A Gardener's Labyrinth: Portraits of People, Plants & Places - Tapa dura

An evocation of the British garden past, present, and future, A Gardener's Labyrinth celebrates 50 visionary gardeners and their glorious gardens. Illustrated with outstanding images by acclaimed photographer Tessa Traeger, the book reveals a history of gardens from tiny city allotments to country estates and formality to wilderness, as seen through the eyes of those who have shaped them. Whether as designers or writers, horticulturists or conservationists, explorers or scholars, all have enriched and furthered the tradition of gardening. Patrick Kinmonth unravels the principles and philosophies that have informed the gardeners' work and explores new directions for gardens of the future. A brief biography of each gardener completes this elegant book, designed by Stephen Gan of Visionaire magazine.

Trained at Guildford School of Photography and Fine Art, Tessa Traeger has worked at Rossetti Studios in London since the 1960s. She is known especially for her still-life photographs, taken on large format cameras, many of which were published during her long association with British Vogue. Her beautifully crafted images of the French hill farmers in the Ardeche, a project she worked on for seven years, have also been highly acclaimed. Her work is represented in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Bibliotheque National in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Citibank collection in London, as well as numerous private collections. Traeger has won many awards including D&AD Silver for European Publicity Still Life, the Andre Simon Book Award for A Visual Feast, and Association of Photographers Awards in London. She has exhibited regularly since 1978 in Paris, London and Hamburg as well as participating in many group shows. Patrick Kinmonth studied English at Oxford University and has since worked as art director, writer, critic, painter and designer. His many commissions for sets and costumes can be seen in opera houses from Vienna to London. Exhibition designs include Mario Testino Portraits (London, Milan, Amsterdam and Tokyo), which he also curated, and Howard Hodgkin Set Designs (Aldeburgh Festival, Suffolk) As Arts Editor of British Vogue, Kinmonth commissioned some of the most formidable photographers of the time - Bailey, Kertesz, Lartigue, Horst and Bruce Weber. In addition, he has written numerous catalogue appraisals and essays on artists and photographers from Craigie Aitchison and Patrick Procktor to the Snowdon retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery, London.