Private Gardens of the Hudson Valley

If one enjoys gardens, this is a book to add to their collections. Well written with great illustrations, but I wished there had been more photographs

Before buying this book I read some of it on line, and was interested in this description, from the Introduction: "All the gardens in this book, with the exception of John Driscoll's garden in Garrison.....have been entirely made by their current owners." I was fascinated that such large, beautiful, well-designed gardens could be made entirely by the owners, without any assistance from professional garden designers.Then as I read through the chapters I found that the gardens were designed by - no, not the owners, but - John Brookes, Edwina von Gal, Oehme & Van Sweden, Fred Callander , Paul Mayen, Deborah Nevins, Tim Steinhoff, Wayne Winterrowd & Joe Eck, Michael Trapp. Almost none were the work of the owners. The owners sometimes worked in the gardens themselves; naturally they contributed to the overall goals and effects. But `entirely'? No. Not even close.Now I don't object to using a garden designer. I am one. But if the authors/editors have an animus against professionally designed gardens, then they should have used fewer of them -- and certainly not claimed to have avoided them.So that is part of the reason for my 3 star rating.The other reason is that the photographs, while very beautiful, are uncaptioned. So unless one is quite familiar with the plants photographed and described, and can carefully coordinate the text and photographs, the book is mostly `just' beautiful pictures. Very beautiful pictures in fact. And fortunately I am familiar with most of the plants described, so I can enjoy and learn from the combinations and juxtapositions and vistas. But I think captions or page references would have made the book much more useful and interesting.

This book is a 'swoon'...my breathe was taken away by the photos...it's inspirational and just gosh darn so lovely.....unlike a number of the other commenters, I did not expect this book to be a how-to journal. Rather, I love the a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words approach....love, love, love how the authors approached the project.

Excellent portrait of Hudson Valley gardens otherwise unavailable to those of us who frequently visit great gardens of the world.

I'm an avid gardener and do not feel like gardening culture in the US is very strong- though I do believe that is changing. (Most of my garden books are from the UK). I live in the Hudson valley so was hoping this book might provide inspiration. However, most of the pics here look like Grey Gardens or other untended messy jungles. I'd like to think people won't take these examples for their own gardens. We need more books for the Hudson Valley gardener that set a higher bar. Disappointing.

When I buy a gardening or decorating book, I make a list on notebook paper of the valuable insights in the book, with page numbers, and tape it to the front cover.This book offers a few crumbs of knowledge, but mostly it is many many full-sized photos of masses of vegetation. It doesn't help to read the text, because what is described is not shown, and vice versa. The owners built this, found that, or planted whatever...really? Because all I see is what looks to an amateur eye like a big messy overgrown area.A disappointment. Only slightly worse than the author's other book on Connecticut gardens...another letdown.Better to describe ehat is pictured, and better still to include some humans or dogs or pickup trucks in the photos for an idea of scale. There are rarely even houses in these jungle photos.An expensive mistake I made twice.

Unfortunately there is very little gardening know-how imparted. Not a book for learning how to garden, and most of the photos are of Hudson Valley garden vistas

A sumptuously photographed survey of gardens in and near the Hudson Valley, 'Private Gardens' includes twenty-six engaging private gardens representing the full range of garden types: from cutting edge modern to more traditional and 'natural' landscapes. The finely-honed writing beautifully illuminates the attitudes and the design approach to each garden with remarkably crisp and evocative descriptions.A highly recommended addition to any serious, or amateur, gardener's library.

Excellent book well written and illustrated. Inspirational if you own a larger garden, several of these are over 100 acres !.One star dropped because the photos are not captioned so it is not always clear what you are looking at