Touring the length and breadth of Britain, two eminent landscape designers revel in the glory of some of the country’s most outstanding gardens—both the truly grand and the marvelously eccentric. Featuring 150 color photos.

Gardening Is for the Birds, and for AnglophilesGuy Cooper and Gordon Taylor, landscape designers at the top of their game, take readers on a grand tour, tooling about the English countryside in a 1960s Alvis coupe, just as they did with viewers during six BBC Two episodes. The Curious Gardeners: Obsession and Diversity in 45 British Gardens samples the richness of this series. The authors drove from the North Sea to the coast of Cornwall, taking in an array of gardens on vast formal estates and in more intimate settings. Exploring traditional methods and modern twists alike, they highlight the unexpected, including a desert garden in Norfolk, tropical delights in Cornwall, water gardens, ponds, moats, waterfalls, hermitages, sculpture and even a tree cathedral. Their perceptive and witty observations pay tribute to the gardeners and their delightful creations. 150 color photos.

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Forthright, erudite, and always entertaining, Guy Cooper and Gordon Taylor, garden designers extraordinaires, tour a dazzling range of British gardens, expertly holding forth on, among others, spectacular creations by Capability Brown and Humphrey Repton, a labyrinth created by land artist Jim Buchanan, elaborate Victorian parterres at Waddesdon Manor, and Charles Jencks’ Garden of Cosmic Speculation. Illustrated with 150 color photos, The Curious Gardeners is a hymn to passion, obsession, eccentricity, and a great heritage of garden design. Guy Cooper and Gordon Taylor have designed gardens throughout Europe, America, and Britain, including Elton John’s 36-acre Berkshire estate. They are frequent contributors to HOUSE & GARDEN and the authors of Paradise Transformed, Gardens of Obsession, The Gardens of Fernando Caruncho, and Gardens for the Future.