I enjoyed this book but crikey he s erudite I ended up reading it by the computer so I could look things up Latin French Italian vocabulary plant species Luckily I know literature reasonably well because there was a lot of that as well Still lots of ideas to make it worth while. I started skimming over the second half which was applying the principles and ideas from the first half to individual gardens but I really enjoyed the first half 192 What do we expect of gardens when we make them and when we visit them Could we get from them if we thought harder about what it is we want and why we make gardens This book approaches the experience of being in a garden from many different angles questioning many of our easily adopted assumptions and suggesting ways of getting from any garden whether it is our own or one we are visiting What Are Gardens For Experiencing Making and Thinking About Gardens.