Historic Virginia Gardens: Preservations by the Garden Club of Virginia [signed]

Virginia has long been famous for its lush and elegant landscapes. The beauty of sites like Monticello, Stratford, and Gunston Hall has aroused interest in garden restoration over the past decades. HISTORIC VIRGINIA GARDENS is a valuable source of information both for those who wish to supplement their garden tours with background information and for those interested in carrying out projects of their own. To the preparation of this book, The Garden Club of Virginia, one of the nation's earliest and most well-established clubs, has brought a half century of experience in restoring some of the most beautiful gardens in America. It has opened its private files of documents, plans, and illustrations to regard a comprehensive story that ranges from the gardens of the 17th-century Adam Thoroughgood and the Rolfe-Warren houses to those of Woodrow Wilson and Kent-Valentine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. HISTORIC VIRGINIA GARDENS presents individual monographs detailing historical backgrounds for each of the 23 restorations. This feature is of particular interest because The Garden Club has limited its projects to sites of intrinsic historical value and has based the designs for landscaping upon the historical and archaeological research of each area. Accompanying the historical monographs are lists of plans which at the time of restoration were deemed compatible with the particular period and specific location of the original gardens. These may be examined and matched with the book's 99 plans of gardens and of garden embellishments. Well over 100 illustrations, many in color, generously fill out the statistics and add a vital visual dimension to the descriptions. The gardens described in this book transmit an awareness of history, tradition, and antecedents. Though the story is one contained within the Commonwealth of Virginia, its historic significance extends beyond, providing a review of the entire development of the nation's landscape techniques.