Seeking out their roots

The desire to resettle on ancestral soil -- specifically England, France and Italy -- has deep roots in United States history. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin did it. James Whistler, Edith Wharton, Peggy Guggenheim and Gore Vidal did it too.

This fascinating book proves that many such expatriates arrived with green thumbs and incorporated American style into their Old World gardens. Others, including writer Henry James, learned to garden once in England. “Little by little,” he wrote, “even with other cares, the slowly but surely working poison of the garden-mania begins to stir in my long-sluggish veins.”

Adventurous Americans, notes author Hill (an art historian and passionate gardener), return to Europe for reasons that haven’t changed over time: because wealth will allow it -- or for inspiration, liberty or love.

Hundreds of paintings and period photos are finely reproduced on the book’s brawny paper.

The closing chapter, “Americans Abroad Today,” profiles daring, creative moderns who, like certain “first” Americans, have chosen to garden far from home.

-- Lili Singer