= Very rare work on garden architecture and - planning. Lothar Abel was an Austrian architect and lecturer at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. He carried out numerous constructions and renovations of palaces, and built many villas and country houses in the Austro-Hungarian empire, but his heart lay in garden design and art, and he increasingly saw himself as a garden architect. Through his greenhouse buildings, he soon became one of the leading garden architects of Vienna. Abel favoured an architectural understanding of garden design, drawing on the examples of the Renaissance and classical antiquity. He insisted on carefully-weighed proportions and symmetry, and the observance of rules; low groups of bushes aligned along axes accentuated treeless lawns, offering an unimpeded view of the buildings and their facades. As such, he was an opponent of the English landscape garden. Chapters: Bedeutung der Form in der Garten-Architektur und leitende Prinzipien bei dem Entwurfe; Ueber den Styl; Charakteristik der verschiedenen Anlagen und Garten; Strassen; Einfahrt und Zufahrt; Thorwachterhaus; Vorplatze; Terrassen und Freitreppen; Blumengarten; Plastische Decorationen eines Gartens (Fointainen, Vasen und Strassen); Gebaude in Gartenanlagen; Wintergarten und Bemerkungen uber Kulturaume der Pflanzen im Allgemeinen. Covers sightly soiled/ dampstained; first free endpaper w. narrow waterstain in outer margin.