Historic renovation and preservation of classic gardens requires a bit of cerebral time travel. Decorating Eden: A Comprehensive Sourcebook of Classic Garden Details, edited by Elizabeth Wilkinson and Marjorie Henderson, provides a Global Positioning System for navigating the complex arrangements of landscape and hardscape that comprise the history of garden design. The very soul of reference data, its contents are organized alphabetically by topic; readers may dually explore each motif within the contexts of its historical era and new applications. Perhaps its most valuable resource, five pages of classic garden ornaments suppliers are listed in the back of the text, and readers can now receive catalogs by fax and FedEx!

As a tour de force from A to W (no XYZ is found), this fully-illustrated book guides the reader from the gardens of Alleys to Wells. Its contents encompass numerous site amenities invented by man, including small buildings, fountains, paving, fences, walls and arbors. The text deals only peripherally with botanical concerns, for the plants are treated within their architectural contexts, including hedges, alleys, pleached structures and topiary (no Disney World cartoon clipped animals here!). Perhaps following a design principle that maintains "potpourris" are not pleasing to a well-trained eye, editors Wilkinson and Henderson do not propose assembling classic-style gardens from a jumble of diverse and unrelated elements. Rather, like the plants they utilize, garden designs will not thrive if simply transplanted; instead, they flourish by evolution and adaptation, fertilized by imagination and a very sensitive understanding of local conditions.

Historic research reveals how the evolution of garden traditions was inspired by invasions and conquests. The Persian occupations of Assyria in 540 B.C. and Egypt in 525 B.C. exposed natives to early garden prototypes upon which they based their own great garden designs. Later, Muslim conquerors adopted and adapted Persian designs. As a result, as plant species were slowly exported around the world, so were exciting trends in design. The text compares the private and public parks of the Greeks and Romans, featuring the lush paradise garden of Sumeria which was replicated by the ancients and throughout historic Europe.

Finally, this comprehensive text analyzes the eclectic direction of American gardens that were apparently guided by no single dominant influence. Recognizing the impacts of climate and topography variety and the diverse origins of settlers, the editors illustrate the historical lack of an "American" garden style, in the sense that we describe English, French, Italian, Spanish and Japanese styles.

In the information age, this book is a touchstone (I wish it were available as a CD-ROM!) that will aid Landscape Architects in choosing valid pieces for their compositions.

Yolla Bolly Press/ Chronicle Books San Francisco $19.95 415-777-7240.

LASN International Associate David Linstrum explains that the unique approach to American garden design created by Jim Van Sweden, ASLA, (considered by many as the father of New American gardens) and his partner Wolfgang Van Oehme is not referred to in this book because their gardens are not classic-- they are leading edge contemporary! Look to a future issue of LASN for a profile of the New American garden design.