Gardens of Philadelphia & the Delaware Valley

Gardens of Philadelphia & the Delaware Valley
ISBN-10
1566393132
ISBN-13
9781566393133
Category
Gardens
Pages
327
Language
English
Published
1995
Publisher
Temple University Press
Author
William M. Klein

Description

Once mostly rolling hills and valleys covered with hardwood forest in the seventeenth century, contemporary Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley now claim the largest concentration of many of the finest public and private gardens in the world. William M. Klein explores the broader attitudes and behaviors toward nature that have influenced this developmentt - of colonial farms and gardens created for survival to the art of suburban gardens to nature conservatories and public parks. Discover how in 300 years we have moved from fencing nature out to fencing nature in. Out of the past, examine the worm fence at Colonial Pennsylvania Plantations, overgrown by weeds as it would have been during Colonial times, zigzagging across the fields tenuously holding back the great forest that presses down. Into the present, consider the chain link fence at the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum that bounds a threatened wetland habitat from the intrusion of highways and reverberates to the sounds of traffic from I-95 and the Philadelphia International Airport. Klein's eloquent and knowledgeable narrative include detailed portraits of forty-four individual gardens, all lustrously illustrated by noted garden photographer Derek Fell. While considering a particular garden's historical and social influences, Klein discusses the philosophy behind each garden, its planner's goals and even personality, and the garden's interaction with surrounding architecture. This complete guide also includes each location's address, phone number, hours of operation, events, and featured plants, flowers, and trees. Yet this book goes far beyond the usual guides in this search for answers to the perennial questions of how and why each generation struggles to define its place in nature. As we approach the twenty-first century, the garden has become the metaphor for how we must begin to view all nature today - tended space where we collect, name, nurture, and share our love of plants. Author note: Formerly Director of the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. William M. Klein, Jr. is Executive Director of the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Lawai, Hawaii. In 1993 he was presented with the American Horticultural Society's Professional Award, and has been a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 1989. He has published many important writings on nature, botany, and landscape, including his previous book, The Vascular Flora of Pennsylvania: Annotated Checklist and Atlas. Derek Fell is a widely published garden photographer and the author of more than 50 garden books and garden calendars.

Similar books

  • Lawrence Johnston: The Creator of Hidcote
    By Graham S. Pearson

    Lawrence Johnston: The Creator of Hidcote

  • Small Gardens for City and Country: A Guide to Designing and Planting Your Green Spaces
    By Alice Recknagel Ireys

    AN ENTRANCE GARDEN -Boxleaf Holly Birch Birch Front Door French 10 Service Door Dwarf Hedge Holly Fleostone Courts are Laurel Leucothoe Weeping Birch Dogwood Dogwood Driveway Fig . 6-28 . An entrance area twenty by eighteen feet within ...

  • Our Silly Garden
    By Karen Berman Nagel

    A toaster, some socks, pillows, and rocks grow to be toast, a soccer ball, sheep, and a rocking chair in this silly garden! Fun, rhyming text and wonderfully imaginative illustrations make this book a winner for beginning readers!

  • The Practical Rock & Water Garden: A Step-by-step Guide from Planning and Construction to Plants and Planting
    By Peter Robinson

    Previously published as Rock & Water Gardening. A step by step guide from planning and construction to plants and planting.

  • Garden: Garden Designs to Enhance Your Life
    By Karen Ellis, Tony Murrell

    Using twelve of Tony Murrell s beautiful gardens, ranging from a tiny inner-city oasis of style to a French Provincial garden, this book will appeal to a broad range of modern gardeners who want to enhance their lives with a wonderful ...

  • Making a Garden
    By Matthew Wilson

    Divided into three parts, the book starts by exploring the practical requirements and the environmental considerations behind a successful garden.

  • The Faber Book of Gardens
    By Philip Robinson

    Editor and avid gardener Philip Robinson has paid attention to the small, private plot as much as the grand aristocratic and imperial gardens – from medieval Japan to English landscape to suburban Arizona – and this collection is sure ...

  • Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition
    By Robert Pogue Harrison

    The bibliography that surrounds Plato in general and Plato's educational aims and politics in particular is enormous. Here I cite only a small fraction of what has been written on the subject. For a comprehensive reconstruction of Plato ...

  • The Secret Garden
    By Frances Hodgson Burnett

    HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics.

  • On the Spot: The Yorkshire Red Books of Humphry Repton, Landscape Gardener
    By Humphry Repton

    The term 'Red Books' is also used generically to embrace Repton's collective output of reports, whether bound in red Morocco leather or not.