So Fine a Prospect: Historic New England Gardens (Library of New England)

Join Alan Emmet on a tour of gardens that graced New England from just after the American Revolution into the 20th century. A Martha Stewart Decorative Arts Gift Book Choice for 1996.

If May Brawley Hill's Grandmother Garden and Mac Griswold's Golden Age of American Gardens weigh heavily on your shelf of classic foliage histories, Alan Emmet's study of New England private gardens from the 18th and 19th centuries should take its place alongside them. Emmet shows how the more extreme climate, the looming presence of the frontier, and the moral fiber of Puritanism combined to shape an American vernacular gardening style as distinct from the venerable hedge-and-fountain traditions of England. The Italianate garden at Wellesley, Massachusetts, designed by Hollis Hunnewell, and the Impressionist bouquet by Cecil Thaxter on Appledore Island, Maine, demonstrate that early Americans were transforming European traditions in landscape architecture at the same time they were adapting those in politics, arts, and literature.