No comments about A Garden Blessing.

3 comments about Washington's Gardens at Mount Vernon.

1. This lovely book, full beatiful photographs is a must for any one interested in American history and garden history in general. In fact it gives us Americans a garden history (slavery excluded) to be as proud of as the British are of theirs.
   Lots of well researched interesting facts, useful advice, historical insight and pretty pictures make this book thoroughly enjoyable and I recomend it highly.



2. This lovely book, full beatiful photographs is a must for any one interested in American history and garden history in general. In fact it gives us Americans a garden history (slavery excluded) to be as proud of as the British are of theirs.
   Lots of well researched interesting facts, useful advice, historical insight and pretty pictures make this book thoroughly enjoyable and I recomend it highly.



3. This is an interesting and informative book about the gardens that George Washington spent 45 years planning and tending for his home, Mount Vernon. The stylish new photographs are supplemented by historic drawings, some from the archives of the museum. Various out-buildings are shown along with the landscape garden, kitchen garden, pleasure garden and a botanical garden where Washington experimented. In addition, there is a listing of Washington's trees and shrubs, eighteenth century flowers, bulbs and roses currently grown at Mount Vernon, and a list of what George Washington grew from seed. This a good reference for all interested in the history of gardens in America.

4 comments about The Plant Hunters: Tales of the Botanist-Explorers Who Enriched Our Gardens (Horticulture Garden Classic).

1. This exciting and in depth book contains excellent information on the many exploits of plant hunters around the world. It recites tales of both failures and successes. The author has a talent for weaving these incredible tales into stories you won't soon forget.



2. In the wake of reading ORCHID FEVER, I looked for other books that dealt with the plant hunters -- particularly of the 19th century. What I found was this wonderful book that is even broader in scope, providing a fast paced review of highlights in mankind's never ending task of collecting, naming and growing plants. The author does not try to present only sensationalized material, and doesn't try to be "complete," but instead gives a wonderful and highly readable overview of the field. Highly recommended.



3. This book is in a way the "Laertus" of botanical explorers, full of information and gossip, descriptions of the historical periods in which the explorations took place, and the technologies and economics driving the field forward. All of this in a great, slightly sarcastic tone that makes it a real page turner.

   One note: for the most part, the book only discusses the actual plants in passing...a bit of botanical background might be useful. On the other hand, I'm sure it would be just as good a read without the background knowledge, as the book is more about people than plants.




4. "The Plant Hunters" gives every sign of having been thrown together by Tyler Whittle to boil a pot. Yet he was an enthusiast for his subject, so there are many signs of a good book trying to get out.
   
   Nevertheless, is it more than irritating, in a book about hunting plants, to read a page or two, sometimes more, about a plant hunter without a hint of what plants he found. (No women plant hunters allowed.)
   
   This is definitely a book about the hunters and not the hunted. Hair's breadth escapes or failures to escape dominate the anecdotes. A great many plant hunters died in the field, typically falling off cliffs, but there were other ways. More than a couple were chopped up by Buddhist monks.
   
   Rather more about rather fewer hunters would have made for a better book. When Whittle does give a subject some elbow room, as he does with his nominee for greatest of all collectors, David Douglas, it still is not enough. About the only subject who gets just about the right amount of space (seven pages) is Nathanial Ward, who devised the Wardian case, although he was not a plant hunter himself but a GP in the East End of London.
   
   This is an insubstantial work, suitable for idling away a few hours in the late winter when the seed catalogs have become dog-eared.
   
   It hardly seems to have earned a place in Horticulture magazine's Garden Classics, and the edition I have is anything but a classic. Reprinted, complete with howlers, from the plates of the 1970 edition, it includes two pages of acknowledgments for permission to reprint illustrations but not the illustrations themselves.
   
   If you are going to spend the time it takes to read this book, turn hunter yourself and find the original Chilton edition and give the Lyons & Burford/Horticulture paperback reprint a miss.

1 comments about Through the Garden Gate.

1. Miss Lawrence says, "Dill is a hardy annual. The seeds can be sown in fall or early spring. The seedlings must be thinned, and Mrs. Clarkson says she saves every scrap that is pulled up. She uses them in potato salad, and sprinkles them over broiled lamb."

   Miss Lawrence has distilled much of her gardening and some of her cooking knowledge into this lovely little book (about 250 pages). Ideas abound from sources such as old wives tales, myths, stories, poetry, and the miscellaneous information passed along to Miss Lawrence from her correspondents, friends, and readers. Reading this text is like sitting at a wise woman's knee and listening to her tell about past times.

   Will it rain on Saint Swithin's Day (July 15th) as it did in 971 A.D when his body was transferred from a forgotten grave to the Cathedral for a proper burial? Were the Chinese, who considered the frog the lord of waters onto something, "Send soon O frog the jewel of water."

