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Garden
and Climate
By Chip Sullivan
The author of Garden and Climate is Associate Professor of Landscape
Architecture in the College of Environmental Design at the University
of California, Berkeley. It is therefore perhaps surprising that the inspiration
for his book came from a belated recognition that the formal gardens of
the Persians, Romans and Renaissance Italians were more than exercises
in geometry, possessing "ingenious passive methods to control climates
and microclimates".
Garden and Climate is primarily a book about the details of these
historic gardens which were used to modify microclimate rather than about
garden history or garden design as such. The author praises the wisdom
of the makers of historic gardens around the Mediterranean and seeks to
disseminate that wisdom to today's landscape architects in the hope of
reducing our profligate use of fossil fuels, pointing out that one third
of America's consumption of fossil fuels is used to heat or cool buildings.
The book is in four
sections: earth (and its cooling effects), fire (the warming effect of
the sun), air (and its cooling effects) and water (again for cooling).
Each section contains numerous examples of features - turf seats, grottoes,
loggias, pergolas, cascades and water jokes - used to modify the microclimate
of the house and garden. Each is illustrated with delightful pen drawings,
very reminiscent of Jellicoe and Shepherd's Italian Gardens of the
Renaissance (1925) and undoubtedly the best part of the book. Each
chapter ends with a rather facile "how to do it now" section
and a hypothetical garden in which all the features described in the chapter
are incorporated.
Richard Bisgrove
Garden and Climate
(288 pages) is published by McGraw-Hill Education, Shoppenhangers
Road, Maidenhead, Berkshire SL6 2QL. Price £32.99 (hardback), ISBN
007 027103 8.
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