Winner, American Society of Landscape Architects Honor AwardNamed one of
the 75 Best Garden Books by the American Horticultural SocietyFor sixty
years, Fletcher Steele practiced landscape architecture as a fine art,
designing nearly seven hundred gardens, from Boston to Detroit, from
North Carolina to Canada. Often brilliant, always original, Steele's
work is considered by many to constitute the essential link between
nineteenth-century Beaux-Arts formalism and modern landscape design. "A
book to give for Christmas, or as the grandest of house presents; it's a
book to keep as well. . . . [Karson] has written a wonderful read and,
in doing so, has revived an entire era in all its detail. Intelligent,
theatrical, infuriating, amusing--and loveable--Steele struts off the
page, giving life to his own work." --Garden Design "Karson has done a
magnificent job in integrating carefully chosen archival drawings and
pictures with contemporary photographs of many gardens. Planting plans
and plant lists are offered as additional information for many of the
gardens with a comprehensive list of clients. We are given
simultaneously a revealing account of one of America's greatest modern
garden designers as well as an inspiring reference of garden-making as a
fine art." --Public Garden "This is a book to be savored, to be read and
re-read for enjoyment and consulted repeatedly for inspiration. The text
is uncommonly readable, the descriptions of the gardens and their maker
consistently perceptive and insightful. . . . [An] exceptional
volume." --Pacific Horticulture "Makes available to students and
teachers of landscape design a wealth of material: plans, drawings,
photographs, and correspondence, as well as interviews with Steele's
family, his clients and their family members, office staff and
associates, and collaborators in architecture, gardening, art, and
sculpture. Moreover, the text places Steele's gardens in the context of
major threads of American socioeconomic history and of the development
of the young profession of landscape architecture." --Landscape Journal
