Garden Room Style Book

Peter Marston's book is coffee-table fare of a superior sort: a potted history of garden rooms, from the simplicity and elegance of the 18th-century orangery through elaborate Victorian confections of glass, wood and cast iron--brim-full of exotics from the colonies but with little enough room for people--to the plethora of options today's House & Garden set enjoy when it comes to dining, living and even working within breathing distance of the garden. Marston's definitions of what constitutes a garden interior are set satisfyingly wide: some of the decorative rules of garden rooms apply equally well to rooftop terraces, particularly when they are shielded from the harshest summer sun by dramatic canvas shades. Nor, indeed, does every garden room in this book come accompanied by a garden: one of the more illuminating of the book's many high-quality photographs captures a tiny town conservatory overlooking a passageway softened by a trellis and pots. In chapters on plants, textures and materials, imagination is married to good practical sense. Advice on wicker furniture--always out of date, always treated with a certain degree of embarrassment, yet constantly, thanks to its strength and lightness, being "rediscovered"--is particularly welcome. --Simon IngsRead More