One of the most important aspects of garden design has always been the relationship between a garden and its surrounding landscape. A desire to conceal or blur the boundary that defines a garden, the wish to extend the garden into the landscape beyond, or to "borrow" it, so that it becomes an extension of the designed garden, has been a recurring ambition of garden designers. From the formal Renaissance gardens of Versailles, where long vistas were designed to give the illusion of the garden disappearing into infinity, to the eighteenth-century "ha-ha" that concealed the boundary between garden and countryside, designers have often used deception in creating gardens. Gardens Without Boundaries looks at the ways in which today's leading garden and landscape designers -- including Dan Kiley, Oehme & van Sweden, Steve Martino, Julie Toll, Susan Childs, and Fernando Caruncho -- have concealed boundaries, disguised and blurred edges, or brought "nature" up to the house, in order to link both small and largescale private gardens to the landscape beyond. The challenge of the small urban garden has also caused designers to invent new trompe l'oeil effects, with materials such as glass and mirror plastic used to make cramped spaces appear larger. Other designers have adopted and adapted traditional devices, and re-worked them with modern materials and construction methods, devising new ways to mimic nature or link a garden to the landscape beyond; while land artists have "adopted" the existing landscape, and created gardens that are either temporary events, or may be unattached to a property. Gardens Without Boundaries is a comprehensive work that will not only challenge preconceptions of contemporary garden design, but provide design ideas and inspiration to garden owners everywhere. Book jacket.
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