California Eden

A striking and elegant coffee-table book highlighting cultural landscapes in California.

California’s diverse vernacular and designed landscapes have roots in the late 1700s Spanish colonization of what was then called Alta California. The state also has a unique endemic flora and rich botanical history from both the Indigenous people’s “protoagriculture” and prescribed burn pyrodiversity to plant introductions by settlers and others that continue to this day. For many people, however, the concept of landscape is associated with gardens, especially estate gardens. Yet landscape design reaches far beyond the elite circles of private estates; California Eden: Heritage Landscapes of the Golden State showcases a wide range of landscapes from the professional to the vernacular through exceptional essays from early issues of Eden: Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society freshly edited for the book with new color images. Entries highlight famous and beloved estate gardens but also more frequently overlooked landscapes such as shopping malls, streetscapes, golf courses, and vernacular sites. From a military installation on the California-Mexico border to the Japanese American gardens of San Diego, the essays speak to design as well as the challenges of historic preservation of these-often ephemeral places. As elegant as it is informative, California Eden is an essential book for anyone who is passionate about history as experienced through the lens of landscapes.