Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The Napa Valley is a famous vintner's paradise, with its long, warm summers and mild winters. Naturally, this also makes it a gardener's paradise, and longtime Napa winery owner Molly Chappellet has an intimate knowledge of each nook and cranny of this horticultural Eden. Napa Valley's oldest gardens were planted around 1860, at about the same time grapevines were introduced to the region, and though there are only a handful of these, their enormous oaks and antique roses perfectly fit the image of old Napa homesteads. The gardens at Schramsberg, Beaulieu, Spottswoode, Krug, and the Niebaum estate (now owned by Francis and Eleanor Coppola), to drop a few well-known winery names, fall into this category.
Chappellet and her collaborator, Richard Tracy, define "new gardens" as those developed since 1960, some by the enthusiastic new winemakers who brought new life to the Napa region. These gardens are numerous, breathtakingly beautiful, and have apparently provided abundant employment to a number of talented landscape designers over the past three decades. In many cases, a heroic amount of work was done to tame, for example, a rocky hillside into a proper Mediterranean-style villa garden, and Chappellet and Tracy note the details down to the individual plant names. The numerous color photographs, clearly often taken at daybreak and just before sunset, show off the calm, lush gardens to perfection.
Wall Street Journal
'We do not need to venture as far as the Riviera for brilliant gardens and intricate landscaping. There is, it turns out, plenty of breathtaking vegetation in California's own Napa Valley. Like Jerry and K.C. Cunningham's parterre, where a rectangular pool sits among boxwood-enclosed lavender and white roses. Or Peter and Su Hua Newton's Chinese-style tea house, situated against a backdrop of wisteria vines golden cypress and roses. These are just two of the botanical designs in Molly Chappellett and Richard Tracy's 'Gardens of the Wine Country' the highlight of which is Francis and Elenor Coppola's estate-where dogwood, Japanese maple and peony decorate the grounds, and the Quercus lobata (an ancient oak) towers above the main house."
Gardens of the Wine Country
Gardens of the Wine Country,Molly Chappellet,Richard Tracy,Chronicle Books,0811816974,California,Garden Design,Gardening,Gardening / Horticulture,Gardening/Plants,Gardens,Landscape Horticulture,Napa Valley,Napa Valley (Calif.),Pictorial works,Reference,Regional - General,Gardening / Regional
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