{"product_id":"english-garden-eccentrics-three-hundred-years-of-extraordinary-groves-burrowings-mountains-and-menageries-9781913107260","title":"English Garden Eccentrics: Three Hundred Years of Extraordinary Groves, Burrowings, Mountains and Menageries","description":"\u003cb\u003eA highly original study of eccentric English garden-makers and their extraordinary gardens\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e In \u003ci\u003eEnglish Garden Eccentrics\u003c\/i\u003e, renowned landscape architect and historian Todd Longstaffe-Gowan reveals a series of obscure and eccentric English garden-makers who, between the early seventeenth and early twentieth centuries, created intensely personal and idiosyncratic gardens. They include such fascinating characters as the superstitious antiquary William Stukeley and the animal- and bird-loving Lady Read, as well as the celebrated master of Vauxhall Gardens, Jonathan Tyers, who created at his home at Denbies one of the gloomiest and most perverse anti-pleasure gardens in Georgian England. Others built miniature mountains, shaped topiaries, displayed exotic animals, excavated caves, and assembled architectural fragments and fossils to realise their gardens in a way that was often thought excessive. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e With quirky and compelling illustrations and chapters including \"Lady Broughton's 'Miniature copy of the Swiss Glaciers, '\" \"Topiary on a Gargantuan Scale: The Clipped 'Yew-trees' at Four Ancient London Churchyards,\" and \"The Burrowing Duke at Harcourt House,\" \u003ci\u003eEnglish Garden Eccentrics\u003c\/i\u003e brings together garden and landscape history with cultural history and biography. The book engagingly reveals what it is about the gardener and his or her creation that can be seen as eccentric and focusses on an area of garden history that has scarcely been explored: gardens seen as expressions of the singular character of their makers, and therefore functioning, in effect, as a form of autobiography. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e This lively and accessible book calls on gardeners today to learn from example and dare to be eccentric. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTodd Longstaffe-Gowan\u003c\/b\u003e is a landscape architect with an international practice based in London. He is gardens adviser to Historic Royal Palaces, lecturer at New York University (London), president of the London Gardens Trust, editor of \u003ci\u003eThe London Gardener \u003c\/i\u003eand author of several books including \u003ci\u003eThe London Town Garden \u003c\/i\u003e(Yale, 2001) and \u003ci\u003eThe London Square \u003c\/i\u003e(Yale, 2012).\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Paul Mellon Centre","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50660846240018,"sku":"9781913107260","price":34.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_429f661c-f849-4da1-b20e-2e56f0b69555.jpg?v=1733477661","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/english-garden-eccentrics-three-hundred-years-of-extraordinary-groves-burrowings-mountains-and-menageries-9781913107260","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}