The Art of the Japanese Garden: History / Culture / Design

A great primer on Japanese garden styles.Very accessible explanations, beautiful photography and illustrations, and excellent value for money.A great compliment to this book is Kawaguchi's 'Authentic Japanese Gardens', which shares similar characteristics.If you also enjoy books on this topic that are less 'how to' and more simply about beautiful photographs of beautiful Japanese gardens, then Itoh's 'The Gardens of Japan' is considered to be a classic along those lines, but it is showing its age, in terms of many of the photos being printed in black & white (interspersed with some nice full-page colour plates). Note that different editions of the book vary in size!.To my surprise, the images in Brown & Cobb's 'Quiet Beauty' are outstanding. I say surprise because this book is about North American examples of Japanese style gardens, and they can often miss the mark, but this book is largely an exception to that, and is filled with superb absolutely pin-sharp photography of some beautiful gardens. If you're a sucker for Japanese style gardens and photographs of them, then I highly recommend 'Quiet Beauty'. I have yet to find a book on the gardens in mainland Japan that trumps the equisite photography Cobb did of the North American gardens, and overlooking this book on account of the gardens not actualy being in Japan would be a missed opportunity - I know this because I myself nearly fell into that trap. If you're intending to build your own garden, then you will probably want to obtain some books on the philosophical underpinnings of how the Japanese styles evolved, some books on practical construction methods, and some for beautiful images that serve as inspiration.

Great book.Lovely images.Great service.

Very good quality excellent reference book.

I love the Japanese buildings and art.

The friend I bought it for was delighted, very informative

Beautiful book. Purchased as a gift, but I've had a look through and I'm really impressed. Very informative and engaging, with some gorgeous photography.

Lovely book with beautiful pictures.

Great book!