Gardens of the Wine Country (ISBN 0811816974)

Amazon.com Review:
The Napa Valley is a famous vintner's paradise, with its long, warm summers and mild winters. Naturally, this also makes it a gardener's paradise, and longtime Napa winery owner Molly Chappellet has an intimate knowledge of each nook and cranny of this horticultural Eden. Napa Valley's oldest gardens were planted around 1860, at about the same time grapevines were introduced to the region, and though there are only a handful of these, their enormous oaks and antique roses perfectly fit the image of old Napa homesteads. The gardens at Schramsberg, Beaulieu, Spottswoode, Krug, and the Niebaum estate (now owned by Francis and Eleanor Coppola), to drop a few well-known winery names, fall into this category. Chappellet and her collaborator, Richard Tracy, define "new gardens" as those developed since 1960, some by the enthusiastic new winemakers who brought new life to the Napa region. These gardens are numerous, breathtakingly beautiful, and have apparently provided abundant employment to a number of talented landscape designers over the past three decades. In many cases, a heroic amount of work was done to tame, for example, a rocky hillside into a proper Mediterranean-style villa garden, and Chappellet and Tracy note the details down to the individual plant names. The numerous color photographs, clearly often taken at daybreak and just before sunset, show off the calm, lush gardens to perfection.

An Absolutely Breathtaking Pictoral of Napa Valley Gardens:
What an amazing glimpse into the world of Napa Valley Gardening. The author has brilliantly selected a wide variety of gardens, from the traditional Victorian gardens we expect, to the new age ideas of more modern gardeners.Molly says in the introduction that she fell in love with all of the gardens over and over...you can tell. Adding personality to the gardens, by telling us that each garden has the fingerprint of its owner...makes them really come to life...they seem much more like personal playgrounds than showpieces.A lovely book, perfect for anyone's spring/summer coffee table.