LAND FORUM

LAND FORUM

Viewing Olmsted: Photographs by Robert Burley, Lee Friendlander and Geoffrey James

Art and Landscape in Charleston and the Low Country

New from SPACEMAKER PRESS

Bold Romantic Gardens

When Bold Romantic Gardens: The New World
Landscapes of Oehme and van Sweden was first published eight years ago, Wolfgang
Oehme and James van Sweden were developing a national reputation for
reinvigorating the American garden and liberating suburban properties from the
tyrannies of the lawn. The volume has become one of the most popular garden books
in the world, and is available again in this beautiful reprint by Spacemaker
Press. The book's influence is obvious, not only on the profession of landscape
architecture, but in the transformation undergone by urban parks, suburban
tracts, and even housing projects. Bold Romantic Gardens has become a classic
teaching and reference volume used by students and professors of landscape
architecture at universities and colleges around the world. Gardens depicted here
represent the defining moments of Oehme and van Sweden's partnership, showing how
these talented designers' early risks of scale and vision paid off with striking
results. They provide the setting for a profound interplay of texture, color,
scent, sound, and introduced elements - particularly water. They demonstrate how
the designers both blur and strengthen the boundaries between public and private
spaces. Beautifully photographed and documented, these gardens reveal solutions
to concerns that have made them so popular: year-round interest and relatively
easy care. Bold Romantic Gardens is a gorgeous compendium of modern gardens, but
it is more than a coffee-table book. In the words of James van Sweden, "it is
a subversive text: a chronicle of our methods for overturning outmoded approaches
to landscape design and planting, and a guide for bringing nature more fully into
our lives." 9 by 12 inches; 312 pages. ISBN 1-888931-10-8. Softcover.

Images from the book