Italian Gardens Romantic Splendor in the Edwardian Age

To many of us, the great gardens of Italy seem like paradise on earth. But how much do we know of their history, and the people who created them? In this ravishing book, illustrated with contemporary paintings, drawings and prints as well as photographs of the gardens today, Helena Attlee tells their story. She starts with Petrarch - still looking to medieval chronicles for advice on how and when to plant - and goes on to the Renaissance and those first gardens to emerge from architects' plans. Then she describes the great gardens of the Medici; the first botanic gardens; the weird Mannerist gardens and their grottoes followed by the Baroque splendour of Isola Bella and the Villa Aldobrandini; the Neoclassical and Picturesque gardens of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and how, in the twentieth century, expatriates with money to lavish on their villas and gardens brought new delights.

Helena Attlee is a journalist who has written about gardens and garden history for over twenty years. Her work has appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines, and she regularly leads garden tours throughout Western Europe. She is also the author of The Gardens of Portugal and The Most Beautiful Country Towns of Provence.

Charles Latham, staff photographer for England's Country Life magazine, was widely acknowledged as one of the twentieth century's preeminent architectural and landscape photographers.