There are some good visual histories of the designed landscape which might complement this Very Short Introduction where the space available for illustration has been necessarily limited. A perennial favourite is The Landscape of Man: Shaping the Environment from Prehistory to the Present Day (3rd edition, Thames & Hudson, 1995) written by Geoffrey Jellicoe, Britain’s most eminent 20th-century landscape architect, and illustrated with his sketches and photographs by his wife, Susan Jellicoe. William Mann’s Landscape Architecture: An Illustrated History covers the same ground with plans and drawings but no photographs. Another good historical survey is Tom Turner’s Garden History: Philosophy and Design 2000 BC–2000 AD (Routledge, 2005).
For anyone thinking of studying to enter the profession, there are several good introductory textbooks. Tim Waterman’s The Fundamentals of Landscape Architecture is concise, well-written, and well-illustrated (AVA Publishing, 2009). A much heftier book, at least in size, is Barry Starke and John Ormsbee Simonds’ Landscape Architecture: A Manual of Environmental Planning and Design, which is now in its 5th edition (McGraw-Hill Professional, 2013). Catherine Dee’s To Design Landscape: Art, Nature & Utility (Routledge, 2012) is very approachable and beautifully illustrated, as is her earlier book Form & Fabric in Landscape Architecture: A Visual Introduction (Taylor & Francis, 2001). My own Ecology, Community and Delight (E. & F. N. Spon, 1999) and Rethinking Landscape (Routledge, 2007) are concerned with the concepts and values that are inherent in landscape architectural practice. Susan Herrington has also probed these matters in On Landscape (Routledge, 2008), which is part of the Thinking in Action series. There have been two credible attempts to collate landscape architectural theory: Theory in Landscape Architecture: A Reader, edited by Simon Swaffield (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), and Landscape Architecture Theory: An Evolving Body of Thought by Michael D. Murphy (Waveland Press, 2005).
There are numerous good biographies of particular landscape gardeners and landscape architects. In view of Frederick Law Olmsted’s centrality in the transition from gardening to landscape architecture, I would recommend Witold Rybczynski’s A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century (Prentice Hall and IBD, 2000). Janet Waymark’s Thomas Mawson: Life, Gardens and Landscapes (Frances Lincoln, 2009) covers the career of the first president of Britain’s Institute of Landscape Architects. Brenda Colvin’s contribution to the discipline is presented in Trish Gibson’s Brenda Colvin: A Career in Landscape (Frances Lincoln, 2011). Ian McHarg’s A Quest for Life: An Autobiography (John Wiley & Sons, 1996) is characteristically entertaining. Similarly, Lawrence Halprin’s colourful career emerges vividly from his autobiography A Life Spent Changing Places (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). There are, of course, numerous monographs presenting the work and ideas of particular designers or design firms, far too many to catalogue here. There are also, from time to time, large compendiums which present a wide range of current practice. A fairly recent one is 1000 x Landscape Architecture (Braun, 2009). There is also Philip Jodidio’s Landscape Architecture Now! (Taschen, 2012). These make good coffee table books and might also be good sources for design ideas.
Some landscape architects have been good writers as well as talented designers, so there is a corpus of classic books which I should mention. When first published, Thomas Church’s Gardens are for People ushered in Modernist garden design (3rd revised edition, University of California Press, 1995). Garrett Eckbo’s Landscape for Living, first published in 1950, is now back in print (University of Massachusetts Press, 2009). Ian McHarg’s Design with Nature is often said to have been the most influential book ever published by a landscape architect, and the 25th anniversary edition (John Wiley, 1995) is still available.
For readers who wish to learn more about Modernism, a key book is Peter Walker’s Invisible Gardens: The Search for Modernism in the American Landscape (MIT Press, 1996). Marc Treib has also written two important books: Modern Landscape Architecture: A Critical Review (MIT Press, 1994) and The Architecture of Landscape, 1940–1960 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). Another good survey of Modernist work is Janet Waymark’s Modern Garden Design: Innovation Since 1900 (Thames & Hudson, 2005). The influence of Minimalism and Land Art can be explored in John Beardsley’s, Earthworks and Beyond (4th revised edition, Abbeville Press, 2006) and in Jeffrey Kastner’s Land and Environmental Art (Phaidon Press, 2010). For the career of a seminal figure who crossed disciplinary boundaries, see The Life of Isamu Noguchi: Journey without Borders (Princeton University Press, 2006) by Masayo Duus. The work of another significant, if often controversial, practitioner is presented in Recycling Spaces: Curating Urban Evolution: The Landscape Design of Martha Schwartz Partners by Emily Waugh (Thames & Hudson, 2012).
