American Garden Literature in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection (1785–1900) offers insights into the holdings of the Garden Library at Dumbarton Oaks as well as the revolution of American garden culture and landscape architecture in the course of the nineteenth century.

Only in the last decade has much serious attention been paid to the Byzantine garden, so indirect is the mass of information, both in literature and the visual arts, that is available for scholars. Byzantine Garden Culture, based on papers delivered at a colloquium at Dumbarton Oaks, is the first book devoted to the subject.

Individual essays discuss Byzantine conceptions of paradise, the textual evidence for monastic horticulture, animal and game parks, herbs in medicinal pharmacy, and the famous illustrated copy of Dioskorides’s herbal manual in Vienna. An opening chapter explores questions and observations from the point of view of a non-Byzantine garden historian, and the closing chapter suggests possible directions for future scholarship in the field.

John Evelyn (1620–1706), an English virtuoso and writer, was a pivotal figure in seventeenth-century intellectual life in England. He left an immensely rich literary heritage, which is of great significance for scholars interested in garden history and the histories of intellectual life and architecture.

Evelyn is perhaps best known for Sylva, a compilation of thoughts on practical estate management, gardening, and philosophy, and the first book published by the Royal Society in London. As one of the group of learned men who founded the Royal Society in 1660 to promote scientific research, discussion, and publications, John Evelyn was at the center of many of the vital intellectual currents of the time. “Elysium Britannicum,” Evelyn’s unpublished manuscript of almost a thousand pages of densely packed drafts, rewrites, and projects, was perhaps something of an enigma to his contemporaries, who nevertheless urged its publication. It remains for scholars today a treasure-trove of fascinating insights on Evelyn and his milieu.

The contributors to this volume approach Evelyn and his work from diverse disciplines, including architectural and intellectual history and the histories of science, agriculture, gardens, and literature. They present a rich picture of the “Elysium Britannicum” as one of the central documents of late European humanism.

This volume explores the broad range of ideas about nature reflected in twentieth-century concepts of natural gardens and their ideological implications. A possible definition—nature is ideology—suggests that nature can be seen as a systematic scheme of ideas held by particular social, political, and cultural groups, and that our definition of nature is a human intellectual construct. Historical and contemporary concepts of natural garden design provide evidence of these different concepts of nature. The desire to produce a natural garden design has fascinated many professional and amateur garden designers, and the essays in this volume investigate their use of earlier ideas of natural gardens and their relationship to the rich model that nature offers. The work of early twentieth-century natural garden advocates helped shape much of twentieth-century landscape architecture in both the United States and Europe, and the ideologies underlying the concepts of natural gardens show how political, economic, and social developments influenced design programs and decisions.

“Everyone is occupied, consciously or unconsciously, with identity—one’s origin and the question of one’s place in humankind and society of the past, present, and future. Identity and memory are not stable and objective things, but representations or constructions of reality related to a particular interest, such as class, gender, of power relations. Identity is problematic without history and without the commemoration of history, and of course such remembrance may distort historical events and facts. When dealing with gardens, a substantial part of our physical environment, there are always unspoken questions of identity.”

Places of Commemoration examines commemorative sites of different character, including gardens, landscapes, memorials, cemeteries, and sites of former Nazi concentration camps, detailing the ideas behind the creation of memorials and monuments and the struggles over the narratives they present.

For centuries, travel was an important part of a gardener's initial and continuing professional training. Educational journeys to parks and gardens at home and abroad were consistently recorded in lengthy reports and articles for professional journals. The travel report by Hans Jancke (1850-1920), a court gardener who served the Prussian kings in Potsdam, Germany, is typical of this genre. Jancke's manuscript, which until now remained unpublished, describes his 1874-1875 apprenticeship at Knowsley, the seat of the Earl of Derby near Liverpool, England. Containing extensive plant lists and detailed descriptions of the horticultural regimens observed in the estate's kitchen gardens and greenhouses, the text is augmented by several measured drawings executed by Jancke. These illustrations include the hothouses used for fruit forcing, vegetable production, and exotic ornamentals, as well as a site plan based on Jancke's own survey data. Professionally focused travel journals of gardeners and garden artists were for a long time ignored as sources to be taken seriously in historical research. But Jancke's eyewitness account, especially as it documents an intense scientific curiosity, demonstrates the potential of these texts for illuminating the more technical and practical aspects of the history of the garden arts.

The study of vernacular gardening is a new departure for scholarly investigations of gardening practices and forms. While much has been written on the traditions of elite gardens—Villa d’Este, Versailles, Stowe, and others—little attention has been directed to the gardens of more humble and popular cultures reflecting regional, localized, ethnic, personal, or folk creations. The articles in this volume parallel developments in other areas of cultural studies and reflect a growing interest in a wider range of cultural artifacts that demonstrate how culture can profoundly influence our surroundings. These essays consider vernacular gardens, gardening, and gardening communities, including the journalism of popular homemaking, African-American communities, a “cooperative” of French market gardeners, the closed world of British Royal Naval housing, and a French mining community.