You’ll definitely want to put The New Beautiful (Rizzoli International Publications, Inc, 2025) on your garden gift list. Gardens Illustrated magazine has taken on the task of selecting the gardens across the world that illustrate the very best in contemporary design. While most of the gardens are in the British Isles, there are also featured gardens in the United States, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France and Greece.
The 52 gardens profiled in the book represent the best of modern designers along with the best of their contemporary ideas for hardscape, plants, and overall design. In a foreword to the book, designer Piet Oudolf notes that the magazine always features well-known designers, but also emerging talents who are just beginning to show their work. “I am pleased to see,” he says, “that the team at Gardens Illustrated continue to actively seek out, discover and promote not just new designers but also the skilled gardeners we need to look after our planting.” He adds that there’s no other magazine that keeps you updated “with what is going on in the world of gardens…” This book entirely embraces that idea.
There’s always a garden visionary, and back many decades ago, in the Netherlands, that person was Mien Ruys. She was truly the mother of modern garden design, and you may now read all about her and her life’s work in The Gardens of Mien Ruys (Timber Press, 2024) by Connie den Hollander, who is head of the gardens and has worked there since 2010.
den Hollander takes you through Mien’s life, from her birth in 1904, through the rest of her years in the nursery and gardens started by her grandfather. As she says in the preface to the book, “My intention was to record the story of a talented woman and her gardens. Someone who was ahead of her time and who — as a woman — managed to become a respected and successful garden designer and landscape architect.” The book includes sections on Mien’s experiments with plants, illustrations of her “plans” for gardens, and lovely photos of the gardens as they are today. If you’re an aficionado of today’s modern gardens, you’ll want to know how it all began, and you’ll find out in this book.
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