Howard Loxton

Quite a nice book which is basically about the history of gardens but delves into instructions for designing gardens and building swimming pools. Initially, I thought it was all the work of Howard Loxton and was suitably impressed but then I noticed that a large part of the book had been written by contributing authors. It is, overall, very "British" (or "British Empire") in focus....even for the sections on Asian gardens there is no obvious Asian name among the contributing authors. Overall, it's interesting and there are some lovely photographs but I felt that it lacked a reasonable balance between the gardens presented and tropical/Asian/Arid gardens. Yes, there is a bit about each of these ...but it's pretty brief and superficial. Even where I thought he would have very significant sections ...such as on woodland gardens ...there was very little. I guess, that's the problem of taking on an all-embracing, encyclopaedic subject such as "A history of gardens". It's really too big to do it justice in a singe book.
Nevertheless, if you don't have the time to read whole books on every type of garden then this is a very good overview. In places, it gets a bit didactic...such as in the Garden design (section by John Medhurst) but overall, the pictures soften or enhance the text and one can excuse the lapse into the didactic.
I enjoyed reading it. Maybe rate it as good but not great so 4 stars from me.… (meer)