BOOK FEATURE : : : :

An astonishing world is hidden in plain sight.

By photographing public and botanical gardens at night, Linda Rutenberg reveals a luminous landscape of plants, colors, shadows, and light. Twenty-one gardens throughout North America are included in the book, each with intimate portraits of their regional flowers and plants glowing in the blackness, revealing a secret nighttime world of subtle yet vibrant beauty.

THE GARDEN AT NIGHT will enchant art-lovers and garden-lovers alike with its mysterious beauty and matchless elegance. As editor Alan Rapp writes on the Chronicle Books Blog, "These color photographs are quite unlike other plant and garden photos you have seen, with a unique glow and temper throughout."

Using predominantly nocturnal illumination—moonlight, city glow, even flashlights—together with a delicate, optical precision, Rutenberg coaxes the best out of her light-shy subjects. Her images transform familiar and well-loved locations like the Brooklyn or New York Botanical Gardens into what celebrated author Christopher Dewdney calls "a kind of wonderland; a charmed locale that we can roam through in our imaginations."

Exotic cacti come alive in Phoenix's Desert Botanical Garden, while the verdant conifers of the fog-laden San Francisco Botanical Garden and the fragrant flora of Florida's Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden metamorphose into a magical world reminiscent of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

William Shatner describes this transformation in his essay, "In the Realm of the Night," which serves as a preface to the book: "Much like the imagined vastness of space, entering the domain of the night is an experience of quiet but not silence, light rather than dark. Night allows an awakening of the senses, a heightened awareness of the beauty—and a perception of the eloquence—of the natural world."

A truly innovative work of haunting beauty, The Garden at Night illuminates a world of hidden grandeur.

See images from the book and send e-postcards here.

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