Robin Karson
Revised paperback edition
A handsome re-design with more than 50 new photographs
$34.95
To order: University of Massachusetts Press,
tel. 800-537-5487, fax 410-516-6998
American Society of Landscape Architects Honor Award
Named one of the 75 Best Garden Books by the American Horticultural Society
For sixty years Fletcher Steele practiced landscape architecture as a fine art, designing nearly seven hundred gardens, from Boston to Detroit, and New Brunswick, Canada, to Asheville, North Carolina. Often brilliant, always original, Steele’s work is considered by many to constitute the essential link between nineteenth-century Beaux-Arts formalism and modern landscape design. This handsomely redesigned paperback edition adds more than fifty new photographs.
“A book to give for Christmas, or as the grandest of house presents; it’s a book to keep as well. . . . [Karson] has written a wonderful read and, in doing so, has revived an entire era in all its detail. Intelligent, theatrical, infuriating, amusing—and loveable—Steele struts off the page, giving life to his own work.”—Garden Design
“A meticulously detailed, fascinating account of Steele’s life and work. Woven from the diverse threads of voluminous correspondence, project documents, notebooks, photographs, diaries, interviews, and conversations, this richly textured history reads well—no small accomplishment for so inclusive a study. . . . Karson’s fluid narrative style, seamlessly punctuated by Steele’s voice throughout, makes the considerable volume of material accessible and clear.”—Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
“Karson has done a magnificent job in integrating carefully chosen archival drawings and pictures with contemporary photographs of many gardens. Planting plans and plant lists are offered as additional information for many of the gardens with a comprehensive list of clients. We are given simultaneously a revealing account of one of America’s greatest modern garden designers as well as an inspiring reference of garden-making as a fine art.”—Public Garden
“This is a book to be savored, to be read and re-read for enjoyment and consulted repeatedly for inspiration. The text is uncommonly readable, the descriptions of the gardens and their maker consistently perceptive and insightful. [An] exceptional volume.”—Pacific Horticulture
“Makes available to students and teachers of landscape design a wealth of material: plans, drawings, photographs, and correspondence, as well as interviews with Steele’s family, his clients and their family members, office staff and associates, and collaborators in architecture, gardening, art, and sculpture. Moreover, the text places Steele’s gardens in the context of major threads of American socioeconomic history and of the development of the young profession of landscape architecture.”—Landscape Journal
Robin Karson is the founder and executive director of LALH. Her books include Fletcher Steele, Landscape Architect; The Muses of Gwinn; Pioneers of American Landscape Design (as co-editor); and A Genius for Place. She has organized several touring exhibitions for LALH on topics relating to American landscape history. Karson is the recipient of three Honor Awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects and in 2004 was named a distinguished member of the Honor Society of Sigma Lambda Alpha for her “continued high-quality contribution to the scholarship of landscape architecture and the literature of landscape architecture history.”
Click title to read published review:
Period Homes
Click the links below to read preservation case studies of Fletcher Steele landscapes:
“Camden’s Harborside Parks”
“A Private Steele (and Shipman) Garden”
“Naumkeag” |
