Where the Wildness Pleases: The English Garden Celebrated

The ‘Garden of England’, ‘The High Weald’, these are phrases that describe a 70-year-old Area of Outstanding National Beauty in Southern England. Among these dramatic landscapes and ancient woodlands stand many castles, mansions and cottages, ringed with orchards, meadows, drifting flowers and horticultural exotica. Featured gardens range from grand landscapes to works of glorious eccentricity, Arts and Crafts green rooms to postage stamp-sized plots of ingenuity. Wilderness weaves into floral genius, while native and exotic species stand side-by-side all within the unique climate of the English garden. Including chapters on English Parks, Arts and Crafts Gardens and Woodland Gardens, Where the Wildness Pleases The English Garden Celebrated pays homage to English horticultural excellence and tells the gripping stories behind some of our most breath-taking landscapes. This book also features a handy Who’s Who of designers, gardeners, plant hunters and nurserymen, and a brief guide to English playing greens cricket, bowling, croquet and tennis. This is a welcome guide for anyone interested in visiting this astonishingly beautiful part of the country, or those thinking of buying a plot. AUTHOR: Sifting humour from humus worldwide, Caroline Holmes is a well-known name in horticulture. She has lectured across many oceans and on every continent except Antarctica, from the University of Cambridge to Paris, New York, Sydney, Wellington and Penang, delving into the myriad ways people and plants have historically shaped landscapes and what we can learn from them. She co-presented the garden design and history TV series Glorious Gardens for Anglia, Meridian and Channel TV. She has presented several BBC Radio Four series and written 11 books. Her last, Water Lilies and Bory Latour-Marliac, the genius behind Monet’s Water Lilies, received the Herb Society of America’s ‘Elizabeth Crisp Rea Award’. RHS Herbs for the Gourmet Gardener was a finalist in the Garden Media Guild 2014 Reference Book of the Year Award. Caroline won the Herb Society of America’s ‘Gertrude B. Foster Award for Excellence in Herbal Literature’. SELLING POINTS: A detailed guide to many of the most attractive gardens in Southern England’s unspoilt High Weald Sumptuously illustrated Contains a Who’s Who of the designers, gardeners, plant hunters and nurserymen responsible for these gardens 200 colour illustrations