Secondhand Garden Bargain Book Box SP4249

Secondhand Garden Bargain Book Box SP4249

Eight large garden books, nearly all hardback with jackets: Marina Schinz’s Visions of Paradise, Rosemary Verey’s Secret Gardens, David Hicks’s Cotswold Gardens, Mary Keen’s Glory of the English Garden, French Garden Style, Secret Gardens in Venice, The English Formal Garden and Fashion Designers’ Gardens. A box for a gardener who reads in winter and plans.

1. Visions of Paradise: Themes and Variations on the Garden — Marina Schinz — Cottage gardens, rose gardens, kitchen gardens and grand formal ones across Europe and America, by the Swiss photographer. A 1980s classic of garden photography that set the look of garden books for a generation.
2. French Garden Style — Georges Lévêque & Marie-Françoise Valéry — Clipped box, gravel, orange trees in pots and long green vistas, from château parterres to Provençal terraces. Foreword by Penelope Hobhouse.
3. Fashion Designers’ Gardens — Francis Dorléans, with photographs by Claire de Virieu — The private gardens of Givenchy, Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent, Armani, Oscar de la Renta, Kenzo, Hardy Amies and a dozen more. People with a professional eye for colour and line, working in plants.
4. Secret Gardens in Venice — Cristiana Moldi-Ravenna & Tudy Sammartini, with photographs by Gianni Berengo Gardin — The walled gardens behind the palazzi that visitors never see, photographed by one of Italy’s great photographers. A side of Venice missing from the guidebooks.
5. The Glory of the English Garden — Mary Keen, with photographs by Clay Perry — Five centuries of English gardening, from knot gardens to Sissinghurst, by one of England’s best garden writers and designers. Keen has opinions and gives them.
6. Secret Gardens: Revealed by Their Owners — ed. Rosemary Verey — Private English gardens described by the people who made them, chosen by the creator of Barnsley House. The owners’ own accounts of what failed are the best part.
7. The English Formal Garden: Five Centuries of Design — Günter Mader & Laila Neubert-Mader — Two German architects on English formality: plans, axes, topiary and terraces, analysed like buildings. The most rigorous book in the box.
8. Cotswold Gardens — David Hicks, with photographs by Andrew Lawson — The interior designer’s choice of the best gardens in the Cotswolds, including his own. Hicks judged gardens as he judged rooms, by structure first.