Gardens, Annotated: Chris Young on why great gardens work
For Book Month, Grace interviews Chris Young, the former head of publishing at the RHS about his new book: Gardens, Annotated. 200 gardens, taken apart, understood, and explained.
Most garden books give you one of two things: beautiful pictures or practical how-to. Gardens, Annotated (DK), the new book from Chris Young, puts the two together, and I could not be more excited to learn more.
Chris is a landscape architect by training and was editor-in-chief of the RHS Encyclopedia of Garden Design. This time he takes 200 of the world’s best gardens, from private plots in Somerset to Herrenhausen in Germany, and annotates them. By which I mean, he explains, skilfully and thoughtfully, why they work.
He shows why the path goes where it does, what the pergola is there to do, and which tree is quietly screening the road. Once you see a garden explained, you can’t stop seeing it.
I adored the fact that the book is organised by principles rather than styles: routes, levels, views, focal points, planting, lifestyle. That means you don’t have to start at page one. I didn’t. I flicked through until a picture caught my eye, read the notes around it, and then I thought, “I could do that in my garden.”
In our conversation we talk about:
- how a book of 200 gardens was made without a huge amount of travel
- why gardens are always a reflection of their gardeners
- why story telling is the most important thing in garden writing
- what books can still offer in an age of endless free images
- the question he puts to every would-be author: would you invest £100,000 of your own money in this book?
If you’ve ever walked round a garden and wondered why it felt so right, this conversation, and this book, will show you.
Listen to the full interview below. If Chris leaves you wanting more, paid members can find his series How to Design a Garden in the archive.
Chris Young
