<P>Invisible Gardens is a composite history of the individuals and firms that definedthe field of landscape architecture in America from 1925 to 1975, a period that spawned asignificant body of work combining social ideas of enduring value with landscapes and gardens thatforged a modern aesthetic. The major protagonists include Thomas Church, Roberto Burle Marx, IsamuNoguchi, Luis Barragan, Daniel Urban Kiley, Stanley White, Hideo Sasaki, Ian McHarg, LawrenceHalprin, and Garrett Eckbo.They were the pioneers of a new profession in America, the first to offeralternatives to the historic landscape and the park tradition, as well as to the suburban sprawl andother unplanned developments of twentieth-century cities and institutions. The work is describedagainst the backdrop of the Great Depression, the Second World War, the postwar recovery, Americancorporate expansion, and the environmental revolution.The authors look at unbuilt schemes as well asactual gardens, ranging from tiny backyards and play spaces to urban plazas and corporate villas.Some of the projects discussed already occupy a canonical position in modern landscape architecture;others deserve a similar place but are less well known. The result is a record of landscapearchitecture's cultural contribution - as distinctly different in history, intent, and procedurefrom its sister fields of architecture and planning - during the years when it was acquiringprofessional status and struggling to define a modernist aesthetic out of the startling changes inpostwar America.</P>