Italian Gardens

"The first steps of one who is interested in the formal style of landscape architecture should be directed to Italy". So wrote the great garden designer Charles Platt (1861-1933) in 1884 in his introduction to "Italian Gardens". Devoted solely to the Italian villa estates, this handsomely illustrated work quickly found an eager readership among clients, architects and topographical designers. It also made Platt one of the most sought-after landscape architects of his day.;Platt's book offered more than design motifs. Photographs celebrated an indoor/outdoor lifestyle, and text prescribed a relationship between domestic and garden architecture. Platt saw the Italian concept of a garden as a series of rooms, "where one might walk about and find a place suitable to the hour of the day and feeling of the moment, and still be in the sacred portion of the globe dedicated to one's self".;Long out of print, "Italian Gardens" is now made available in a historic edition, with important new material. The text and plates - reproduced from original glass plate negatives - are supplemented with twenty additional pictures taken by Platt on his Italian tour not included in the 1894 publication. Keith Morgan places the author and his book in its context, capturing his designs in photographs, plans and drawings. This volume is not only a record of a great and influential garden designer, but is itself a treasure of beauty which will inspire the modern garden enthusiast.;Keith N. Morgan, Chairman of the Art History Department, Boston University, is the author of "Charles Platt: The Artist as Architect".