The history of European landscape design has its beginnings in the early cultures of the Mediterranean. Again and again, especially during the Renaissance, ancient parks and gardens have been imitated as archetypes. The park is still a site of design activity today: human beings use living material to create an artificial landscape, a paradise.
This book not only recounts the history of the garden-it conjures it up before the reader's eyes, from the Garden of Eden and the Hanging Gardens of Nebuchadnezzar to the first book on botany and the gardens of the Renaissance, from the invention of the lawnmower to the land art movement in the United States, Hangende Garten II (Hanging Gardens II) at the Hanover Expo by the Dutch architectural firm MVRDV, and the Gazebo-Berg (Gazebo Mountain) of the Swiss artist couple Studer/van den Berg at the 2005 world's fair in Japan. Every single station of this journey through gardens and time is illustrated by an entire double page, with pointedly written texts and an abundance of historical and contemporary images.