Writer in the Garden - Hardcover

Jane-garvey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1862054355 ISBN 13: 9781862054356

Publisher: Pavilion, 2000

Synopsis

Book by Garmey, Jane.

About this title

Review:

Not the least of the charms of this collection is that it is printed on quality paper, with delightful line drawings, and is just the right size to encourage the reader to take it in hand and turn the pages--which they will surely want to do once they have dipped into any chapter, where they will find some of the finest garden writing of the last hundred years. The famous writers of the past, like Vita Sackville-West, Gertrude Jekyll, Elizabeth von Arnim (author of Enchanted April), and Beverley Nichols rub shoulders with the garden columnists and book authors of today, such as longtime Washington Post columnist Henry Mitchell, Christopher Lloyd, and Ken Druse.

As all gardeners know, thinking about plants and gardens leads one to speculate about life, love, triumph and despair, obsession, and death. These authors cover it all, not just in metaphor, although they are expert at the well-turned phrase and the classic image, but in garden practicalities, too. Perhaps only in the best garden essay can the design of shovels, the number of worms in the soil, and raves about the newest kind of perennial co-exist comfortably with ruminations on mortality, the soul, and the nature of beauty. Lest this sound too serious, all is laced with humor; Henry Mitchell's hounds lie about the garden beds, crushing his latest peony, and Charles Kuralt complains about how he missed his favorite daffodil when CBS News had the nerve to send him to Moscow in April for an unfortunately scheduled summit conference.

"Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination," said Alice Morse Earle in 1897. We are fortunate that these writers had enough imagination to both garden and to write about it and that Jane Garmey had the imagination to gather such a variety of well-chosen garden voices. --Valerie Easton

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

About this edition

• Publisher: Pavilion
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1862054355
• ISBN 13: 9781862054356
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272