Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China

Gardens are sites that can be at one and the same time admired works of art and valuable pieces of real estate. As the first account in English to be wholly based on contemporary Chinese sources, this beautifully illustrated book grounds the practices of garden-making in Ming Dynasty China (1369–1644) firmly in the social and cultural history of the day.

Who owned gardens? Who visited them? How were they represented in words, in paintings and in visual culture generally, and what meanings …