"What makes a historic landscape? Why is landscape important to historic restoration? What tools does a landscape historian use? Nowhere can these questions be better answered than at Old Salem, a restored Moravian town in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Its restoration of utilitarian and ornamental gardens has been guided by the richest--and earliest--documentation of colonial gardens in the United States. Using eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century garden plans, plant lists, and gardening practices as described in diaries, correspondence, and other records, The gardens of Salem tells the story of how the early Moravian settlers combined science and practicality with a sense of beauty to shape the landscape around them"--Cover page 4