Including formal French gardens and English landscape gardens; famous botanical gardens and little-known curiosities; Iranian and Persian gardens; grand, country-house gardens and inner-city gardens; Zen gardens, strolling Japanese gardens and Chinese gardens; medicinal gardens and one poison garden; knot gardens and Roman gardens, explores a huge variety of the approaches and uses of gardening around the world over millennia. In telling the stories of these places, the book touches on the lives of the people who worked in them, designed them, and owned them—people such as Prince Charles, Capability Brown, Gertrude Jekyll, Edith Wharton, and Agatha Christie. not only champions the splendor of the world's most magnificent gardens but also reveals many fascinating stories about the history of these places and the people who created them.