While there’s no shortage of information on restoring and maintaining the historical integrity of period homes, until now there has been no authoritative reference that provides comparable information for landscapes. American Home Landscapes is a comprehensive, fully illustrated guide to recreating nearly 400 years of historical landscape design and adapting them to modern needs. You will first learn how to research design elements for a particular property. Each of the following chapters focuses on the design characteristics of six well-defined historical periods, beginning with the Colonial period and ending with the last decades of the twentieth century. Each section features the most prominent landscape features of each era, such as paths, driveways, fences, hedges, seating, and accessories. Extensive bibliographic resources and historically accurate plant lists round out the text. Whether the goal is to create a meticulously accurate period landscape or simply to evoke the look of a bygone era, you’ll find the tools you need in American Home Landscapes.

Published to great acclaim in 2006, the hardcover edition of Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape met with outstanding reviews and strong sales, going into three printings. A language-lover's dream, Home Ground revitalized a descriptive language for the American landscape by combining geography, literature, and folklore in one volume. Now in paperback, this visionary reference is available to an entire new segment of readers. Home Ground brings together 45 poets and writers to create more than 850 original definitions for words that describe our lands and waters. The writers draw from careful research and their own distinctive stylistic, personal, and regional diversity to portray in bright, precise prose the striking complexity of the landscapes we inhabit. Home Ground includes 100 black-and-white line drawings by Molly O’Halloran and an introductory essay by Barry Lopez.

Publisher Description

Gardeners are the front line of defense in our struggle to tackle the problems of global warming, loss of habitat, water shortages, and shrinking biodiversity. In The New American Landscape, author and editor Thomas Christopher brings together the best thinkers on the topic of gardening sustainably, and asks them to describe the future of the sustainable landscape. The discussion unfolds from there, and what results is a collective vision as eloquent as it is diverse. The New American Landscape offers designers a roadmap to a beautiful garden that improves, not degrades the environment. It’s a provocative manifesto about the important role gardens play in creating a more sustainable future that no professional garden designer can afford to miss. John Greenlee and Neil Diboll on the new American meadow garden Rick Darke on balancing natives and exotics in the garden Doug Tallamy on landscapes that welcome wildlife Eric Toensmeier on the sustainable edible garden David Wolfe on gardening sustainable with a changing climate Elaine Ingham on managing soil health David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth on sustainable pest solutions Ed Snodgrass and Linda McIntyre on green roofs in the sustainable residential landscape Thomas Christopher on waterwise gardens Toby Hemenway on whole system garden design The Sustainable Site Initiative on the managing the home landscape as a sustainable site

Photographs and essays express "the way the American landscape has been forged by various cultures in the past and what the possibilities are for its future design."--Jacket.

Foreword : In search of the American cultural landscape / Dolores Hayden -- Considering nature and culture in historic landscape preservation / Robert Z. Melnick -- Selling heritage landscapes / Richard Francaviglia -- The history and preservation of urban parks and cemeteries / David Schuyler and Patricia M. O'Donnell -- Appropriating place in Puerto Rican barrios : preserving contemporary urban landscapes / Luis Aponte-Parés -- Considering the ordinary : vernacular landscapes in small towns and rural areas / Arnold R. Alanen -- Asian American imprints on the Western landscape / Gail Lee Dubrow -- Ethnographic landscapes : transforming nature into culture / Donald L. Hardesty -- Integrity as a value in cultural landscape preservation / Catherine Howett.