American Eden

February 21, 2011
From Jefferson's founding garden, Monticello, to Martha Stewart's Turkey Hill, American gardens have been revealing self-portraits that reflect their owners aspirations and anxieties, cultural legacies and passing fashions. In his far-ranging survey, designer and historian Graham unveils the aesthetic, political, psychological, and ethical dimensions of the American garden. This is a world in which hedges, lawns, parks, and cemeteries are revealing displays of national identity, class distinction, and political correctness. Our gardens are a pastiche of classical pastoral ideals, the 19th-century European grand tour, and the distinctly American tension between our democratic ideals and aristocratic pretensions. Graham is able to gently mock the fashions of history while astutely observing that we are still as vulnerable to gardening fads today. After more than 250 years, the American gardening tradition has bequeathed to us treasured public parks, suburban sprawl, Kentucky bluegrass lawns in the desert, and kitchen gardens at the White House. Graham's history is a fascinating and illuminating tour of this American landscape. Includes extensive notes and bibliography. More than 70 color and b&w illus.

Starred review from December 15, 2010
Garden designer and historian Graham takes a panoramic perspective in his bold interpretation of the form, function, and meaning of American gardens. Thomas Jefferson is the first, and most complex, of the many pioneering gardeners Graham incisively profiles, and Grahams frank dissection of the profound paradoxes implicit in Jeffersons landscape vision for Monticello in a time of slavery and genocide against Native Americans sets the groundwork for his central insight, the fact that wilderness was a catalyst for the American imagination even as we rapidly destroyed it. Other intriguing garden designers include the nineteenth-century advocates for middle-class gardens as emblems of virtue A. J. Downing and Charles Platt, and their heir, the ever-ambitious Martha Stewart, as well as Beatrix Jones Farrand, Jens Jensen, and Lawrence Halprin. As Graham unwinds the DNA of American garden design from grandiose to utilitarian, he matches garden aesthetics with the social mores of each era to surprising effect. His discussion of the pastoral dream underlying suburban sprawl is of particular resonance, and his comparisons between Eastern and Western gardens are fascinating. This blazingly fresh, critical, and ecologically astute masterwork brilliantly traces the great cycles of American life through a spectrum of gardens that embody our devotion to the art of cultivation for beauty and status, sanctuary and sustenance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2011

Scrupulous history of American gardens and the imaginative creators who made them possible.

Los Angeles–based garden designer and environmental writer Graham shares a wealth of knowledge on the genesis and development of America's most striking landscapes. Each a "miniature Utopia," these leafy environs are a reflection of their respective architects. The author ardently describes the first garden creations of the 1600s, then moves on to the Arts & Crafts romantic naturalism movement in the mid-19th century and Martha Stewart's unique brand of house-and-garden style, which is interwoven with business savvy and "controlled enthusiasm." Graham's visit to the panoramic "founding garden" of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, derived from British poet Alexander Pope's "cutting-edge" landscaping approach, provides an intimate history of the third president's life and boundless passion as a dedicated architecture and flora aficionado. The planned landscaping influence of "aesthetic giant" Andrew Jackson Downing paved the way for the blossoming genius of Frederick Law Olmsted, who, in collaboration with architect Calvert Vaux, brought "country to the city" in the redesign of New York's Prospect Park and Central Park and Boston's Emerald Necklace, among others. Graham points to the greening of New York's Chelsea and West Village neighborhoods, the installation of Manhattan's unique aerial greenway, High Line Park, and Michelle Obama's White House kitchen garden as examples of a modern "return to agriculture" movement. Accented by paintings, photographs and drawings, the author's appealing commentary introduces a distinctive line of gardeners and foliage engineers whose work has become timeless.

A bright, comprehensive horticultural celebration written with a fine eye for detail.

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