May Brawley Hill returns to traditional American gardens to present the inventive outdoor structures that enlivened three centuries of garden making across the country.

Furnishing the Old-Fashioned Garden is the first book to concentrate on the history of these structures, locating pergolas, summerhouses, dovecotes, and other outbuildings in the context of their specific period, place, and garden style.

With evidence gleaned from American paintings, photographs, historical narratives, archival publications, and personal recollections, the author reveals which structures suit a weathered clapboard house, or a bungalow, or an adobe ranch, for example, and she explains the latest fashions in garden furnishings when these houses were first built. The result is a full-scale portrait of American garden architecture, as seen in town and country large and small, east coast to west coast.