Growing Pains: Time and Change in the Garden - Hardcover

Thorpe, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151766525 ISBN 13: 9780151766529

Publisher: Harcourt, 1994

Synopsis

Discusses the theory that gardens, like people, change over time, and tells how the gardener can learn to understand these changes and work with them to nurture a healthy, beautiful garden

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Citing a "mid-life crisis" in American gardening following renewed growth in the hobby of horticulture over the last 10 years, Thorpe ( America's Cottage Gardens ) suggests what those of us who are caught in crisis ought to do about it: reassess our work and make some changes. And "it really doesn't matter how your design or lack of it came about," she reassures, because "you understand more about your landscape than you did." Thorpe focuses on, among other things, "cutting back or cutting down," on coming to grips with plants that haven't thrived and probably never will, on adapting old ideas of scale that now won't do ("a small bed of tiny shrubs may not look ridiculous at first. . . .") and on how to deal with the growth of shade over passing years. Her book is conversational, thorough, witty and grounded in landscape history, as well as in the aesthetics of gardening. Thorpe will be appreciated for her literate swing and for her realism: "Maturity, in the garden or out of it, should not bring an end to anticipation. Until you have tried zizia or schizanthus, you can't claim to have seen it all." Garden Book Club main selection .
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Few gardening books mention, let alone concentrate on, the growth that is the essence of gardening. Thorpe helps the gardener confront "mid-life crisis" in the garden-one that like its creator seems suddenly to have developed scantiness in some areas and too much growth in others. She wisely and wittily explains how the instant meadow becomes a field of weeds, what to grow under ever-spreading trees, and how to cope with overgrown shrubs and an unbalanced border. She helps the former novice temper enthusiasm with wisdom, rethinking a garden plan to use more suitable material in more imaginative ways. Anyone who has gardened for a decade or has purchased an overgrown lot should go out with this book in one hand and pruning shears in the other. Highly recommended for the uniqueness of the subject and the quality of the writing. [Garden Book Club main selection.]-Molly Newling, Piscataway P.L., N.J.
--Molly Newling, Piscataway P.L., N.J.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harcourt
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0151766525
• ISBN 13: 9780151766529
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 206
• Illustrator: Clifford Judy