The Writer in the Garden - Hardcover

Garmey, Jane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565121813 ISBN 13: 9781565121812

Publisher: Algonquin Books, 1999

Synopsis

Show me a person without any prejudice of any kind on any subject and I'll show you someone who may be admirably virtuous but is surely no gardener.--Allen Lacy. Idiosyncratic, determined, and occasionally obsessed, gardeners have a lot to say about their outdoor passion. THE WRITER IN THE GARDEN brings together a host of writing gardeners and gardening writers reveling in their quirks, confessing their shortcomings, and sharing their experiences. Combing through a hundred years of garden writing, editor Jane Garmey has discovered some great contemporary works and rediscovered many classics: "I am strongly of the opinion," declares Gertrude Jekyll, "that the possession of a quantity of plants, however good the plants may be themselves and however ample their number, does not make a garden." "It isn't that I don't like sweet disorder, but it has to be judiciously arranged," writes Vita Sackville-West. "Gardeners are--let's face it--control freaks," Abby Adams admits. "Who else would willingly spend his leisure hours wrestling weeds out of the ground, blithely making life or death decisions about living beings, moving earth from here to there, changing the course of waterways?" Drawing on the work of more than fifty writers, THE WRITER IN THE GARDEN covers subjects ranging from the beauty of the garden to ornery weeds, the hazards of rare plant collecting, and the tribulations of inclement weather. The collection includes a range of authors from both sides of the Atlantic: from Edith Wharton, who insists that we could all learn a thing or two about design from the Italians, to Stephen Lacey, who reveals that his most exciting gardening moments are spent in the bath. Some of the other writers in the collection are: E. B. White, Beverly Nichols, Ken Druse, Eleanor Perenyi, W. S. Merwin, Mirabel Osler, Henry Mitchell, Jamaica Kincaid, Robert Dash, Sara B. Stein, Michael Pollan, M.F.K. Fisher, Anne Raver, Patti Hagan, Paula Deitz.

About this title

About the Author

JANE GARMEY is an independent television and audio producer and the author of Great British Cooking: A Well-Kept Secret and Great New British Cooking. She has published articles in various publications including The New York Times, Food & Wine, and Garden Design. Her audio book, also titled The Writer in the Garden, won a 1998 Quill and Trowel Award.

From the Back Cover

I didn't know what narcissism was until I beheld my own narcissus.

- Charles Kuralt

"People who don't really understand gardening think of it as a patrician and benign hobby. That couldn't be further from the truth. To serious gardeners, it's blood sport."

- Cynthia Kling

'If it's rare, we want it. If it's tiny and impossible to grow, we've got to have it. If it's brown, looks dead, and has black flowers, we'll kill for it.

- Ken Druse

"Show me a person without any prejudice of any kind of any subject and I'll show you someone who may be admirably virtuous but is surely no gardener."

- Allen Lacy

"It isn't that I don't like sweet disorder, but it has to be judiciously arranged."

- Vita Sackville - West

From the Inside Flap

Edith Wharton, Under the Spell of evergreen foliage and stone, celebrates the magic of Italian gardens. Charles Kuralt waits on the bloom of a single daffodil like an expectant father. Gertrude Jekyll, after a month-long drought, praises the coming rain. Allen Tracy rails against hydrangeas.

Here is an engaging group of more than fifty gardening writers - and writing gardeners - reveling in their likes and dislikes, confessing their shortcomings, and sharing their successes and failures. The Writer in the Garden presents a colorful bouquet of prose and poetry from both sides of the Atlantic. With subjects ranging from an old-fashioned rose to ornery weeds, the hazards of rare plant collecting, and the tribulations of inclement weather, The Writer in the Garden brings together an entertaining selection of garden writing from the past one hundred years. From Thoreau to Jamaica Kincaid, the writers and gardeners here express the trials and joys of gardening in the country as well as the challenges and rewards of trying to make things grow in the city. But whether a garden is large or small, thriving or failing, every gardener has a story.

Bursting with personality, strong opinions, and bright ideas, The Writer in the Garden is a book to read and enjoy - season after season.

Reviews

This delightful collection of garden writings edited by Garmey, a travel, food, and gardening writer, is just what's hoped for in a sampler: each bite is a likely pleasure, with a couple of duds thrown in to forestall complacency. Garmey has put together 63 pieces, many of them snippets from larger works (there are a few poemsHomer, Marvell, Pope, Schuylerand newspaper articles), from writers rich in quirk and wit, and with dirt under their fingernails. They discourse here in a nonprescriptive wa y about the pleasures and foibles of gardening. The names are by and large familiar: Eleanor Perenyi writes about her stream of lunatic, incompetent, and tragic garden helpers, and Maribel Osler serves up a not-so-gentle plea for chaos. Henry Mitchell's l ament on the weather is so dry its in danger of spontaneously combusting (``As I write this, on June 29, it's about time for another summer storm to smash the garden to pieces''). There is Michael Pollan on Marx and Freud in the rose garden, and Allen Lac y cutting rough: ``Let me dwell for a moment on one plant I especially detestthe hydrangea.'' Less household names are equally engaging, such as Cynthia Kling on gardening as a contentious blood sport, or Julian Meade's nonconformist salute, ``The more I hear of Horticulture, the more I like plain gardening,'' for the ``slipshod method suits me better.'' Even fusty old Gertrude Jekyll and sniffy Vita Sackville-West are bearable since they are given just a little page space. Only Sara Stein's predictable item on weeds and Lauren Springer's uninspired ode to autumn and its ``frost-tolerant annuals'' and ``lingering pastel perennials'' are true disappointments, but then its easy enough to turn the page and move on to the well-turned earth of E.B. White or J amaica Kincaid. A fun gathering of garden eccentrics and cranks of every radius. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1565121813
• ISBN 13: 9781565121812
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 250