About the Author

JOHN BROOKES (1933-2018) designed gardens all around the world, among them the College Green Garden at Westminster Abbey, the English Walled Garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden, the Barakura English Garden in Tateshina, Japan, the Zespol Palace Park in Kikole, Poland, and many gardens in Russia, the Middle East, and all over Europe and North and South America. He also taught garden design all over the world, and in 1980 he founded the Clock House School of Garden Design at Denmans, West Sussex.

John Brookes was awarded an MBE for garden design and services to horticulture, the Award of Distinction of the American Association of Professional Landscape Designers, the Garden Writers’ Association of America Award of Excellence, and countless other international awards, including four Chelsea Flower Show Gold Medals. He lived at Denmans in West Sussex. John Brookes died in March 2018. 

Reviews

"This attractively produced book is essential reading for anyone interested in garden design and history."
*Telegraph Gardening Books of the Year*

“We are fortunate that he lived to complete this book, for he was an inspired teacher and mentor as well as a designer, and every page, with its plans, elevations and photographs, underscores not only his expertise but his powers in communicating it.”
*Spectator, The Year's Best Gardening Books*

"A delightful and insightful book and as important in the literature of garden design as Brookes' monumental Room Outside."
*Irish Garden Plant Society blog*

"To read this book is to understand the history and development of contemporary garden design. Brookes' legacy is utterly significant to the creation of the modern garden and this memoir is a book all landscape designers should have on their bookshelves."
*The Garden*

"This is one book that deserves its place on the bookshelf and I know it will be treasured by many, including myself, for decades to come."
*Reckless Gardener*

 ‘Enrolling in the garden design course at Kew was my best investment ever. John Brookes was the teacher – he is probably the most influential (as well as the most acclaimed) garden designer of the twentieth century. And he is a very good teacher as well.’
*Cleve West*

‘John Brookes’s precise eye and talent make most current garden design look tone deaf – he draws out the essence of the site and adds an undercurrent of strong emotion and personal style that allows the land to reveal its character.’
*Janice Parker*

"It is no exaggeration to say that John Brookes transformed 20th-century garden design, not only in his native Britain but throughout the world. Here, he tells his story and reflects on how his thinking about garden design, and design generally, has developed."
*Listed Property Owners Club magazine*