California Gardens: Creating a New Eden
Almost everyone knows that California has incredible gardens,  but not everyone knows that California landscape architecture dates  back to the mission era, when priests imported the olive tree and  Mexican fan palm.California Gardensdepicts the high points of  California gardening over the last century and a half, from the mission  gardens to the custom-designed lawns and flower beds of the wealthy and  tasteful. David Streatfield's text explains how the state's ecology and  evolving architectural styles borrowed from other areas have influenced  garden design. The book's final chapter, "Old Realities, New  Possibilities," addresses the modern problems of designing for  space and water efficiency. This is a scholarly and thought-provoking  work, but is also exuberantly beautiful.