English Gardens of the Twentieth Century: From the Archives of Country Life

For over a century, Country Life has been an influential force in the world of garden design, chiefly as a result of its weekly articles on country houses and gardens illustrated with specially commissioned photography. The magazine’s unrivalled archive of photographs is the key source for this comprehensive history of the changing styles of garden design during the twentieth century. Gertrude Jekyll was one of the first contributors and advisors to Country Life, and in her wake a succession of gardening and architectural editors has used its pages to champion a favoured garden style. Tim Richardson, himself a former gardens editor of the magazine, has drawn on this remarkable legacy to produce the first serious study of English garden design in the twentieth century. The story begins with Arts and Crafts gardens, typified by herbaceous borders and modern planting, and continues with the Edwardian debate between formality and ‘wild’ gardening, interwar grandeur, post-war practicality, and finally the emergence of visionary and pioneering artists’ gardens.