The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll

Book excerpt: "Should there be any doubt that Gertrude Jekyll was among the greatest practitioners of the art of gardening (there isn't, of course), a survey of this book will quickly confirm her almost totemic status in twentieth-century ornamental horticulture."--Wayne Winterrowd, Horticulture, The Magazine of American Gardening "[This book] is scholarly, well-written, and based on original research. The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll is the most innovative study of the patron saint of modern gardeners since Jane Brown's pioneering Gardens of a Golden Afternoon appeared ten years ago. . . . [Bisgrove's] is the most detailed and comprehensive analysis ever made of Gertrude Jekyll's gardening."--Charles Quest-Ritson, Gardens Illustrated "The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll serves as a living complement to her gardening ideas, indicating the scope and variety her gardening vision could assume. Richard Bisgrove has mined extensive archives for Jekyll's most effective planning schemes, and illustrates them with photographs of her existing gardens. He helpfully divides chapters by types of gardenincluding formal gardens, rose gardens, wild gardens, steps and walks, and sun and shade."--Ann Geneva, Literary Review "Gertrude Jekyll is famous the world over as the mother of the lush English garden. . . . The stage is set for an updated revival of the Jekyll cult. Her philosophical commitment to native plants and gardens that incorporate existing heathland and woods makes her environmentally up to date."--Diana Ketcham, New York Times "The most comprehensive study I have seen of the garden-making ideas of this astonishingly prolific lady . . . This is a book that can be read cover to cover -- but one to which people will refer time and again over the years."--Arthur Hellyer, Financial Times "Richard Bisgrove must now be firmly established as one of our most authoritative, painstaking yet easy-to-read garden historians . . . The writing is a happy combination of scholarship and art . . . readers must be equally delighted with Andrew Lawson's magnificent photographs."--Graham Stuart Thomas, The Garden