What makes a garden authentic? For American gardeners, this question can be vexing. Because America is a comparatively young nation, it hasn't had much time to develop an indigenous garden style. Gardeners have therefore tended to turn to other national traditions for inspiration. The unhappy result of this piecemeal stylistic borrowing has been the creation of gardens that bear no relationship to local landscapes and history, and that have no connection with our daily lives. In this cogently reasoned and persuasively argued volume, Claire Sawyers shows us how this tendency can be reversed: how we can create gardens that are both deeply rooted in their surroundings and deeply satisfying to their creators and owners.