Outstanding American Gardens

The Garden Conservancy, founded in 1990 by the late garden-world luminary Frank Cabot, has spent the past 25 years championing, chronicling, and helping to preserve great landscapes. Outstanding American Gardens (Abrams, $60) celebrates the nonprofit’s silver anniversary by offering an in-depth look at some of the subjects of its efforts. Gorgeous photographs by Marion Brenner and nuanced essays edited by Page Dickey illuminate the histories of eight public and 42 private gardens.

The Authentic Garden: Naturalistic and Contemporary Landscape Design

The history of landscape architecture and its influence on contemporary trends are explored in The Authentic Garden: Naturalistic and Contemporary Landscape Design (The Monacelli Press, $50), written by garden designers Richard Hartlage and Sandy Fischer, principals of the firm Land Morphology. Organized into thematic chapters, the book features more than 60 recently designed gardens—both residential and commercial—by top talents including OLIN, Christine Ten Eyck, Thomas Woltz, and Ron Lutsko.

Rescuing Eden: Preserving America’s Historic Gardens

In Rescuing Eden: Preserving America’s Historic Gardens (The Monacelli Press, $50), design historian Caroline Seebohm tells the story of 28 visit-worthy gardens, including lavish Gilded Age estates, Alcatraz’s prison gardens, and the quirky vision of Pearl Fryar’s South Carolina dreamscape. As different as they are from one another, the gardens are unified by the dedication of their original owners and contemporary conservators to protecting these little slices of paradise.

Highgrove: An English Country Garden

For more than 30 years, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales has made Highgrove, his Gloucestershire estate, a proving ground for organic gardening and agriculture, yielding lush greenery and robust harvests. The acreage’s enchanting orchards, arbors, flower beds, and meadows are shown year-round in Highgrove: An English Country Garden (Rizzoli, $50), which also includes valuable horticultural insights from both Prince Charles and garden guru Bunny Guinness.

The New Shade Garden: Creating a Lush Oasis in the Age of Climate Change

Garden writer Ken Druse notes in his spectacularly informative and well-illustrated book The New Shade Garden: Creating a Lush Oasis in the Age of Climate Change (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $40) that the warming of our planet has hit home. More specifically, it has transformed the beloved outdoor spaces surrounding our homes. This book, packed with cheerfully delivered advice, gardening resources, and crisp photography, gives gardeners strategies for creating lush outdoor spaces that beautify and heal the earth.

A Natural History of English Gardening

Mark Laird’s A Natural History of English Gardening (Yale University Press, $75) explores gardening as it was done, pondered, examined, painted, recorded, and scientifically advanced in the 17th and 18th centuries, a time when England was flooded with explorers bringing back exotic plants from distant shores. For people who might have little interest in the subject, the absorbing illustrations support an unexpectedly engrossing text.

The Art of Gardening: Design Inspiration and Innovative Planting Techniques from Chanticleer

For 20-plus years, Chanticleer garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania, has been charming visitors, educating amateur gardeners, and pursuing an exuberant, idiosyncratic aesthetic. The Art of Gardening: Design Inspiration and Innovative Planting Techniques from Chanticleer (Timber Press, $35) pairs lush photography with free-ranging essays from all of Chanticleer’s full-time gardeners. The staffers discuss the areas they oversee, moving easily from philosophy to pruning techniques, ecological treatises to color theory.

Private Gardens of Paris

In the City of Light, the chic Haussmannian apartment buildings and Art Deco artist studios are beguiling enough from the outside. But, as Private Gardens of Paris (Flammarion, $35) reveals, often hidden behind those lovely façades are compelling patches of sumptuous greenery.

Charlotte Moss: Garden Inspirations

Charlotte Moss: Garden Inspirations (Rizzoli, $50) takes as its case study the designer’s East Hampton, New York, home, Boxwood Terrace, a spec house that she converted into what she calls her “personal Arcadia.” Biographies of her gardening muses, from Beatrix Potter to Bunny Mellon, as well as an inventory of her favorite gardens across the globe, round out the book.

Bunny Williams: On Garden Style

First published in 1998, Bunny Williams: On Garden Style (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $50) has become a classic of the genre, and this edition, full of fresh photography, is a smart update for the 21st century.

