Parks and gardens are reopening for which we are all grateful. However, many of us remain close to home, dreaming of the future when we can safely travel again. In the interim, escape the summer doldrums with a selection of recently published garden and landscape books.
A Garden for all Seasons: Marjorie Merriweather Post’s Hillwood by Kate Markert (Rizzoli Electa, 182 pages, $50)
It’s a win for everyone when private gardens are created for public benefit and even more so when a generous endowment accompanies them. Hillwood, the last home of socialite and philanthropist Marjorie Merriweather Post, is such a place.
Meticulously planned, with help from leading landscape architects of the day, the 25-acre Washington, DC estate once served as a stage set for entertaining some of the most powerful people in the world. Today it is open to the public. A Garden for all Seasons chronicles its history and provides a seasonal tour of its gardens.
Paradise on the Hudson: The Creation, Loss and Revival of a Great American Garden by Caroline Seebohm (Timber Press, 222 pages, $27.95).
The creation, decline, and rescue of another great American private garden conceived for public benefit is profiled in Paradise on the Hudson: The Creation, Loss and Revival of a Great American Garden.
New York attorney Samuel Untermyer set about to build “the finest garden in the world” at Greystone, his 150-acre gilded era estate in Yonkers, New York. No detail was spared in its creation.
Lacking an endowment, much of the estate was sold when he died, the remaining public land left to neglect. Thanks to the efforts of the Untermyer Garden Conservancy, his professional and garden-making legacy is being preserved. This is the story of that effort.
An Island Garden by Celia Thaxter (David R. Godine, 124 pages, $27.95)
Closer to home off the coast of New Hampshire is Appledore Island where poet Celia Thaxter nurtured a 15 foot by 50-foot cutting garden. Restored, it is tended by volunteers and staff from the University of New Hampshire’s Marine Shoals Laboratory.
Published shortly before her death in 1894, An Island Garden is illustrated by Impressionist painter, Childe Hassam, one of the many artists and writers who found inspiration on the Isles of Shoals.
Tours to the island have been canceled this year but a recent edition of Thaxter’s classic, An Island Garden, transports the reader to Celia’s world.
Spirit of Place: The Making of a New England Garden by Bill Noble (Timber Press, 288 pages, $35)
In Spirit of Place: The Making of a New England Garden, garden designer and former director of preservation for the Garden Conservancy Bill Noble, writes about his garden in Norwich, Vermont. He shares the pleasures and challenges of creating a garden that is deeply rooted in place and the singular passion of its creator.
Designed to be maintained by himself and one other, Noble’s garden uses interesting and appropriate plants to create a work of art within a beautiful, memorable setting.
As a collector, Noble cultivates his garden to evoke emotion and create a sense of place, elements that underscore the influences, intentions, and circumstances through which his garden has evolved.
Blooming Flowers: A Seasonal History of Plants and People by Kasia Boddy (Yale University Press, 256 pages, $22.00)
Looking at emotion through a slightly different lens, Blooming Flowers: A Seasonal History of Plants and People examines how flowering plants have served as cultural barometers and mediums for communication throughout time. Whether sensory, emotional, or associative, the myriad meanings of sixteen distinct flowers are explored, challenged, and reinterpreted.
Described as an anthology, or gathering (legein) of flowers (anthos) Blooming Flowers is a highly readable, engaging, idiosyncratic blend of historical antidotes and facts that bridge culture and time. Extensively researched (with nearly 20 pages of credits), as a cultural history it transcends academic boundaries weaving together art, politics, science, and culture in a feat of storytelling that surprises and entertains.
Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World by Kathyrn Aalto (Timber Press, 287 pages, $24.95)
During this time of social distancing, as we navigate the boundaries between public and private space, the personal landscape is more important than ever. As are unheard voices. In Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World a celebration of the overlooked role women have played in observing and writing about the natural world, both are explored.
Illuminating diverse voices, the book spans genres, featuring women who overcame barriers, biases, and bullying to share their stories. Natural history, environmental history, country life, scientific writing, garden arts, memoirs, and meditations are the focus of their work and all are included.
Rootbound: Rewilding a Life by Alice Vincent (Canongate, $23.00, 348 pages)
Longlisted for the 2020 Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing, Rootbound: Rewilding a Life offers a fresh perspective on the restorative benefits of green space for the urban dweller.
Written by millennial author Alice Vincent, this is a coming of age story in which connecting to plants and the natural world of London provides the foundation for personal transformation.
A mixture of memoir, botanical history, and biography the story begins with a balcony garden and concludes with a flat in the woods, a new space and a fresh start as Vincent finds, through plants, a way of being beyond the life she had come to expect for herself.
The Well Gardened Mind: Rediscovering Nature in the Modern World by Sue-Stuart Smith (William Collins, 342 pages, $25.00)
A byproduct of staying close to home this spring and summer, as anyone who has visited a garden center can attest, is a renewed interest in gardening.
In The Well Gardened Mind: Rediscovering Nature in the Modern World psychiatrist, teacher and gardener Sue Stuart-Smith examines the relationship between gardening, the natural world, and mental health, exploring how gardening helps people re-find their place in the world when they feel they have lost it.
A blend of science, storytelling, and memoir, The Well Gardened Mind implores us to embrace and reconnect with the natural world – a need that has never been more urgent.
This review appeared in Leaflet: A Massachusetts Horticultural Society Publication, August 2020.
Copyright © 2020 Patrice Todisco — All Rights Reserved
