William Thompson Esq. The Walton Grange Gardens Stone Staffordshire 1898

22pp, 6 colour litho plates. Tall 4to. Lettered wrappers. Warappers a little worn. Staples slightly rusted else good. Sale conduced by Potheroe & Morris, Horticultural Auctioneers and Valuers. May 11th and 12th 1898. Lewis Castle, in his book on "Orchids, Their structure, history and culture" lists Thompson in his inventory of the principal amateur ochardists in Britain 1886. One or two red ink notes on prices on the first illustration.

Cambridge Mass. and London Yale University Press, Paul Mellon Studies for British Art

440pp, 300 colour and 100 b/w plates.Winner of the 2013 David R. Coffin Publication Grant, given by the Foundation for Landscape Studies. Inspired by the pioneering naturalist Gilbert White, who viewed natural history as the common study of cultural and natural communities. Mark Laird is a historic landscape consultant and garden conservator and teaches landscape history at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University.

Chichester, Phillimore 1990

262pp illustrated with b/w plates. Fine in dust wrapper. Readable account of the estate and mansion drawing on contemporary accounts and archival material. Extensive material on the work of the Bridgewater - the Canal Duke - with a chapter on the gardens and park including details of the work of Repton. Brown is responsible for the "golden valley" at Ashridge, made in a narrow dry valley edged with curving woodland at its edges. Useful overview on the history of the estate.

London E. Lloyd and Son 1829

Second edition revised. Volume I, xilvii + 333 pages Volume 2 viii + 423pp + full index. Quarter calf, marbled boards. Missing title label on volume 1. Tooled spines. Henry Phillips (1775?-1838) was both a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society, and the Linnaean Society. Popular writer on horticulture.

St Louis and University of Missouri Press 1986

304pp with over 250 b/w photographs, maps and plans throughout. Cloth vg indeed in dw, similar with very light shelf-wear in protective glassine. Founded in the 1870s, the park was the site of the 1904 World's Fair, and played host to festivals and concerts throughout the 20th century. This is a beautifully illustrated account of its history, showing how this important civic landscape has been shaped by time and the needs of the city, combining conservation and innovation. Dedication copy signed by both authors.

London Ernest Benn Ltd 1927

248 pp., beautifullly illustrated with b/w photographs and plans. Large 4to. Open weave cloth spine with paste down label, blue sugar paper covered boards. Very good copy. Massive study on the principles of garden design with useful material on Versailles and André le Nôtre, Italian gardens and the English style. Hard to find in this edition.

Glasgow Garden Festival 1988

160pp illus with colour and b/w plates and including period ads. 4to. Decorated wrappers featuring Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. Key source for the pavilions, gardens, outdoor sculpture and spaces. Loosely inserted press releases and photocopies relating to the event. Loosely inserted are two copies of one leaflet advertising the Gateshead festival to be held in 1990.

Milano Electa 1988

360pp illus with b/w and colour plates with illustrations drawn also from period maps and plans. Square 4to. Very good with dust wrapper. With nice slipcase. Individual contributors, each an expert in their field docujment individual gardens in the area. Superbly produced book. Text in Italian.

Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press 1924

(i-ii)+frontispiece+(iii-xxiv)+(i)+1-770, includes several full page illustrations as well as in-text illustrations, an appendix and an index, previous owner name and address in front board, green boards with gilt lettering on front board and spine, maps of the Metropolitan District of Boston showing local public holdings of the Metropolitan Park Commission from 24 January 1893 and 1 July 1910 inserted in front and rear pockets. 8vo. Biography of the American landscape architect Charles Eliot (1859-1897) which includes Eliot's own writings. Dedication page: For the dear son who died in his bright prime from the father. A very good copy. Eliot was a devotee of the picturesque and travelled to Europe to observe first hand the works of Repton, Brown, Prince Puklau Muskau. In his short career he worked in his own right before joining the Olmsted practice. He died at 38. HIs major legacy is aguably the landscape of the Charles River in Boston.

London Francis Lincoln 2008

256pp illus. Small 4to. Attractive bright yellow dust wrapper. Useful assessment of this key figure and author of the beautiful "Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris". His lifelong passion for plants was intimately bound up with the new dawn of scientific enquiry and the struggles of faith. The book follows him from a humble childhood in Lancashire to a career as an apothecary in London which would bring him to high office under Charles I. It investigates how he tried, with his medical colleagues, to create a new 'common wealth' to replace the old monastic system, vesting his effort in writing the most comprehensive and scientific herbal there had ever been in English. Yet as a Catholic he kept a low profile, quietly growing an extraordinary range of flowers for 'delight and pleasure' in his notable garden in Covent Garden.

London, Thames and Hudson 2006

192pp with colour illustrations throughout. Cloth in d/w, new copy, still in plastic wrapping. A survey of modern Brazilian garden design, divided into chapters on water features, planting features, abstraction features and sculpture features, each showcasing the work of a number of designers. Lovely illustrations. In print at 29.95.

