One of my favourite subjects! I collect antique gardening books, picking them up at garage sales, used book shops etc. I have books 30 to over 100 years old. A couple of my favourites are A Guide to the Wild Flowers by Alice Lounsberry with over 60 colour plates by Mrs. Ellis Rowan and Our Ferns in Their Haunts by Willard N. Clute. Both these books are over 100 years old.
A little newer, is a book by Margaret Goldsmith in 1937 called Friday-to-Monday Gardening. It is a lovely read about her restoration and garden planting over many years at her summer home in upstate New York, in a 1700's cottage called Limecot.
For anyone restoring a Craftsman home and wanting to plant a garden to complement, I recommend In Harmony With Nature-Lessons From the Arts and Crafts Garden by Rick Dark.
He is a well known garden writer and the book has lots of historic information and lush photography.
Well, this is a start...I'll think of more later!
Anne-Marie

Nice thread Ginny. Here's two I've been wanting to recommend to someone:

1) American Garden Writing: An Anthology (ed. Bonnie Marranca -- expanded edition 2003). It's a collection of essays and excerpts -- some practical, some poetic -- from about 50 different authors, ranging in date from the late 17th century to the late 20th. If you're someone who doesn't always have long uninterrupted periods for reading, this gives nice food for thought in shorts bursts.

2) Beatrix Farrand's American Landscapes: Her Gardens & Campuses. This 4-chapter book appears to have been written as a catalog to an exhibition many moons ago. I found it to be a nice blend of biography and the history of landscape design. Those with an interest in women's history will also enjoy this account of how a woman with vision was able to succeed in what was an extremely male-dominated profession.

I'm looking forward to other responses. -- Kate

Not about historic gardens, but two books I came across recently:
Residential Landscape Architecture by James E. Hiss and Norman K. Booth. A Landscape Design course I'm taking uses excerpts from this book to illustrate basic design principles. It describes the problems most commonly found in residential properties, and how to deal with site conditions such as wind, sun, drainage, and how to measure, analyze, and design or re-design a residential landscape, including how to interview clients before doing a design. No pretty pictures, only line-drawings, but a good basic book on design, and a lot of info I hadn't seen in other design books I have.

The other is Garden Design: How to Be Your Own Landscape Architect by Robin Williams. It covers a lot of the basics, materials, and design elements, including some nice examples of actual site layouts without getting bogged down with plant selection. It had nice examples of pergola, fence, wall, and paving styles. The examples of symmetrical and asymmetrical formal gardens were especially interesting to me, as I love formal-style gardens and was frequently at a loss when trying to design around existing structures or plants, or a less than symmetrical lot. I particularly enjoyed this one.
Jo

"Onward and Upward in the Garden"
a compilation of the columns of Katherine White, who wrote for the New Yorker publication til about 1958. She's a Maine native and talks about Maine and New England plantings, nurseries, traditions, and best of all *catalogs*
It's the catalog reviews that are fascinating because you get a very long perspective of catalogs for ornamentals and vegetables, some exist today and some do not. Sounds like dry reading to some, but I had a few aha! moments that made it worth the read
:-)
Cheers
Maryanne in frigid WMass

Here is a link that might be useful: Onward and upward review

I second "Onward and Upward in the Garden". Good Read.

Interesting. That book came out a long time ago--maybe 20 years? It did ok but not fabulously. There were lots of remaindered copies in every book store. But its reputation has slowly increased and now it is considered something of a modern classic. I think, IMHO, that it is because gardeners--and therefore garden readers--have become much more knowledgeable and sophisticated. I hope this rediscovery happens to others as well, as it has for Elizabeth Lawrence, for instance. And most of all, I wish publishers today would take a risk on publishing books like this by current writers. Katherine White's book got published because of her New Yorker connection and her husband's fame and personal efforts. That's my rant for the day!