Beautiful Gardens of South Africa By Nancy Gardiner
Beautiful Gardens of South Africa (Premium Collectible Hardcover Edition)
A Visual Celebration of Masterful Landscape Design, Horticultural Artistry, and Diverse Regional Styles
A Visual Celebration of Masterful Landscape Design, Horticultural Artistry, and Diverse Regional Styles
Bibliographic Specifications
- Title: Beautiful Gardens of South Africa
- Author: Nancy Gardiner
- Publisher: Struik Timmins Publishers Ltd., Cape Town
- Publication Date: 1991
- ISBN-10: 0869785346
- ISBN-13: 9780869785348
- Edition Details: First Edition / First Printing. A beautifully preserved local heritage publication showcasing the premier domestic gardens of the late 20th century.
- Binding: Original publisher's premium full-cloth boards, structurally firm with crisp title stamping along the spine face.
- Physical Format: Large Quarto (4to), 176 pages. Lavishly supplemented with a stunning array of full-colour studio photographic illustrations documenting private estates, indigenous layouts, and historic cottage acreage.
- Language: English
Official Condition Report
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The Book: Very Good (VG)
- Exterior Boards: The original full-cloth hardboards are straight, solid, and flat. The spine face is completely unbroken, undamaged, and uncreased, with all corners holding firm lines. The casing displays light, age-appropriate storage shelf-rubbing along the base rims, completely consistent with careful domestic preservation.
- Interior: The textbook block binding remains robust and completely tight. Internal pages and brilliant high-gloss color plates are exceptionally clean, complete, clear, and intact. Completely free of modern ink highlighting, previous owner signatures, gift notes, dog-ears, or dealer pencil notations.
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The Dust Jacket: Very Good (VG)
- Condition & Integrity: The original graphic dust jacket is present. True to a large pictorial volume of this era, it exhibits signs of vintage wear, localized primarily as light edge-crinkling, minor handling friction, and micro-tears along the corner tips and spine boundaries. The jacket has been carefully stabilized, held together beautifully, and is now fully preserved under a high-grade archival cellophane protective cover sleeve.
Synopsis & Historical Value
First released in 1991 under the celebrated Struik Timmins imprint, Beautiful Gardens of South Africa stands as an elegant and deeply inspiring milestone in local botanical literature. Written and beautifully photographed by the legendary Nancy Gardiner, this classic volume serves as an extraordinary visual masterclass, inviting readers across the threshold of the most breathtaking private properties and public botanical havens in the country.
The work bridges the gap between pure horticultural science and fine art, exploring how local garden designers work with the land rather than against it. Gardiner tracks a magnificent array of regional gardening styles, from the sweeping, formal rose terraces of the Highveld and the lush, subtropical paradises of KwaZulu-Natal to the rugged, water-conscious indigenous rockeries of the Karoo and the historic Cape Dutch estate layouts of the Western Cape. Filled with spectacular, full-colour photographic plates that capture changing seasons and clever spatial textures, this well-maintained manual provides an invaluable reference tool for home designers seeking layout inspiration, native plant pairing ideas, and a rare look at South Africa's rich gardening legacy.
Author Profile: Nancy Gardiner
Nancy Gardiner was a highly distinguished South African photojournalist, horticultural authority, and prolific author whose multi-decade career profoundly shaped the visual identity of domestic landscape design. Widely celebrated for her long-standing, iconic contributions to South African Garden and Home magazine, Gardiner possessed a rare, brilliant ability to capture the soul of a garden through a camera lens. Her prolific publications, including Gardening with Nancy Gardiner and The South African Garden Design Book, earned her widespread praise from professional botanists and casual enthusiasts alike. Her enduring focus on biodiversity and climate-adapted aesthetics makes her collective works timeless reference assets for academic researchers and private antiquarian collectors nationwide.
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