THE DEVELOPER'S FRONTIER: THE MAKING OF THE WESTERN NEW YORK LANDSCAPE

tion; etc. All this information is here, and the fate of each garden, including periods of decline, war damage, and vandalism--is brought right up to date, even to the question of how to get in to see the gardens and what condition they’re likely to be in when you do. Chatfield’s role as a design critic is less strong. While this might not matter in a coffee-table book such as Gardens of the Italian Villas by Agnelli et al. (also published by Rizzoli, 1988), the inclusion of plans taken directly from Triggs and Shepherd and Jellicoe suggests a design orientation which is not fulfilled. If space and form, siting and context, are discussed in the text, the reader is thwarted by several difficulties in format. For example, the plans from Triggs have no scale or north point (although this is not true of the originals), and the all-important cross-sections showing the relationship of levels which accompany the plans in Triggs and Jellicoe/Shepherd are lamentably not included. Further, the photographs are not keyed to the plans, nor do they have captions. For a designer or design student unfamiliar with the gardens, it is difficult to understand their structure and scale, how they relate to the landscape, and how they were used or experienced. As a guide book, A Tour of Italian Gardens purports to be a source of information for the tourist. But this is limited to notes on whether the gardens are open to the public on a regular basis and, if not, whom to write to for permission to enter. This is useful enough, but by the author’s own admission this information is subject to change. The gardens are grouped geographically in regions from north to south, a convenience for travelers (as opposed to an order which might explain the evolution of the garden concept over time). There are no road maps or directions, however, such as are often found in garden guides to Britain where visiting gardens is a serious national pastime. As subjects for photography, gardens present great opportunities as well as problems. For the scholar, photographs provide information. For the lay person, atmospheric compositions or details may be more interesting. Liberto Perugi, whose attractive photographs illustrate this book, tends to cater to the latter. Triggs stated the dilemma clearly in his acknowledgement of Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond’s photographs for his book. "She was frequently handicapped," he wrote, "for the points of view chosen for pictures have often been selected more to show the general disposition of the garden than to obtain the most artistic result" (Triggs, p. vi). Both Le Blond’s and Masson’s photographs attempt to show the gardens spatially and in context. For example, Masson’s photograph of Isolabella includes the other side of the lake, whereas Perugi’s photograph from the same spot does not. The effect and the information conveyed is quite different. Assembling information on the villas together with new and old illustrations in one volume is useful. But the book is not clear about its objective. While for the historian it may be valuable, for the designer and tourist it falls short. Michael Laurie is a Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley, California 94720.