Deux mille ans de jardins

Autumn has always been the season for gardens: while leaves are getting ready to play their symphony of colors, here is a nicely illustrated vademecum. Most of the major classics are dealt with, in a planetary trip. The congruent portion was awarded to the gardens of Islam, from Iran to Grenade, and to the gardens of the Far East, too often limited to the cherry trees in bloom, to wooden bridges and to the believers in zen scratching the gravel. The Western world is by far more abundantly analyzed, from the reconstructions of antique gardens (Pompey) and the medieval cloisters to the most remarkable creations from the XXth century. It is difficult to find any unity as the inventiveness goes in different directions, from Roberto Burle Marx’s perfect geometries (Pétropolis, Brésil) to Richard Jencks’ conceptual evocations (at Portrack, Scotland with a black hole and the garden of DNA!), up to the ivy that invades the zinc roofs in Paris (Camille Muller). In the last creations, wheat is even used for the flowerbeds and it is moving (the Mas de les Voltes, in Catalonia). One regrets the absence of an introduction that would have allowed us to place this lush matter in an historic perspective.

• Deux mille ans de jardins, photos by Alain Le Toquin, text by Jacques Bosser, La Martinière, ISBN : 2-7324-3482-5, 2006, 49 €