The Education of a Gardener is Russell Page’s classic account of designing gardens, drawn from a career spent working for clients around the world. This Vintage Classics edition carries an introduction by Alan Titchmarsh.
About This Book
Page trained as a painter before becoming a professional garden designer, and it shows. He combined a plantsman’s knowledge with an architect’s feeling for structure, and he wrote about gardens as places shaped by colour, form and the slow passage of time. The book moves between anecdotes of patrons and colleagues and plain, lucid advice on composition, planting and the setting of a garden near the house.
It remains one of the most widely read books on garden design, valued as much for its prose as for its practical wisdom.
Key Features
- Introduction by Alan Titchmarsh and illustrated with photographs by Russell Page and Marina Schinz
- Chapters on style, composition and design, and on planting trees and shrubs
- Reflections on gardens from small domestic plots to major commissions such as Longleat and the Frick Collection
What You’ll Discover
- How Page approached style and composition when designing a garden
- His thinking on siting a garden and handling the ground near a house
- How he used trees and shrubs to give a garden structure
- Why he treated time and change as part of a garden’s design
About the Author
Russell Page (1906–1985) studied painting at the Slade School and in Paris before turning to garden design in 1928. He worked across Europe, the Middle East and the Americas, and was among the few Englishmen awarded a medal by the French Academy of Architecture.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Dimensions: 130 × 198 mm
- Pages: 448
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781784877743
- Publisher: Vintage Classics
Perfect For: Gardeners and garden designers, landscape architects and students, and readers who enjoy thoughtful writing on design and the making of places.