From small gardens to complete cities, humans have always moulded their environment to express or symbolize ideas – power, order, comfort, harmony, pleasure, mystery. Geoffrey and Susan Jellicoe link these ideas together and demonstrate that they are manifestations of a single process: humankind's instinct to shape its surroundings. The ground covered includes ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, the Muslim world, medieval Europe, India, China, Japan, pre-Columbian America and the post-Renaissance West in all its phases, as well as planning and landscape architecture from 1945 up until the present day. The new final section of the book, edited and written by Tim Richardson, spans Modernism to Postmodernism to post-industrialism, as well as looking at large-scale urban planning in China and elsewhere, before ending with small-scale healing and community gardens. Re-designed throughout with a new contemporary look and feel, this landmark book by the renowned expert on landscape architecture looks set to be discovered by a new generation of readers keen to understand how we have got to where we are today.