The American Spirit in the English Garden

In The American Spirit in the English Garden (Garden Art Press, $65), author Jean Stone traces how, in the 17th century, new-world plants began arriving in the British Isles, greatly influencing the region’s highly regarded horticultural style.

Hummelo: A Journey Through a Plantsman’s Life

Hummelo: A Journey Through a Plantsman’s Life (The Monacelli Press, $50) profiles Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf’s nursery in the Netherlands, where for more than three decades he has been experimenting with the plantings that make up his distinctive style.

Secret Gardens

Secret Gardens (Abrams, $50) highlights photographer Alain Le Toquin’s dreamy images of 13 private plots around the world, from Europe to the Caribbean to Oceania, many of which have never appeared in print before.

Gardens at First Light

Shooting in the early dew-heavy moments of the day, photographer Stacy Bass has captured 12 serene sylvan settings in Gardens at First Light (AtHome Books, $60).

In & Out of Paris: Gardens of Secret Delights

In & Out of Paris: Gardens of Secret Delights (Gibbs Smith, $50), written by Zahid Sardar and photographed by Marion Brenner, offers a primer on the evolution of landscape design in France’s capital city, juxtaposing descriptions of celebrated and lesser-known public and estate gardens in and around Paris with portraits of private retreats within the city.

Women Garden Designers: 1900 to the Present

While names such as André Le Nôtre, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Russell Page dominate discussions of landscape design, women have made significant contributions to the field. Kristina Taylor’s Women Garden Designers: 1900 to the Present (Garden Art Press, $70) catalogues their outstanding creations, from Gertrude Jekyll’s lush formal garden at Upton Grey to Haruko Seki’s minimalist plantings.

The Good Garden: The Landscape Architecture of Edmund Hollander Design

The Good Garden: The Landscape Architecture of Edmund Hollander Design (The Monacelli Press, $60) is more than just a monograph of handsome landscape design. It’s a meeting of astute minds, in which the aesthetics of Edmund Hollander and Maryanne Connelly (who cofounded the New York–based firm Edmund D. Hollander Landscape Architects in 1991) are translated onto the page by the crisp, incisive writing of Anne Raver. The firm’s projects are lushly photographed by Charles Mayer and divided into categories that help the reader focus on elements of particular interest, from entry areas and shade gardens to pergolas and greenswards.

Outside Living: Terraces, Balconies, Roof Decks, Courtyards, Pocket Gardens, and Other Small Spaces

Outside Living: Terraces, Balconies, Roof Decks, Courtyards, Pocket Gardens, and Other Small Spaces by Francesc Zamora Mola (Rizzoli, $35) examines work by international garden designers and landscape architects, providing readers with plenty of inspiration for warm-weather projects.

At Home in the Garden

In At Home in the Garden (Clarkson Potter, $85), Architectural Digest special projects editor Carolyne Roehm takes readers into the spectacular garden at Weatherstone, her house in Sharon, Connecticut. The tastemaker focuses on visual inspiration, highlighting outdoor elements that fascinate her (topiaries, furniture, pots) and sharing ways to create a garden you can entertain in.

Landscape and Garden Design Sketchbooks

Fans of contemporary landscape design will be delighted by Landscape and Garden Design Sketchbooks (Thames & Hudson, $60), which peeks behind the curtain of genius and into the early stages of the creative process. Thirty-seven designers share drawings and scribbles from notebooks, hotel memo pads, and the backs of cigarette packs. The international mix includes such luminaries as the Netherlands’ Piet Oudolf, Britain’s Sarah Price, and Argentina’s Cristina Le Mehauté.

The Gardens of Arne Maynard

British landscape designer Arne Maynard likes to think big. The Gardens of Arne Maynard (Merrell, $67) demonstrates this fact via a wealth of sumptuous photographs of grand-scale designs Maynard has created in both Europe and America.

30:30 Landscape Architecture

In 30:30 Landscape Architecture (Phaidon, $75), Meaghan Kombol profiles 30 internationally renowned designers and their pick of the forward-thinking practitioners they admire. Each chapter gives an inside look at the architects’ creative process, with insight into their background, inspirations, projects, and even their favorite plants, trees, and materials. The volume offers a comprehensive look at the field today and a preview of what is to come.