I just loved this book.Claire Takacs is a superb photographer and this book is really a hymn to her work. I've got quite a lot of books about gardens ......especially Australian gardens and the thing that strikes me about the photos used to illustrate them is that it's really hard to capture the real mood of a garden in photographs ....especially if the photographer just has to use the available light.. And especially if that light is in the middle of the day.The contrasts are too great and the colours flattened. But Tackacs has clearly taken her time and chosen her time of day carefully. Clearly, she prefers (in nearly all cases) to photograph when the sun is low in the sky. It looks to me like she is photographing in the late afternoon judging by the rather golden light and the general lack of dew in the photos.And it also looks to me like she has chosen to take most of there photos during the late spring into early summer because of the proliferation of flowers. Sure the gardens are probably looking near their best at that time of the year but i know from reading the works of Piet Oudorf and the words of the individual gardeners in the current book, that most of them are designing their gardens so that they can look good .....or interesting......at all times of the year......even in the snow of winter. And I missed that element in the current book. I don't recall any photos of the gardens in the late autumn or middle of winter when one might expect to see the tall stark seed pods or the skeletons of the formerly exuberant perennials.
I find myself reminded of the autumnal grasses on slopes near Hakone in Japan where the 2m high grasses with their heads cover an entire hillside and have been a viewing attraction for Japanese for at least 100 years (because my mother in law was taken there by her father as a child and i got the impression that he might have been there as a child himself). And these same grasses feature quite heavily in the art work of the Rinpa school in Japan...mainly (I think) the Japanese pampas grass Miscanthus sinensis. So these wild gardens have long been appreciated elsewhere in the world.
I found the individual stories quite fascinating, yet there were a few consistent themes; the seasons in Australia were getting drier; it was really difficult to source desired species in Australia and gardeners had to make do with what they could obtain; and the whole idea of wild perennial plantings was comparatively new in Australia. And many of them had abandoned any pretence of staying within the confines of native species only in their gardens.
I also found a few names kept cropping up; Piet Oudorf ...the Dutch garden designer, and Christopher Lloyd and his Great Dixter garden. I'd never heard of the latter so I googled it and sure the house and gardens are quite spectacular judging by the photos I could see but I felt that the gardens in the current book could hold their own in comparison with this famous garden. (Though maybe it was the magic touch of Claire Takacs with her photos that made the difference).
I don't recall any gardens from Western Australia or Queensland in the current book and I would be interested in seeing such gardens. Certainly, the hot dry tropics (or west tropics in Queensland would present very different challenges in terms of perennial plantings.
Oh...that's something else that struck me about the perennial gardens. It seems that in early winter, the gardeners simply go through their gardens with a hedge trimmer of a whipper-snipper and just cut everything down into mulch. Then they wait to see what grows. I found this a curious way to garden but I guess that one does need to renew and refresh and it also gives new seedlings a chance to show their wares.
I liked the title......"Australian Dreamscapes". Some of the gardens are indeed dreamy...enhanced, of course by the warm glow of the setting sun....or the fading mists of the morning. And many of the gardeners themselves remarked that they just liked to sit in their gardens and enjoy them. Most of the people interviewed appeared to be very much hands-on gardeners. In other books on gardens, I 've noticed a tendency for the owner to do most of the talking but other "full-time" gardening staff were doing all the work.
Bottom line is that I really loved the book and especially the photos. Quite outstanding work...the top photo on p256 (Simon Rickard's garden) illustrates this.....a golden highlight in the middle background of the photo...just catching the light and standing out against the clear bright greens in the foreground. I also note that she favours photographing into the light ....with that beautiful backlit effect with the grasses. Easily worth five stars from me. ( )