Designing a Garden: Monk's Garden at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Michael Van Valkenburgh
The Monacelli Press, October 2019

Hardcover | 7-1/2 x 9-1/2 inches | 208 pages | English | ISBN: 978-1580935524 | $40.00

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:
In Designing a Garden, Van Valkenburgh presents the design of the Monk?s Garden at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, an intimate, walled garden that Laurie Olin has described as ?a masterpiece, and not a minor one.? The book documents the evolution of the garden?s design, which is based on the concept of meandering paths through a dreamlike woodland to create a contemplative space. Sketches and models show how the idea was worked out, and lush photographs reveal the completed garden through the seasons. Van Valkenburgh?s text explores the origins of his love of landscape and plants in his family farm in Upstate New York and how this has influenced his intuitions as a designer. He shares the full background story of the Monk?s Garden, focusing on the experimental nature of design work as well as the challenges and satisfactions of the small scale and the historic and cultural context. Designing a Garden provides a unique first-person account of the design process from the most prominent landscape architects in the country.
Michael Van Valkenburgh is the founder of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) and formerly the Charles Eliot Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture at the Graduate School of Design at Ha...