Vanished Gardens

This unique book is an invitation to visit the ever-changing ecosystem of a great American city. Author/gardener Sharon White was a new arrival in Philadelphia when she began researching the landscaping of naturalists and other plant lovers. By tracking the activities of gardeners from Colonial times to the present in personal documents and illustrations, White reveals the city's sometimes submerged, sometimes obliterated natural landscape. Her own precise, quietly elegant prose complements the meticulous journal entries of gardeners including the 18th-century "mistress of Stenton," Deborah Logan, and famed botanists John and William Bartram.