   But my favorite writing is the poetry she intersperses into the text -- "A bank where the wild thyme blows, Where Oxlips and the nodding Violet grows, Quite over canopied with lucious woodbine, with sweet musk-roses and with eglantine." Planted any eglantine lately..?

1 comments about A Year in Our Gardens: Letters by Nancy Goodwin and Allen Lacy.

1. A YEAR IN OUR GARDENS by Nancy Goodwin and Allen Lacy is a chatty exchange of letters and faxes between two old friends, both of whom have many years of gardening experience to their credit. Ms Goodwin ran Montrose Nursery for many years and is very informed and informing about plants -- native, cultivated, imported, and home-grown.

   Dr. Lacy has written many books about gardening and garden design -- centered on his garden in New Jersey and other gardens futher afield. My personal favorite of Lacy's books is THE GARDEN IN AUTUMN, although THE INVITING GARDEN is probably his best selling book. I wouldn't recommend A YEAR IN OUR GARDENS to the novice gardener since it has no colorful photographs and a plethora of Latin named flowers and plants. Even the intermediate gardener searching for tips might find THE INVITING GARDEN a better read.

   If you've been gardening awhile and like to read about green adventures from the comfort of your easy chair or need a good book for bedtime reading, you'll probably enjoy A YEAR IN OUR GARDENS. To me it's something of a cross between the books by Elizabeth Lawrence and Beverly Nichols. In fact, if Lawrence and Nichols had written to each other their conversations might have been a bit like the conversations of Goodwin and Lacey.

   Goodwin and Lacey both had an affilitation with Duke University as did Elizabeth Lawrence though neither Goodwin nor Lacey is a botonist like Lawrence. Lacey wrote garden columns for the Wall Street Journal and New York Times and until recently taught philosopy and horitculture at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey where he lives and gardens. Lawrence's father was Lacey's professor of English at Duke University, and Lawrence lives and gardens near Hillsborough NC.

   Both Goodwin and Lacey have gardens in growing zone 7. As they relate their experiences over the course of the year, it becomes obvious this counts for little. Lacey lives near the Atlantic, has sandy soil he must amend with humus, and experiences milder summers and colder winters. Goodwin lives in the NC piedmont, gardens in clay, and has hot-hot summers. Both have green houses that allow them to cultivate a variety of plants more suited to tropical climates. Lacey tends to grow many plants in pots on a large extended deck, while Goodwin has a much larger property with room for numerous shubs and trees and a woodland garden. Lacey says he prefers summer months for gardening, and Goodwin says she prefers anything but summer.

   In addition to the exchange about plants, garden design and the various wildlife sightings, both correspondents share the ups and downs of daily living. Over the course of a year, Lacey undergoes major surgery and Goodwin's husband has eye surgery and her father dies. Both Godwin and Lacey travel to various locations to give lectures and undergo interviews on television and radio. Martha Stewart drops by for a fifteen minute tour of Montrose, and Lacey goes to Disneyland.

   All in all this book is mildly entertaining, and a peek into the lives of two relatively well educated gardeners.

No comments about Everything I Know I Learned in My Garden: Life's Lessons in My Own Backyard.

No comments about The Passion for Pelargoniums: How They Found Their Place in the Garden.

1 comments about Herbs and the Earth (Pocket Paragon).

1. Until you have read Herbs and the Earth by Henry Beston, you know half of what the Earth knows of magic, fine gardening and great literature. I have read most of the writers from Findhorn and Perelandra, as well as Emerson, Thoreau, Steiner and the rest; I find here a more authentic connection with the earth from one of the most eloquent translators of her many voices. You will find much love and lore in this book. Beston's depth and devotion will amaze and delight you. I consider this the herbalist's bible, if only they knew it!

3 comments about We Made a Garden (Modern Library Gardening).

1. WE MADE A GARDEN is a lovely little book by Margery Fish, an "elderly" English lady who with her husband (he who must be obeyed or cleverly deceived it seems) moved to a country manor and converted the mostly lawn areas into gardens of shrubs, flowers, and herbs. First published in the U.K. in the 1950s, the book has been republished as part of the `Modern Library Garden Series' edited by Michael Pollan.

   Fish's little book will be considered a gem by experienced gardeners who can picture the plants she names in the mind's eye, identify with her triumphs and failures, and appreciate a useful clues from an obviously seasoned hand. Garden veterans will also identify with the greedy gardener who never has enough space, the stubborn gardener who plants Nepeta despite it's runaway habits, the recalcitrant gardener who hides the verboten brilliant orange Lychnis chalcedonica at the back of the beds, and the disobedient gardener who leaves many openings in the cemented walkway hubby designed to thwart weeds.

