When she was four years old in 1917, Ruth's German mother abandoned her and her brother in a children's home in Dresden. When her Jewish father came there to reclaim his children two years later, Ruth was influenced by the matron to reject him. She never saw him again. At fourteen she left the children's home to become a Haustochter, and spent the next eleven years in various domestic posts. Despised as a half Jew, she escaped from Nazi Germany just eight weeks before the beginning of WWII, to become a refugee in England. This book, written by her daughter, chronicles Ruth's life in Germany,...

Women Garden Designers presents twenty-seven of the most important and influential women garden designers and their gardens from around the world, showing both their finest commissions as well as the gardens they designed for themselves, in their own space. The carefully researched text examines their influences and their legacy to garden design. Beginning with the remarkable Gertrude Jekyll and Beatrix Farrand, who were working simultaneously, though on different sides of the Atlantic, the book then moves on into the 20th century, featuring international designers as diverse as Florence...