The Garden Conservancy, founded in 1990 by the late garden-world luminary Frank Cabot, has spent the past 25 years championing, chronicling, and helping to preserve great landscapes. The new book Outstanding American Gardens (Abrams, $60) celebrates the nonprofit’s silver anniversary by offering an in-depth look at some of the subjects of its efforts. Gorgeous photographs by Marion Brenner and nuanced essays edited by Page Dickey illuminate the histories of eight public and 42 private gardens. The chapter on Hooverness (pictured here), the garden of former Whitney Museum director Tom Armstrong, describes the transformation of the property, located on Fishers Island in Long Island Sound.

Dickey has written two books about Duck Hill, the North Salem, New York, home where she has lived and gardened with her husband, Bosco Schell, for 30 years.

Cindy and Ben Lenhardt’s Charleston, South Carolina, garden features closely planted boxwood parterres that perfectly complement their 1743 home.

Just outside of Ed and Vivian Merrin’s house in Cortlandt Manor, New York, stands an inviting wisteria-covered pavilion.

Emmott and Ione Chase spent 40 years perfecting the landscape around their Orting, Washington, home near Mount Rainier.

The John P. Humes Japanese Stroll Garden in Mill Neck, New York, includes bamboo, mosses, ferns, and Japanese maples.

Hydrangea paniculata take center stage in this section of AD100 designer Bunny Williams’s Falls Village, Connecticut, garden.

A parterre at the garden of Gene and Betsy Johnson, located in Charleston, South Carolina, echoes the windows of the property’s 1806 Gothic Revival carriage house.

Grey Gulls, the garden of Peter and Carolyn Lynch, sits on the tip of a rocky peninsula in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

Hollister House Garden, George Schoellkopf’s property in Washington, Connecticut, takes the classic English cottage garden as inspiration.

Maureen Ruettgers’s Gardens at the Clock Barn, in Carlisle, Massachusetts, are crisscrossed with stone dust paths surrounding rectangular beds.

Susan Burke’s Nantucket, Massachusetts, garden overflows with gorgeous plants, including the white-flowering rugosa roses seen here next to the porch.

John and Neville Bryan’s Crab Tree Farm in Lake Bluff, Illinois, features a box-lined planting garden.

Outstanding American Gardens was published September 22 by Abrams.