No city has played a more seminal role in the development of "landscape" as a concept than has Venice. In a city where the land and gardens are reclaimed from a lagoon environment whose ecology is in jeopardy today, they are the very basis of life, dwelling, and culture. This book develops a typology of gardens distinguished by their predominantly small scale, all of which work with essential dimensions of landscape architecture: private and public space, usefulness and beauty, and open space in a densely built environment that is permeated with history. From nearly one hundred city gardens, squares, and courtyards, public parks and temporary gardens, this book identifies garden layout and design elements that involve both material factors – spatial and design-related features – as well as the social circumstances of their use. The areas presented include the Arsenale, where the Paradise Garden was created for the 2008 Biennale by Gustafson Porter, and the giardini and public gardens that – since their creation two hundred years ago – have served as a laboratory for making Venice into a modern city with a strong appeal to the "natural".

John Dixon Hunt is Professor Emeritus of the University of Philadelphia School of Design at Pennsylvania. Among his many publications are: The Genius of the Place, MIT Press; The Picturesque Garden in Europe, Thames & Hudson; The Afterlife of Gardens, Reaktion Press); L'art du Jardin et son Histoire, Odile Jacob; Nature Over Again: the Garden Art of Ian Hamilton Finlay, Reaktion Press.