Gardens of Awe and Folly: A Traveler's Journal on the Meaning of Life and Gardening
Registered by 
GoryDetails
of Nashua, New Hampshire USA on 4/14/2017
This book is in a Controlled Release!
GoryDetails of Nashua, New Hampshire USA on 4/14/2017 This book is in a Controlled Release!
1 journaler for this copy...
I found this handsome hardcover at the Book Cellar in Nashua, while browsing there before the monthly book group. It's a mix of travel-memoir and gardening book, with lovely illustrations by the author. She describes her idea for the book:
"If all you ask of a garden is What?, then all you'll probably get in reply is a planting list. But ask, instead, Why? How? When? and, most of all, Who?, and then you're in for a nice, long conversation. This book is a collection of the conversations I've had with nine gardens that had a lot to say."
The book opens with a chapter on the Square du Vert-Galant, a tiny garden on the point of the Île de la Cité. I visited Paris years ago and loved wandering around Notre Dame and other sites on or near the Île de la Cité, but remained unaware of the garden, something I regret! Swift describes its history and development, and includes many lavish and colorful images, setting the tone for the rest of the book.
Other gardens include the garden of the Whispering Pines in Key West - the illustrations here feature lots of cats, in homage to author Ernest Hemingway and his tribe of polydactyl cats whose descendants still roam the area. The chapter on the tiny Austalian Pine forest raises issues of native vs. imported plants, and also features a Key West gardening tip: "No snivelling." {grin}
There's La Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech, restored by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. There's Karen Kersting's rose garden in New Orleans - which began when she planted 12 rose bushes in the driveway of her Hurricane Katrina-battered home after she spent an entire year living there in a FEMA trailer while the house was restored. On New York's Long Island, there's the John P. Humes Japanese Stroll Garden, which Swift describes as "Old Money, not at all tacky, but, in the best traditions of the Gold Coast, it is every bit the folly as any robber baron's pretend-Gothic castle".
By way of contrast from all the colorful gardens so far, Swift visits Edinburgh for best-kept-secret Dunbar's Close Garden, which was laid out in the Baroque hedges-in-patterns style of the 17th century, and which looks really lovely! Yet another one I'd love to visit someday... as with nearly all the gardens in this book. (I say "almost" because I'm not up for the hot-weather ones, such as Marrakech and Key West, though if I could visit them and then blink back to temperate zones I'd do it!)
Another garden that I did come within shouting distance of and yet never managed to visit is the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, with its 17th-century herbal plantings.
There's more here, much more - a really enjoyable book, whether you use it as inspiration for travel, for plant-selection and garden design, for Google-motivation, or for the lovely artwork.
"If all you ask of a garden is What?, then all you'll probably get in reply is a planting list. But ask, instead, Why? How? When? and, most of all, Who?, and then you're in for a nice, long conversation. This book is a collection of the conversations I've had with nine gardens that had a lot to say."
The book opens with a chapter on the Square du Vert-Galant, a tiny garden on the point of the Île de la Cité. I visited Paris years ago and loved wandering around Notre Dame and other sites on or near the Île de la Cité, but remained unaware of the garden, something I regret! Swift describes its history and development, and includes many lavish and colorful images, setting the tone for the rest of the book.
Other gardens include the garden of the Whispering Pines in Key West - the illustrations here feature lots of cats, in homage to author Ernest Hemingway and his tribe of polydactyl cats whose descendants still roam the area. The chapter on the tiny Austalian Pine forest raises issues of native vs. imported plants, and also features a Key West gardening tip: "No snivelling." {grin}
There's La Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech, restored by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. There's Karen Kersting's rose garden in New Orleans - which began when she planted 12 rose bushes in the driveway of her Hurricane Katrina-battered home after she spent an entire year living there in a FEMA trailer while the house was restored. On New York's Long Island, there's the John P. Humes Japanese Stroll Garden, which Swift describes as "Old Money, not at all tacky, but, in the best traditions of the Gold Coast, it is every bit the folly as any robber baron's pretend-Gothic castle".
By way of contrast from all the colorful gardens so far, Swift visits Edinburgh for best-kept-secret Dunbar's Close Garden, which was laid out in the Baroque hedges-in-patterns style of the 17th century, and which looks really lovely! Yet another one I'd love to visit someday... as with nearly all the gardens in this book. (I say "almost" because I'm not up for the hot-weather ones, such as Marrakech and Key West, though if I could visit them and then blink back to temperate zones I'd do it!)
Another garden that I did come within shouting distance of and yet never managed to visit is the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, with its 17th-century herbal plantings.
There's more here, much more - a really enjoyable book, whether you use it as inspiration for travel, for plant-selection and garden design, for Google-motivation, or for the lovely artwork.
I'm sending this to my niece in New York. Enjoy!
