The Enclosed Garden

History and development of the hortus conclusus and its reintroduction into the present-day urban landscape

Rob Aben, Saskia de Wit

Design by Erik Wong, Annelies Frölke
Translation by John Kirkpatrick

English
256 pp / 230 x 170 mm / paperback / € 24.50
ISBN 90 6450 349 4
010 Publishers

google 'peter walker' and 'kathryn gustafson'

the urban pocket book

Straight from the Horses mouth...


i looked this over, but never had chance to look in more detail:

Osmundson, Theodore
Title Roof gardens : history, design, and construction / Theodore Osmundson
Imprint New York : W.W. Norton, c1999
Edition 1st ed


712.6 Os56r ( = the Dewey shelf number)



but i can't find anything when trying an author search on amazon.

There's an essay by Mona Houghton in Everyday Urbanism (monacelli) about a secret urban garden in her neighborhood in LA. It's up in Laurel Canyon so the urbanity might be less forthright than what you're looking for.

This is a great topic - are you putting together an article for your site?

there is a tv show in the u.k called the "urban gardener" its basically a home make over show (for gardens)

also check out alan ttchmarshes ground force.

mostly very twee and standard things, but there are a few nice projects

also in NYC there are public gardens maintained by volunteers

and try a search for allotments (the british equivilent) generally used as a place to escape teh wife, grow vegetables and flowers, lots of lovely self built garden sheds, and more like a market garden than a ornamental one, but you can rent them for as little as £15 a year!

I thought this was pretty interesting: Ken Smith's MoMA roof garden.

to the city of chicago website and type in roof gardens in their search box. lots of information there. peace

there are some great sites in NY- as mentioned before in the post done by volunteers on abandoned or vacant lots called green thumb

link

there is also a great law in tokyo i think- like 10%of rooves have to be green.

Granite Garden by Ann Whiston Spirn is very good. It has more to do with dealing with large scale urban ecology from a landscape design perspective, but a worthwhile read.