Books > Books on Garden History

Tim Mowl's current garden history project is writing the landscape and garden history of every county in Britain. It's a major and continuing task, but the first ten are already complete and Warwickshire, Herefordshire and Berkshire are currently in progress.

His approach is a combination of green wellies and dusty archives. Walking the sites and then searching for the documentation helps to make sense of the design and planting of the gardens. Tim has discovered the most surprising and unlikely features - ruined Gothick summerhouses, Turkish tents, a Druid's Stone Circle, crystal-encrusted grottoes, the wrecks of formal parterre gardens, a Millennium alfresco Dining Pavilion by I M Pei, the architect of the Louvre Pyramid. No walker, holidaymaker, historian or garden enthusiast should be without these beautifully illustrated books.

Read more about each book below.

Opposite: Harold Peto's Italianate garden at Iford Manor, Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire

Historic Gardens of Herefordshire (expected September 2011)
  Historic Gardens of Warwickshire (expected April 2011)
  Historic Gardens of Somerset
Historic Gardens of Staffordshire
Historic Gardens of Cheshire
Historic Gardens of Northamptonshire
Historic Gardens of Oxfordshire
  Historic Gardens of Worcestershire
  Historic Gardens of Cornwall
Historic Gardens of Wiltshire
Historic Gardens of Dorset
  Historic Gardens of Gloucestershire
  Gentlemen and Players

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