Modern Public Gardens: Robert Royston and the Suburban Park

Among the first partners of Bay Area architect Garrett Eckbo was Robert Royston, a landscape architect who received the American Society of Landscape Architects' highest medal in the 1980s at the peak of his career. This monograph celebrates Royston's influential suburban parks. With their clean, geometric designs, water features, crisply defined areas, whimsical play elements and brilliantly chosen plant material. The architect's advanced exploration of the landscape form made the parks remarkably insightful in their understanding of sociology, play and the postwar suburban landscape. Royston's parks had an immediately recognizable rhythm and style born of Japanese and Scandinavian influences and Royston's own aesthetic as a native Californian.