A great artist may spend years painting one canvas, making infinitesimal changes in color, mood, and form until every element has been refined and perfected to satisfaction. Henry Francis du Pont was such a consummate artist, and the canvas was his beloved garden at Winterthur, du Pont's home from his birth in 1880 until his death in 1969. The sumptuous masterpiece he created in Wilmington, Delaware, is now open for the public to enjoy, but for years it functioned as a private horticultural laboratory where du Pont, primarily known as a visionary collector of American decorative arts, experimented as much with the landscape as with individual plant species gathered from the far corners of the globe.
In "The Winterthur Garden, author Denise Magnani, curator of landscape at Winterthur, offers an intimate portrait of both the man and his environment. Magnani's text and additional essays are breathtakingly illustrated by landscape photographer Carol Betsch's lush pictures of this impeccably preserved national treasure. This newly issued paperback edition also features a new foreword by Winterthur's current director, Leslie Greene Bowman.