   The book may appear a bit dense to the new gardener as it describes activities such as composing flower beds, creating walkways, and engineering rock gardens with inferior rocks,with no illustrations, other than a few black and white photos-one of Mrs Fish on bended knee at work in her rock garden. However, all is not lost. Determined gardeners unfamiliar with the various plants Mrs Fish names can refer to a nursery catalogue since 60-70 percent of the plants available in the 1950s can be found contemporary mail order publications




2. I wanted to like this book. I just finished the Dudley Warner Book, in the same classic gardening series, which I had savored like a good box of chocolates, rationing out a few pages, each day. But this one--oddly enough--depressed me slightly. It has a sad subplot. You have this stiff upper lip British Matron, who was married to Walter, who oppressed every good idea she had for their garden. She basically isn't able to implement her visions until he dies. But once he's dead you realize, in her humerous complaints, that she misses him. The rest is all gardening, without the breathtaking observations Charles Dudley Warner has, about plants, and without the richness of his language. Fish is an OK writer, but she's not great. I guess Charles Dudley Warner is an impossible act to follow. Warner has one chapter where General Ulysses Grant visits, then he realizes he must burn the chair he sat in. He's unbelievably funny. That book is full of life and a grand vision. Fish's book is somehow claustrophobic. Reading Warner's book, I feel like I'm in a most interesting place filled with surprises, in Fish's book I feel like I'm trapped in a garden, I'd rather exit. I've read about half of her book, and you'd have to pay me to finish it. I frown when I see it on the pile of books behind my comode.



3. Margery Fish must have loved her Walter very, very much to have put up with him all those years. Her account of the garden they made despite each other is one of the great triumphs of the "garden memoir" genre, and vastly more interesting than most such works.

   The book is haunted by the presence of Walter, and his likes and dislikes, and right ways and wrong ways to do anything. You can't help but feel Mrs Fish must have breathed the world's biggest sigh of relief at his passing, since it finally allowed her to get on with her gardening.

   Here's a sample: Walter would smother her seedlings by putting too much manure around HIS roses, he decorated the outbuildings with bought mounted animal trophy heads (until they rotted), and he would stand guard over his wife while she planted dahlias to ensure she did so 'correctly.'

   Not to be missed! (And for others in the just-as-absorbing-when-not-about-the-garden books, you must turn to Beverley Nichols and any of his brilliantly charming works about house or garden).

   Note: a 3 star ranking from me is actually pretty good; I reserve 4 stars for tremendously good works, and 5 only for the rare few that are or ought to be classic; unfortunately most books published are 2 or less.

5 comments about The Wildest Place on Earth: Italian Gardens and the Invention of Wilderness.

1. John Hanson Mitchell has spent the past two decades prowling a square mile or so of suburban woods and fields in Eastern Massachusetts, searching for its past and speculating on its future, and in the process producing 4 books (Ceremonial Time, Living At the End of Time, Walking Toward Walden, and Trespassing) dealing with the nature of place and its affect on the people who live there. His latest book, The Wildest Place on Earth, may at first glance seem, if not exactly a detour, at least a stroll down a side street, away from his favorite square mile of land known as Scratch Flat, but read on and you will find that Mitchell is once again exploring in small spaces.

   In The Wildest Place on Earth, Mitchell sets out to discover the nature of the American wilderness and the influence of Italyýs tamed landscapes on the American experience. In a series of rambles that span decades and move effortlessly from the history of Renaissance gardens to American conservationists, and the Hudson River school of landscape painters to encounters in Americaýs overcrowded and over-loved wilderness parks, Mitchell pokes and prods and writes of the past. This book is part travelogue, and part informed speculation as Mitchell comes to realize that wilderness is perhaps more a concept than a true reality for most of us, and that the wildest place on earth may be his own somewhat haphazardly planned backyard garden that has grown over the past decade into a lush and relaxing presence.

   Mitchell writes much in this book about the Greek and Roman myths and how they influence, even to this day, what we see and feel as wilderness. The god Pan is always present, and the history of mazes and labyrinths makes for some fascinating side trips through Italy. If you are looking for a few good modern-day gardening stories, he supplies those as well.

   The editor of the Massachusetts Audubon magazine Sanctuary and the winner of the 1994 John Burroughs essay award and the 2000 New England Booksellerýs Award, Mitchell is a graceful stylist who will win you over as he rambles an speculatesýmuch like a close friend who you may not always agree with, but you canýt stop listening to those provocative opinions.




