Just finished this book I received as a Christmas gift last year. It's a beautifully illustrated study of Roman gardens, analyzing the design and content of Roman gardens. Photography is beautiful, and the text was (when I finally finished it) very helpful in understanding what the Romans did and why. Only thing I missed was that while the book was full of photos of frescos of gardens and the gardens in their current state (principally ruins in Pompeii and ruins along the Neapolitan coast) it didn't provide reconstructions, either via line drawings or artwork, showing was the garden originally looked like. (The only indicated reconstruction is the Getty museum in Malibu, and it isn't stated how historically accurate it is). What a small urban garden looks like in Pompeii today after a couple hundred years of exposure to the elements following excavation is probably not what it looked like when built. Hadrian's gardens at Tivoli in particular are shown (well) in their present state, but there is nothing to indicate what they looked like originally. And the cave at Sperlonga that was outfitted as a dining room is a mystery - the photos of its current condition are beautiful but how did it look when completed?
Still, a beautiful and informative book.