Garden Transmissions - Word, Image, Experience, Future

The book examines the ways in which the exchange of garden forms, designs, technologies, and styles created a global garden culture at the intersection of nature and cultural expression from the early modern age to the present. Europe, at the center of this global exchange, drew inspiration from Islamic and Chinese garden traditions and benefitted from the traffic of botanical novelties from the Americas. In turn, European models were successfully exported to other parts of the world and adapted to other landscapes, environments, and climates. The appropriation of new design ideas, methods, and trends resulted in new garden types and invigorated earlier approaches to horticulture. These garden transmissions—effected through the exchange of writing and images as well as direct contact between cultures—provided the tools for fruitful cross-pollination of knowledge and skills as a mode of mediation between humans and nature.