Memory and Transformation

In the summer of 2008, Apeldoorn, the Netherlands' garden city, hosts the inaugural International Garden and Landscape Architecture Triennial—which takes on key issues at the heart of landscape and garden architecture and aims to define and refine the relationship between nature, culture and landscape. Contemporary landscape architecture is called on to create and implement pleasing and ecologically sustainable solutions in situations where different—and often competing—functions exist on the same tract of land. There are a great many people—local residents, ecological and cultural heritage conservationists and academics—for whom these questions are of great concern. Even for the average urban dweller or suburban homeowner, public and private gardens provide society, respite, leisure and an increasingly rare connection with the land. Not just a catalogue overview of the triennial's program, this thoughtful volume includes essays by leading scholars as well as interviews with policy makers and designers.