2. Like a ramble through a garden, or through the twists and turns of a maze, Mitchell takes the reader on a casually structured walk through memory, opinion, and speculation. He jumps from topic to topic in an engaging manner without exploring in any great depth his subjects -- the history of gardening in Italy and America, a few favorite writers (Thoreau, Wharton), his own large garden, his personal history, encounters with interesting people, the American conception and use of wilderness, urban encroachment, mazes and monsters, some colorful myths and stories. Nor does he need to go deep. His attempt in these related essays seems to be to introduce the reader to a great variety of ways of thinking about gardens, to provide different pathways through the subject, different perspectives. And he succeeds. Despite his overly ambitious subtitle ("Italian Gardens and the Invention of the Wilderness"), which suggests a strong unifying theme that the book is not disciplined enough to provide, he continually evokes the beauty and mystery of gardens as places of internal as well as external discovery. Constantly on the lookout for an iconic, sexless Pan, Mitchell finds the demigod in humans, goats, decorative statues, the center of a maze, and, ultimately, in the enduring metaphor that survived the arrival of Christianity not just to exist on its own, but also to inform the imagery of Satan. There are several startling moments as he gently guides us on his personal journey, such as the fact that in the 1960s scientists discovered lead from auto exhaust embedded in Arctic ice, or his encounters with an unnerving hiker in one of our national parks. Throughout, Mitchell's abiding faith in the garden, in the importance of human contact with the earth, sustains the book's meditative and thoughtful tone.



3. This book is a pilgrimage. Not a linear pilgrimage that sets off from a given point and progresses towards a distant goal, but a pilgrimage through a labyrinth or maze - a circular pilgrimage, if you will.

   The writer, a naturalist with a home and garden in eastern Massachusetts, is at home also in the wilderness of the western United States as well as in thr historic gardens of Italy. He traces for the reader the influence that the great gardens of Italy, part cultivated, part bosky wilderness, have had on the development of both the gardens and the wilderness of the U.S. But the book is not so simple and direct. Through it runs the theme of the labyrinth, its symbolism of the complexities of nature, its paradoxes, twists and turns.

   The true spirit of wildness is seldom to be found, the writer says, in our large "wilderness" parks polluted by ATV's, rangers and over-run camp sites. Human connection with the land is most strongly felt in our gardens - not the front yard with its neatly mowed lawn and well-pruned foundation planting but a truly creative garden with wild spaces and vistas that welcome wild creatures. We can save some land from developers, build small parks, add in gardens with their boskyness (lovely word, that) and create our own web of wilderness even in our most built up areas,

   Did the nature god Pan die with the birth of Christianity and the idea of dominion over all the creatures of the earth? The writer is optimistic that he did not and that the true spirit of nature can be revived, one natural garden space at a time.

   This is the work of a respected nature writer who is stringing together ideas about wilderness and gardens loosely and creatively. It is both evocative and provocative, a mental ramble for an open and enquiring mind.




4. This book is a pilgrimage. Not a linear pilgrimage that sets off from a given point and progresses towards a distant goal, but a pilgrimage through a labyrinth or maze - a circular pilgrimage, if you will.

   The writer, a naturalist with a home and garden in eastern Massachusetts, is at home also in the wilderness of the western United States as well as in thr historic gardens of Italy. He traces for the reader the influence that the great gardens of Italy, part cultivated, part bosky wilderness, have had on the development of both the gardens and the wilderness of the U.S. But the book is not so simple and direct. Through it runs the theme of the labyrinth, its symbolism of the complexities of nature, its paradoxes, twists and turns.

   The true spirit of wildness is seldom to be found, the writer says, in our large "wilderness" parks polluted by ATV's, rangers and over-run camp sites. Human connection with the land is most strongly felt in our gardens - not the front yard with its neatly mowed lawn and well-pruned foundation planting but a truly creative garden with wild spaces and vistas that welcome wild creatures. We can save some land from developers, build small parks, add in gardens with their boskyness (lovely word, that) and create our own web of wilderness even in our most built up areas,

   Did the nature god Pan die with the birth of Christianity and the idea of dominion over all the creatures of the earth? The writer is optimistic that he did not and that the true spirit of nature can be revived, one natural garden space at a time.

   This is the work of a respected nature writer who is stringing together ideas about wilderness and gardens loosely and creatively. It is both evocative and provocative, a mental ramble for an open and enquiring mind.




5. Not so often do I come across a recently published work and call it a classic -- something worth preserving and handing down to the next generation -- but this is one. It is an honest man's reexamination of how to relate to nature. He wears his erudition lightly, and one has confidence that his thoughts are his own and hard-won.
   
   Like many classics, one gets the feeling that for every sentence written, there were ten he didn't write. The book reminds me in some deep sense of the old masons who taught me my trade. Their words were few, but long thought out, humble, and worth remembering.