Notes From An Italian Garden - Softcover

Marble, Joan

3.37

102 ratings by Goodreads

9780552998413: Notes From An Italian Garden

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0552998419 ISBN 13: 9780552998413

Publisher: Black Swan, 2001

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Thirty years ago journalist Joan Marble and her sculptor husband, Robert Cook, bought an unpromising piece of land near the little hamlet of Canale, north of Rome where the ancient Etruscans once lived. Here they built a house and, more important, set out to start a wonderful garden.

All was not easy, however. They faced blank incomprehension from the local inhabitants. "Why do you want to have a garden here?" they were asked. "There's no water, the ground is like cement, it's too cold in winter and too hot in summer, it never rains. . . ." But Joan and Robert's enthusiasm for the land, their ignorance of the obstacles that faced them, their downright obstinacy and the unexpected friends who helped them -- all served to conquer the intransigent terrain.

"I fell in love with Etruria one chilly evening in the middle of winter," says Joan. "They were having a New Year's Eve festival in a little town near Campagnano, and a group of local boys dressed in Renaissance costumes were marching in a torchlight parade down the main street. As I stood there in the cold watching the flames lurching to the sky, I realized that I felt very much at home in this ancient place. If ever we should decide to move to the country, this was the kind of place I would choose....."

Inspirational, aspirational, enchanting -- this is an account of a passion for a place and an obsession with a garden that will charm all who love Italy, gardening, and life.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Joan Marble is a journalist and writer whose passion for politics has yielded in recent years to her even greater passion for nature -- everything from the song of the bee-eater to the scent of the tree peony. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Ms. Marble started her career as a political correspondent for United Press International. One of her first articles on gardening was a report on the Rose Garden at the White House, and she has written widely on the new gardens of Italy. She and her husband divide their time among Rome, Canale, and London.

From Publishers Weekly:

"I will always be happy that we found the area when we did, in 1964, while it was still an unknown backwater, for we were able to catch just before it began to disappear a way of life that had gone on virtually unchanged since the Dark Ages, and sometimes much longer." The author, an American living in Italy, reminisces about her life in Canale, a village north of Rome in Etruria, the land of the ancient Etruscans (into whose history particularly their age-old passions for horse racing, mushrooms and eels she frequently delves). Marble recounts how her carefully thought-out plans for the garden yielded to the more expedient solution of an overbearing bulldozer operator, tells how she arrived at the perfect design for her greenhouse, muses about the problems of getting seeds to germinate and describes other Italian gardens that have intrigued her, including an overly ostentatious project that got revenge on its owner by self-destructing during a prolonged cold spell. Anecdotes about the locals, standard fare in this type of memoir, include a tale about her maid, who decided not to get married because the prospective groom's new house lacked an adequate bathroom, and a saga of tomb robbers who tried to draw her husband into their illicit activities. It all adds up to a book that is pleasant and sometimes amusing but not original enough to stand out in a market saturated with similar offerings. Line drawings by Corinna Sargood. Author tour to Boston, New York and Washington, D.C.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.