Described as the eighth wonder of the world by the legendary plant hunter Frank Kingdon-Ward, this book describes the history and splendour of Exbury Gardens. Planting for the gardens began in 1919 as the owner, Lionel de Rothschild set out to create a home for his Rhododendrons and Azaleas within carefully landscaped gardens. It was opened to the public in 1955 and now, just over 100 years later this book was commissioned to tell the story of this exceptional garden.
The book was designed by the excellent and experienced book designer, Sally MacIntosh. Because it covered the gardens from their creation in 1919 to the present day, the imagery covered a similar time span and varied from the exceptional to the dog-eared! Nevertheless, our job was to present all the images in the book in the best way possible for their age. This meant a lot of meticulous work restoring edges and marks within some of the older images. Today’s technology allows for the creation, in many cases, of an almost ‘new’ image, but it must be done carefully to retain the sense of period in the image and to convey meaning and atmosphere. However, on the modern images, we were able to let the liveliness sing and the riot of colour is simply amazing to see.
