Reviews for America's Downtowns: Growth, Politics and Preservation

The average rating for America's Downtowns: Growth, Politics and Preservation based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-06-09 00:00:00 Judy D. Pence Roy Strong is best known as director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Prior to that he was director of London't s National Portrait Gallery. So you can imagine that, when he and his wife decided to build a garden from scratch on several acres in Herefordshire, he would bring to it an artistic sensibility. He describes how they found the house and the land (not a garden at all) around it in the 1970s. He recalls what a difficult time that was in the UK. Industrial disputes had led to strikes, power cuts, piles of rubbish in the streets and so on. He and his wife wanted to get out of London, partly so that they could live in a more self-sufficient way rather than relying on central utilities. He talks about his many friends and acquaintances from the art world and their influence on the design of the garden. They knew that they wanted a formal garden and they were heavily influenced by the country house and manor garden from earlier centuries, which were not necessarily in fashion at that time. They didn't have a lot of money to spend, so the process was a gradual one. He gives a lot of detail about the plants they put in and how they did, based on his diaries and letters from those years. The drought of 1976 was devastating for their young plants and other various years took their toll, but gradually the garden has taken shape. He talks a lot about friends who brought plant gifts or ideas (good and bad!) and inspiration, and how he was in turn influenced by visiting their gardens too. That's one of the delights of gardening of course and he and his wife clearly enjoyed it. Some ideas didn't work out, and have been changed over the years, but the garden is now mature and filled in, compared to the early photos of a house in an open field and, later, some straggly shoots looking much too far apart to ever develop into a hedge or an orchard. This was a very personal project for the couple and his love of the garden comes across strongly. It's enjoyable both as a love story about the idea of a garden and, on a more practical level, about garden design and planting.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-03-06 00:00:00 Greg Phillips Interesting book on the making of a formal garden in England.