A study of gardens and their history combines scholarship, detailed description and photography. This book is divided into thirteen sections, beginning with ancient Egypt and proceeding via the European Middle Ages, Renaissance Italy, France, England, the Iberian peninsula, Germany and Eastern Europe to 20th-century America. Parallel chapters treat China, Japan and the Islamic world. In each case, a historical account is followed by descriptions of surviving examples which can be visited today, thus creating in addition a guide to gardens all over the world, many - such as those in Poland and Russia - little known in the West. As restoration, research and publication unearth the great gardens of the past from the neglect of centuries, it is becoming clear that they represent a major part of cultural history.