Words by Clare Foster

Images by Andrew Montgomery

Pastoral Gardens is a unique and ground-breaking book that crosses the boundaries of art, photography and design to explore some of the world's most beautiful, nature-led gardens. The pastoral garden is an intriguing contradiction. The word conjures up a rural idyll, with Hardyesque visions of a wild, untainted landscape - an idea that goes against the manicured expectation of formal or 'designed' green spaces. But our warming climate is propelling a monumental change in how we garden. Around the globe, garden-makers are responding to this new reality by creating remarkable, plant-filled spaces that are inspired by the untamed landscapes around us, building back habitats and increasing the biodiversity that has been lost.

Celebrating the astonishing beauty of wild landscapes, this book shows how we as humans can harness nature in our own gardens, exploring 20 gardens that embrace this bucolic ideal. Created by leading landscape designers, these gardens respond directly to the beauty of our natural habitats, with wildflower meadows and grazing cattle integrated into holistic spaces where the boundaries between a conventional garden and the wider landscape disappear. For the gardens that do not have the luxury of a rural outlook, it is the biodiversity within them that links their human occupants with nature.

Pastoral Gardens will appeal to lovers of art, photography and the natural world as much as it will to gardeners, designers and plantspeople. The essence of each garden is captured in over 250 breathtaking photographs by Andrew Montgomery with illuminating texts by Clare Foster exploring the history, design and planting of each garden. Four additional essays by Jinny Blom, Nigel Dunnett, Kim Wilkie and Tom Stuart-Smith consider the changing nature of garden design as the climate changes around us.

Published by Montgomerypress