In breathtaking images and insightful essays, Gardens on the Edge explores 18 Australian gardens that are defined by extraordinary horizons. Each of the featured landscapes - from every state and territory, from outback to city - is situated on the edge of a natural frontier: rainforest, desert, bushland, river, mountain range, volcanic crater lake, coast, harbour, saltbush plains. In another sense, Australian gardens and their owners are always 'on the edge' in dealing with the endless vagaries of nature, from drought to dust, fires to flood. In telling the stories of the gardens and their owners, Christine Reid reveals the diversity and character of the Australian continent - and celebrates the imagination and resilience of those who have met the challenges of creating, reconstructing or restoring their 'vision splendid' in an ancient and often-unforgiving land.

Author Biography

As a garden writer with a wide-ranging background in newspapers and magazines, Christine Reid's principal interest is the social and cultural history of gardens and designed landscapes, historic and contemporary. Her extensive writings on gardens appear in major lifestyle magazines both in Australia and the UK; she has been the Australian contributor to the English publication Gardens Illustrated since 1998. Christine has also been writer and consulting editor for many international garden books including The Oxford Companion to the Garden (Oxford University Press, 2006) and The Gardeners' Garden (Phaidon, 2014).