Designing a Garden: Monk's Garden at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Designing a Garden: Monk's Garden at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum by Van Valkenburgh, Michael. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781580935524.

The intimate Monks Garden at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston embodies the design principles that inform the work of noted landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh In Designing a Garden, Van Valkenburgh presents the design of the Monks Garden at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, an intimate, walled garden that Laurie Olin has described as "a masterpiece, and not a minor one." The book documents the evolution of the gardens design, which is based on the concept of meandering paths through a dreamlike woodland to create a contemplative space. Sketches and models show how the idea was worked out, and lush photographs reveal the completed garden through the seasons. Van Valkenburghs text explores the origins of his love of landscape and plants in his family farm in Upstate New York and how this has influenced his intuitions as a designer. He shares the full background story of the Monks Garden, focusing on the experimental nature of design work as well as the challenges and satisfactions of the small scale and the historic and cultural context. Designing a Garden provides a unique first-person account of the design process from the most prominent landscape architects in the country.