Norfolk Gardens and Designed Landscapes [Paperback]

This beautifully produced volume, the outcome of many decades of research, is a celebration of Norfolk’s particularly rich heritage of parks and gardens. It provides a detailed exploration of the history of gardening and landscape architecture in the county, from the geometric gardens of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, through the landscape parks of the eighteenth century and the civic spaces of the nineteenth, to the emergence of modern ideas of ecological and ‘minimalist’ garden design. It describes in detail more than three hundred of the most beautiful and significant gardens and designed landscapes in the county. Many of these were the work of famous designers such as Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, Humphry Repton, Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll, but others were made by more obscure professionals, or were lovingly created by gifted amateurs, plantsmen and women. Vast and complex landscapes like Houghton or Holkham are discussed and illustrated, but also many small, private gems in town and country. Lavishly illustrated throughout in full colour, and with an introduction by the distinguished landscape and garden historian Tom Williamson, Norfolk Gardens and Designed Landscapes will be essential reading for all those interested in the history of the county and its landscape, and in the history of gardens more generally.

"One of the first lessons that's drummed into you when a young journalist is to avoid superlatives… Well, I'm going to stick my neck out right now and say that this must be the best book on the subject ever produced. Everything about it says quality, from its heft… to the authority and clarity of its writing, the subject of many years' research."
Trevor Heaton
Eastern Daily Press (04/12/2017)