At a time when visiting gardens is difficult and getting to America even harder, travelling by book is the next best thing. It’s a role that Monty Don’s American Gardens fulfils admirably, capturing in words and photos the sheer scale and horticultural variety the country offers.
The book, illustrated with photos by Derry Moore, is the follow-up to their BBC series and covers gardens ranging from the cactus-filled Desert Botanical Garden in Arizona, to Central Park in the heart of New York, and the irrigated golf course come garden of Sunnylands in California.
Along the way, we learn of Jefferson’s obsession with growing peas, explore the little piece of Italy in Miami that is Vizcaya and marvel at Henry and Lorna Domke’s prairie meadow in Missouri.
Middleton Place in Charleston is America’s oldest landscape garden with awe-inspiring live oaks, Quercus virginiana, that drip with Spanish moss.
Chanticleer in Pennsylvania is divided into different ‘gardens’ each managed by different head gardeners. The resulting mixture of styles and ideas makes it “like visiting the Chelsea Flower Show and going from show garden to show garden”. It’s not a style that meets with the author’s approval.
Climate and landscape are ever present and never more so than in the desert gardens of Arizona where the heat is so intense that outside space cannot be used for half the year. As a consequence, designer Steve Martino starts in the house, creating “a series of tableaux to be viewed from inside”.
Woven through the horticultural quest are little glimpses of the mechanics of the journey from confusion over an airport location to a fire in a Charleston restaurant.
American Gardens is not a mere replica of the TV programme as photographer and writer did not always travel together, deciding early on that “we would not be bound to trace each other’s footsteps”.
As a result, there are gardens that did not appear on television and feature in the book purely from Derry’s perspective with photos and captions but no accompanying words.
Likewise, several gardens that Monty filmed were unvisited by the photographer and the text has no accompanying images.
While the wish to include as many gardens as possible is understandable, it does make it somewhat unsatisfying. Captions are rarely a substitute for a considered comment on a garden, while Monty’s prose would have been so much better with an accompanying image.
It is a minor quibble and overall the book is a fascinating exploration of a way of gardening far removed from the familiar English style.
The introduction poses the question “What is an American garden?” It appears that much like the country, it’s impossible to pin down to just one thing. Rather it is a collection of garden styles, shaped by the landscape around them.
American Gardens by Monty Don and Derry Moore is published by Prestel, with an RRP of £35. You can buy it here for £25.19 (If you buy through this link, I receive a small fee. The price you pay is unaffected.)
Top picture: Cacti at Sunnylands, California. Photo © Derry Moore
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