The first four decades of this century provided the average American with the best magazines published in this country, as well as our most distinguished garden writing. The first national medium of mass communication, these journals had a formitive influence on American culture. Many of their garden articles were by authors we recognize today as singularly fascinating voices: Louise Beebe Wilder, Grace Tabor, Fletcher Steele, Wilhelm Miller, and Mrs. Francis King. But some of the best were by amatuers who wrote about their gardens with wonderful enthusiasm and intelligence while earning their livings in other professions.
Virginia Clayton has selected over fifty of these marvels of garden prose and arranged them in chapters covering everything from "Wild Gardens" and "Formal Gardens" to "A Year in the Garden." The book also includes photographs from the articles themselves, as well as a color plate section reproducing twenty-one glorious magazine covers.
This is truly the book for the "once and future gardener," a delightful and authoritative reference work that no serious gardener, or garden historian, should be without.
Virginia Clayton is an Associate Curator at the National Gallery of Art.
