Detailed with loving accuracy in the photography of Melba Levick and in the lucid prose of Karen Dardick, Estate Gardens of California showcases fifteen magnificent estate gardens that are uniquely, exuberantly Californian. Included within are the classically inspired, 654-acre gardens of Filoli near San Francisco, a property of the National Trust for Historic Preservation-an estate with grounds of such alluring beauty that many times the cameras of Hollywood have come here to film; the Huntington Library Gardens in San Marino, one of the most important botanical gardens in the world; and the opulent and strange but wildly popular Lotusland in Montecito, a fantasy world of exquisite beauty created by Madam Ganna Walska with famed designer Lockwood de Forest. Other gardens featured are in Pebble Beach, Newport Beach, Beverly Hills, the Napa and Sonoma Valleys, and Rancho Palos Verdes. It is the plant palette of almost endless possibilities that makes California's great gardens so breathtaking. In Estate Gardens a rare and privileged glimpse of these possibilities is given. Cohen Estate, Newport Beach (owner of Four Seasons Hotel, Los Angeles) Collins Estate, Beverly Hills Hacienda Mar Monte, Pebble Beach Descanso Gardens, La Canada (open to public) Filoli, Woodside (open to public) Lotusland, Montecito (open to public) Rancho Los Alamitos, Long Beach (open to public) Stathatos Estate, San Marino Beaulieu Residence, Napa Valley (private residence of owner of Beaulieu winery) Villa Fiore, Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma County Huntington Library, San Marino (open to public) Val Verde, Montecito (open for limited public viewing) Villa Narcissa, Rancho Palos Verdes Virginia Robinson Estate and Gardens, Beverly Hills (open for limited public viewing) Alden Estate, Santa Monica Canyon.

Great Gardens in Small Spaces features 44 wonderful and exquisitely photographed California gardens, specifically treating the small garden, its particular challenges and its abundant opportunities and rewards. 300 color illustrations.

Account of the land and its flora, both native and naturalized, and of the men and women who devoted themselves to its cultivation.

A fantastic garden journey that only California can provide In The California Garden Tour, veteran travel writer Donald Olson highlights 50 outstanding public gardens and provides all the information you need to make the most of your visit. From San Francisco and the East Bay to Palm Springs and San Diego, Olson includes iconic gardens like the Getty Center, new favorites like Alcatraz, and uniquely Californian destinations like Lotusland and Sunnylands. The easy-to-use format includes visitor information, an evocative description, and full color photography for each garden.

Seasoned garden writers Susan Lowry and Nancy Berner, along with leading landscape photographer Marion Brenner, tour more than thirty-five private gardens in the San Francisco Bay Area, illuminating the unrivalled beauty of Northern California—the breadth of the sky, the quality of the light, the sparkle of the Bay, the shapes of the hills—that has beckoned landscape designers and gardeners for generations. Organized geographically—starting with the San Francisco Peninsula, moving north into San Francisco itself, crossing the Bay into Berkeley and Oakland, and finishing in Napa, Sonoma, and Marin—Private Gardens of the Bay Area encompasses an extraordinary range of micro-climates that foster the cultivation of an equally extraordinary range of plants. The kaleidoscope of vigorous plants from five continents bursting out of an Oakland front yard is one kind of garden, the clean-lined contemporary composition of drought-tolerant natives and gravel is another, and the garden tucked into the mountain landscape of oaks, manzanitas, and ceanothus is yet another. This fascinating tour includes gardens such as Green Gables, where the 1911 terraced design by Greene & Greene is meticulously preserved; Big Swing, with a world-renowned collection of salvias; a vertical garden on a vertiginous site in San Francisco by Surfacedesign; and a romantic landscape of lawns, perennial beds, and stately oaks owned by noted collectors and gallerists Gretchen and John Berggruen. Lowry and Berner describe the goals of each garden owner and the principles behind the designs.