If you wish to read more deeply into the environmental aspect of landscape architecture, you could begin with Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation (reprint edition, Library of America, 2013). Robert Thayer’s Gray World, Green Heart: Technology, Nature and the Sustainable Landscape (new edition, John Wiley & Sons, 1997) considers the human relation to technology and the role landscape architects have sometimes played in disguising it. The same author’s Life Place: Bioregional Thought and Practice (University of California Press, 2003) is also worth reading. For an easy introduction to landscape ecology, I recommend Landscape Ecology Principles in Landscape Architecture and Land-Use Planning by Wenche Dramstad, James D. Olson, and Richard T. T. Forman (Island Press, 1996). John Tilman Lyle’s Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development (John Wiley & Sons, 1996) is of similar vintage and still relevant.
The problems and potentials of brownfield sites are explored in a number of books, notably Principles of Brownfield Regeneration: Cleanup, Design, and Reuse of Derelict Land by Justin Hollander, Niall Kirkwood, and Julia Gold (Island Press, 2010) and Manufactured Sites by Niall Kirkwood (reprint, Taylor & Francis, 2011). Alan Berger’s Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America (Princeton Architectural Press, 2007) has been controversial because it acknowledges the inevitability of waste and sprawl and even finds some beauty in it. Reclaimed brownfields also feature in Julia Czerniak and George Hargreaves’ Large Parks (Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), while the work of the German practice Latz + Partner, who have developed an influential approach to the redesign of post-industrial sites is explored in Udo Weilacher’s Syntax of Landscape: The Landscape Architecture of Peter Latz and Partners (Birkhäuser, 2007).
For those interested in landscape planning, Tom Turner’s Landscape Planning and Environmental Impact Design (2nd edition, Routledge, 1998) is still relevant, but also see Paul Selman’s Planning at the Landscape Scale (Routledge, 2006) and Sustainable Landscape Planning: The Reconnection Agenda (Routledge, 2012). See also Resilience and the Cultural Landscape: Understanding and Managing Change in Human-Shaped Environments, edited by Tobias Plieninger and Claudia Bieling (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Many books are now being published about green infrastructure: see, for example, Green Infrastructure: Linking Landscapes and Communities by Mark Benedict and Edward McMahon (Island Press, 2006), and Sustainable Infrastructure: The Guide to Green Engineering and Design by S. Bry Sarte (John Wiley & Sons, 2010).
The problems of cities are explored from a variety of perspectives in The City Reader, edited by Richard LeGates and Frederic Stout (Routledge, 2012), which includes Sherry Arstein’s seminal article ‘A Ladder of Citizen Participation’. Groundwork: Partnership for Action, edited by Walter Menzies and Phil Barton. (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012), tells the story of the influential environmental charity which now employs many landscape architecture graduates in Britain.
The close relationship between landscape architecture and urban design is at the heart of Basics Landscape Architecture 01: Urban Design by Tim Waterman and Ed Wall (Ava Publishing, 2009) and in Jan Gehl’s Cities for People (Island Press, 2010). Landscape urbanism’s particular slant on the problems of the city is presented from a series of perspectives in The Landscape Urbanism Reader edited by Charles Waldheim (Princeton Architectural Press, 2006). Critics of landscape urbanism are given space in Landscape Urbanism and Its Discontents: Dissimulating the Sustainable City, edited by Andres Duany and Emily Talen (New Society Publishers, 2013). The likely successor to landscape urbanism is showcased in Ecological Urbanism edited by Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty (Lars Muller Publishers, 2010). The much-lauded High Line project in New York has inspired a number of books including High Line: The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the Sky by Joshua David and Robert Hammond (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2011).