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Historical The Renaissance Garden in England by Roy Strong $22.50 / Thames & Hudson / 1998 A reprint of a 1979 edition published for an exhibition at England's Victoria and Albert Museum, The Renaissance Garden's point of departure is the sad fact that "the formal gardens of 16th- and 17th-century England are a totally lost art form." Fortunately, this book brings them to life again. In this book, author Roy Strong not only gives a detailed description of the formal gardens of Britain, but also chronicles their history. He surveys the different kinds of pleasure garden, the roles of the famous people involed in creating them, the politices of building such grand projects, and the philosophies and sensibilities that underlay the idea of building gardens in the first place, and even the parties held there. Strong also deals with the techinal problems of creating gardens. The reader thus gains an understanding of how these specialized bits of landscping actually functioned in addition to seeing how they looked. The result is an excellent catalog of the magnificent gardens that once dotted the landscape. But more than that, it opens a window into the daily activities of the people whose lives they enriched, often going into such fine detail as their obsessions and marital problems. The book is well-illustrated, though only in black and white. Color would have been nice, but the period engravings, drawings, and paintings stand up well in this setting, and actually enhance the atmosphere created by the text. In fact, after only a few pages, readers will easily imagine themselves walking in the gardens that existed centuries ago, rubbing shoulders with those who created them, and perhaps even stopping to smell the flowers. —C. Bruce Hunter

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