Writing the Garden - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0749016906 ISBN 13: 9780749016906

Publisher: Allison & Busby, 2014

Synopsis

Gardening has always attracted devotedly literate practitioners; people who like to dig, it would appear, also like to write. And many of them write exceedingly well. Focusing on gardeners' words about the art of gardening, and ranging in time and place from Enlightenment France to modern-day New York, Writing the Garden brings together a diverse array of authors including Vita Sackville-West, Gertrude Jekyll and Sir Roy Strong. For the most part they are not professional landscape designers or how-to horticulturalists, but rather hands-on gardeners who write with their own gardens in full view.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Gardening, more than most outdoor activities, has always attracted a cult of devotedly literate practitioners; people who like to dig, it would appear, also like to write. And many of them write exceedingly well. In this thoughtful, personal, and embracing consideration of garden writing, garden historian Elizabeth Barlow Rogers selects and discusses the best of these writers. She makes her case by picking delightful examples that span two centuries, arranging the writers by what they did and how they saw themselves: nurserymen, foragers, conversationalists, philosophers, humorists, etc. Her discussions and appreciations of these diverse personalities are enhanced and supported by informed appraisals of their talents, obsessions, and idiosyncrasies, and by extensive extracts from their writings. Rogers provides historical background, anecdotal material, and insight into how these garden writers worked. And wherever appropriate, she illustrates her story with images from their books, so you can not only read what they wrote but also see what they were describing. Since gardens are by their very nature ephemeral, these visual clues from the pages of their books, many reproduced in color, are as close as we will come to the originals.

What makes Writing the Garden such a joy to read is that it is not simply a collection of extracts, but real discussions and examinations of the personalities who made their mark on how we design, how we plant, and how we think about what is for many one of life's lasting pleasures. Starting with "Women in the Garden" (Jane Loudon, Fran ces Garnet Wolseley, and Gertrude Jekyll) and concluding with "Philosophers in the Garden" (Henry David Tho reau, Michael Pollan, and Allen Lacy), this is a book that encompasses the full sweep of the best garden writing in the English language.

Writing the Garden is co-published by the New York Society Library and the Foundation for Landscape Studies in association with David R. Godine, Publisher.

About the Author:

Elizabeth Barlow Rogers is the president of the Foundation for Landscape Studies. A resident of New York City since 1964, Rogers was the first person to hold the title of Central Park Administrator, and she was the founding president of the Central Park Conservancy. Rogers has won numerous awards for her work as a writer and landscape preservationist.

About this edition

• Publisher: Allison & Busby
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0749016906
• ISBN 13: 9780749016906
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 318