Biographical note:
RORY STUART is the author of Gardens of the World: the Great Traditions. He worked as a teacher of English literature in India and America and at Uppingham School, Westminster School, and The Cheltenham Ladies' College. He inherited a Cotswold cottage with a beautiful garden and began to look at plants and gardens critically, which eventually led to a course in Garden Design. He set up as a designer, and began writing articles for magazines including Hortus, The Garden, The English Garden and The Historic Gardens Review. He has led garden tours of France, India and Italy and his fascination with gardens has now taken him to Rome, where he is learning how to grow plants in the challenging conditions of the hills outside the city.
Main description:
Why have the peoples of the world made pleasure gardens, and why have they made them in such different styles? Here, author Rory Stuart explains how all pleasure gardens derive from one of the world's six great gardening traditions — Italian, Islamic, Chinese, Japanese, English flower garden, and the English park — making them the subject of this book. To create this mammoth resource, Stuart traveled around the world, from Buenos Aires to Vancouver, from Seattle to Cape Cod, from Ireland to India, to China, Japan, and Australia, touring and examining the differences in garden styles. Now he explains them here, abetted by beautiful full-color photos, approaching pleasure gardens as works of art and placing them in their historical and cultural context.
