The Modern Garden

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Summary: A Textbook Study of 20th Century Modern Landscape Design
Review: This book was a Christmas gift from my wish list. I did not have a chance to look through it before requesting it, but had seen an enthusiastic blurb in one of my favorite shelter magazines. I was a little surprised to find it contained little "cutting edge" contemporary landscape design. Instead, it is more of a history of "modern" designs in the Twentieth Century. I was hoping for examples of gardens such as those pictured on the cover and featured on this website, but this was not really the case. Many of the photos are in black and white, from past decades and the most intriguing color shots are already on the jacket. There is a great deal of history and detail provided in the text. I think the book is a "must have" for landscape architects, but for a homeowner looking for inspiration for a mid-century house, it wasn't what I'd hoped for. Nevertheless, it has given me a new understanding of the principles which have changed landscape design.

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Summary: Leave the words; take the pictures.
Review: This is yet another in a series of picture books of pretty gardens. Ms. Brown, no stranger to publishing or to garden history, has assembled, with the help of the beautiful photographs of Sofia Brignone and Alan Ward, a lovely coffee table book, the compact size of which makes it perfect for the small apartment dweller. The text, although lightly footnoted, breaks no new ground. The choice of garden designers is less curious and is the choice of their gardens -- particularly in the case or Pietro Porcinai as the garden at the Villa il Roseto in Florence is far from his most striking works, the well-framed photographs in the book notwithstanding. It is, in fact, one of his more simplistic designs and not the most modern of his works. Perhaps Porcinai's most provocative landscape (as landscapes are also included in the book) is his work on the autostrada near Belluno.

As for the "Gropius Garden," there seems little evidence, even from the lovely photographs, that there is much of a garden to speak of. A stone wall, a tree, and a few stones for a path hardly make a "master work." Moreover, if there was a significant landscape program at the Gropius house in Lincoln, Massachusetts, it is unlikely that Gropius had much to do with it -- his wife Ise would have been far more the guiding hand. It seems that within such a limited book, there are other "master works" far more deserving of note than the remnants of a stone wall and a tree from the "Ise Gropius Garden."

This is NOT a text book ? at least not for a university level course v?but it would be a lovely addition to one?s living room.