nd c1880-1890

Hand written title page in ink "Isles of Scilly". 40 large format photographs, some 8x10 inches(203mm x 254mm) and others 6x8 inches(152mm x 203mm). + 5pp snapshots All sepia. Foxing to mounts and some browning to these all but the first two images unaffected by foxing. Late nineteenth century album rebound in modern cloth preserving original album spine. New end papers. Overall 80% of images are sharp, 20% have some fading but in all cases the interest and quality of the compositions is very good. The images comprise the house and gardens at Tresco Abbey including 2 striking 8x10 inch (203mm x 254mm) interiors of the house, further interiors and exteriors of one of the green houses, the ornamental grounds with subtropical plants including Yucca's and setting. Yet other images document social history aspects of the island. These document working life, daffodil fields, commercial flowers and fishing. Others concentrate on leisure pursuits including tennis + rowing. The sea is always present. 18 of the images are attributable to the the Gibsons and 8 to John Valentine but others have no attribution. The album includes two images of the contemporary ferry, possibly the Little Western. As well as an image of Cromwell's Castle, built after the 1651 conquest of the Scilly Isles it is one of the few surviving Cromwellian fortifications in Britain. Also excellent images record the unique coastal geology of Peninnis Head (Southern most point of saint Mary's) and Round Island Lighthouse designed by William Tregathen Douglas for Trinity House, completed in 1887. These images also give a fascinating insight into period dress. A rare insight into the social history, architecture, geology and horticulture of a unique island at at time when the proprietors of the Scilly's was Thomas Algernon Smith-Dorrien-Smith of Tresco Abbey.

A. Arruda, Azores 1962

18 b/w photographs. All images 240x175, mounts 450x370. Complete set of loose folios, possibly once into an album. Images very good. Mounts slightly scuffed at edges. Captions in white ink in Portuguese. The photographs record pineapple growing - the operation owned by Dr Augusto Rebello Arruda on the Azorean islands of island of St Michael. They were taken in 1962 to celebrate the visit of the president of the Portuguese Republic, Admiral Thomas Americo, and his wife. Pineapples in the Azores are grown under glass. The photographs illustrate the complete process: the gathering of materials, the erection and maintenance of large greenhouses, and the harvesting, packaging and exportation of the fruit. All photographs are accompanied by captions in Portuguese. Together they constitute a fascinating record of large-scale fruit-growing in the early 1960s, blending traditional and modern methods. A. Arruda Pineapple Plantation is still functioning today.

8pp illustrated with b/w plates. Pencil prices given for some lots which made up the small estate. Large colour fold out plan at the end showing the extent of the estate for sale at the time

nd c1869-1875

Weeks & Co, Kings Road, Chelsea, London ..... 'Horticultural Builders and Warming Engineers. Perspective view of the conservatory in pen and ink 350x580mm + two plans and a sectional drawing each 300x500mm, unframed. Major Nathaniel Bousfield, MP for Bath lived for a few years at Parkside in a house designed by J. S. Crowther for Robert Crewsden, a textile manufacturer from Alderley Edge where Crowther was based. Crowther is probably best known for his restoration work at Manchester Cathedral. He built a fine gothic revival house in 1865. The Crewsden family sold the property to Bousfield in 1869 but they sold it on in 1875 dating these drawings between these two dates. Superb pen and ink perspective and one plan which documents the floor plan with plants in situ. Beautifully executed. Weeks & Co are are well known firm and were working from the 1820s on glass houses. By 1818 they had established a nursery in London but soon developed both a system of hot houses and heating systems for them using steam. The firm had various financial ups and downs but after 1840 they grew from strength to strength. In 1853 designed the Grand Winter Garden at Chelsea to promote the firm and act as a second Crystal Palace for London. Surviving plans for domestic hot houses rarely appear on the market for sale. There are plans for Ingestree Hall by Weeks in Staffordshire Record Office and other sets for sites in Suffolk and Herefordshire.

Journal of Garden History Volume 8 no 2 and 3 1989

Special double issue edited by Joh Dixon Hunt. Parallel texts in English and Dutch. 16pp colour plates + 100s of b/w plates. Long 4to. Decorated wrappers. Produced in association with the major exhibition on gardens of these period hosted by Christies and also held at Het Loo.

London B T Batsford (1900) Revised fourth edition 1912

x + 404+ pp. index, with 432 figures including more than 400 b&w plates (from photos, plans and drawings of gardens), also including 5 full page colour plates from watercolours by E.A. Rowe and E.A. Chadwick; photographic end-papers' Folio. Green gilt decorated cloth. lCoth slightly browned on spine else a very good copy indeed. A desirable edition recording the projects and setting out the principles of landscape design as interpreted by one of the most influential garden designers of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Dedication copy from Thomas Mawson to his pupil J. Grant Brown signed and dated Thomas Mawson 24th December 1912.

London The Architectural Press 1973

136pp illustrated with b/w photographs. small 4to cloth boards in illustrated dust wrapper, chipped at the top edge, preserved in plastic sleeve. Pioneering book, looks at the changing nature + scale of the urban garden due to the scarcity + increasing expense of urban space. Includes sections on courtyards, the outdoor room, entrances/pathways, roofs etc.

Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press 1988 (1975)

216pp illustrated in b/w. Wraps, lightly creased, else good. Applies Kevin Lynch's 'perceptual analysis' of urban space to the rural landscape, exploring how people move through it and identify with landmarks etc. In the second section of the book he explores the implications of this for the historically layered Japanese landscape. Translated by Charles Terry. From the library of the Landscape Design Trust, with small stamp on fep.

Edinburgh & London William Blackwood 1893

136pp with some text ills as line drawings, 24pp catalogue of books on rural affairs. Green gilt lettered cloth with rabbit in gilt on upper board. Very good. On how to set up a warren for commercial ends, the book represents a revival in estate management of breeding rabbits for commercial purposes. Fascinating period item for those interested in the history of estate management and landscape design of large parkland landscapes as well as those closely interested in the rabbit.