Garden historian Peter Hayden conducts this wide-ranging and sumptuously illustrated history of the parks and gardens of Russia, spanning the millennium since the earliest Byzantine-influenced gardens of the 10th century. He discusses the influence of Peter the Great, who introduced new ideas and plants and employed designers from Holland, France, and Germany to create the Summer Garden at St. Petersburg and the great formal garden at Peterhof on the Gulf of Finland. Catherine the Great did much to introduce the English style of landscaping, and British gardeners were recruited to lay out parks for the Empress and other nobles.
"Beautifully illustrated throughout and packed with anecdotes bringing back not only these extraordinary parks and gardens, but the whole lost world in which they were created."—Daily Telegraph (London)
