New Jersey is called the Garden State with good reason¾ some of the nation's most strikingly beautiful homes and gardens can be found within its borders. Caroline Seebohm and Peter C. Cook have captured them gloriously in Great Houses and Gardens of New Jersey.

No other book has so beautifully presented the architectural story of the state, stunningly documented in more than 200 color photographs¾ from a centuries-old farm to modern glass houses, from woodlands planted with native plants to formal French and English-style gardens. Each house and garden is privately owned, and many have never before been photographed. Readers are given an exclusive peek at some of New Jersey's greatest treasures.

Seebohm and Cook take us on a private tour of a pre-revolutionary Dutch farmhouse that could have sprung from the coast of Devon in England; a brick-patterned house that vividly expresses the originality and exuberance of the region's early builders and craftsmen; a collection of native stone buildings reminiscent of Bucks County, Pennsylvania; and an Arts and Crafts house with contributions by New Jersey's innovative Gustav Stickley. The twentieth century is equally well represented with works by masters such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Robert Venturi, Michael Graves, and Richard Meier.

The book showcases gardens of dazzling splendor and variety¾ woodlands ablaze with native azaleas and dogwoods; a charming sunken garden by well-known English garden designer Penelope Hobhouse; a stunning water garden on the Navesink River; a tiny formal garden surrounded by a picket fence in Somerset County; a garden in Alpine carpeted with bluebells in the spring, scented with roses in the summer, and with orchids on display all year round.

Caroline Seebohm, a former staffer at House & Garden magazine, is a widely published freelance writer. She has written several books on architecture and design, including Boca Rococo: How Addison Mizner Invented Florida's Gold Coast and Under Live Oaks: The Last Great Houses of the Old South. Peter C. Cook studied photography at The School of Visual Arts and has been working professionally for twenty-three years.