Historical Garden Design Online

The collection includes such watershed works as Salomon de Caus´ Hortus Palatinus (1620), Dominicus Barrière's Villa Aldobrandina Tusculana sive varij illius hortorum et fontium prospectus (1647), Giovanni Battista Falda's Li Giardini di Roma(1680), and Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld´s Theorie der Gartenkunst(1779-85). Also included are the lesser known, but nevertheless, important works, such as Heinrich Hesse´s Neue Garten-Lust(1696) and Die Gartenkunst(1797) by J. F. Blotz (pseudonym of F.Ch. Touchy).

Johann Gottfried Grohmann´s Ideenmagazin für Liebhaber von Gärten(Leipzig, 1796-1802) offers insights into garden ornaments used for well-to-do gardens. The Dutch publication Het vermakelyk land-leven (Amsterdam, 1710-11) includes fascinating views of gardens of the same period in the Netherlands. Such a lesser known publication as Bernhard Christoph Faust´sZur Sonne nach Mittag sollten alle Häuser der Menschen gerichtet seyn (n.p., c. 1824) offers interesting views of the application of the English landscape garden to row houses. The two volumes of Theatri machinarum hydraulicarumby Jacob Leupold (Leipzig, 1724-25) elucidate how to construct water fountains and show, e. g., parts of the water technique used to run the fountains of the Marly garden. Last but not least, numerous titles deal with the most important seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century gardens in Europe, such as Rome, Firenze, Stowe, Versailles, and Schwetzingen.

Also represented in this collection are the diaries and works on garden design by the virtuoso John Evelyn (1620-1706) who was a pivotal figure in seventeenth-century intellectual life in England.

This collection consists of works from the following IDC microfiche collections:
Garden Design, 16th-19th Century
Italian Garden Design
John Evelyn – an English Virtuoso