California Gardens: Creating a New Eden

Almost everyone knows that California has incredible gardens, but not everyone knows that California landscape architecture dates back to the mission era, when priests imported the olive tree and Mexican fan palm. California Gardens depicts the high points of California gardening over the last century and a half, from the mission gardens to the custom-designed lawns and flower beds of the wealthy and tasteful. David Streatfield's text explains how the state's ecology and evolving architectural styles borrowed from other areas have influenced garden design. The book's final chapter, "Old Realities, New Possibilities," addresses the modern problems of designing for space and water efficiency. This is a scholarly and thought-provoking work, but is also exuberantly beautiful.