The Beckoning Path

That Ted Nierenberg has mastered both the arts of landscaping and of making pictures is gloriously evident in The Beckoning Path: Lessons of a Lifelong Garden. On the land the Algonquin Indians called Cobamong, or "beautiful, hidden valley," Nierenberg has created a singular masterpiece of forest gardening, artfully reinterpreted here in eloquent photography. In a special chapter offering ten lessons on garden design, Mark Kane, former executive editor of Fine Gardening magazine, combines his knowledge with Nierenberg's hands-on experience to present gardeners with a wealth of practical information.
When Nierenberg first purchased the land in Armonk, New York, time and abuse had reduced it to fifteen brambled acres, so overgrown that the new owner had to hack his way to the pond at the property's center. Still, he sensed what the land had been and what it could again become and took upon himself the labor of reclaiming it.
That was thirty-six years ago. Since then, Ted Nierenberg has realized his dream of transforming Cobamong into a paradigm of natural landscaping. Almost imperceptibly, nature and culture have been synthesized by the application of formal planning to the dense woods and dramatic ledges of this landscape; a forest of rare perfection has come into being, offering the intimacy and arm's-length closeness of a garden.
Over the decades in which Nierenberg worked on his Cobamong garden, he was pursuing a parallel passion - photography. From winter, when a snowy opalescence shimmers from boulders and ice crackles on the pond, through the coming of spring, as fern spores eddy on the water's surface in a dance of abstract grace, to summer's riotous lushness and the brazen glory of autumn, Nierenberg captures every nuance of the moods and seasons of his landscape. In color photographs that reveal the subtlest detail as well as the most elegant vista, he displays the same sensitivity and respect that have shaped his masterwork in progress.