a beautiful garden - are we looking at an original landscaped site or a recreation? Is the planting matter authentic or made up of modern hybrids? Are the steps and terracing in the Italianate style or are they Arts and Crafts? The truth is that most gardens of any age are like a palimpsest: successive generations have changed and influenced the soft and hard fabric of the place over time. Inevitably many of the gardens we wander through today are an amalgam of changing fashions and circumstance. How to Read Gardens gives you all the knowledge you need to tease out the clues that will tell you the complete story of a garden's past. From the grandest estate to the smallest suburban plot, this book will enliven and inform every visit.

How to Read Gardens is the essential guide for garden lovers and visitors alike.

About the Author
Lorraine Harrison has a master's degree in Garden History from the University of London and has written several books on the subject. She is a successful gardener and gardening writer with a passion for exotic and heirloom vegetables and regularly contributes to Gardens Illustrated and Hortus. When not tending her own plot, she enjoys other people's gardens whether large or small, grand or humble.

Reviews
This handy pocket sized guidebook would be a useful companion for visitors to any garden, great or small, historic or modern, public or private. * Countryman *
This attractive and lavishly illustrated book is an ideal present for friends who claim not to know much about the history of gardens, but delight in visiting them * Cornwall Garden Trust Journal *



Book Information
ISBN 9781789940282
Author Lorraine Harrison
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Herbert Press Ltd
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Weight(grams) 394g