Overview
What Distinguishes a great garden from one that is merely beautiful? In her triumphant follow-up to the award-winning Earth on Her Hands, Starr Ockenga illustrates how a diverse group of visionary American plantsmen and women have taken risks, pushed boundaries, and stretched traditions to create distinctive, idiosyncratic gardens. Boldly conceived and boldly executed, these 21 gardens are highly personal interpretations of paradise.Each of the gardens bears the indelible stamp of the individual. Paul Held's Connecticut garden reflects his passion for the Japanese Sakurasoh, a variety of primula he propagates from seed. Marlyn Sachtjen's Wisconsin property is a sanctuary for the magnificent trees she has termed "majesties." In his Illinois garden, Justin Harper collects and propagates rare conifers, and in a New York penthouse Mark Bramble's obsession is orchids. Artists such as Sarah Draney in upstate New York and Marcia Donahue in northern California have conceived landscapes that serve as the ideal settings for their own works, while Richard Reames forms living trees into unique arborsculpture in Oregon. William Woys Weaver and husband-wife team Karen Strohbeen and Bill Luchsinger use their Pennsylvania and Iowa gardens as laboratories for ongoing experimentation in heirloom vegetable cultivation and ambitious perennial gardening.
From the making of welcoming garden rooms densely planted with exotic flowers and foliage to sprawling landscapes featuring drifts of native plants in their natural habitats, these gardens represent a personal vision of Eden for each of their creators. Intimate portraits of the gardeners themselves and invaluable lists of the plants and techniques these innovators have devised over years and decades of gardening make this a useful and memorable addition to any gardener's library.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewStarr Ockenga delivers a glorious showcase of "boldly conceived and boldly executed gardens," each representative of its creator's unique vision, in Eden on Their Minds. These visions range from propagating heirloom vegetables to creating striking garden sculpture out of trees.
Throughout the book, the author profiles 21 gardens along with their caretakers, who reveal the many tips and strategies (instructions for planting primulas and building rustic structures, lists of plantings, and more) that have made their individual creations thrive. Despite each garden's utter originality, the collection is united by the gardeners' shared passion to contribute something lasting and beautiful, whether it be to the landscape or simply to their home.
For Genevieve and Morrell Trimble, this passion took the form of a 30-year restoration of 40 acres of gardens located on the dilapidated plantation property they purchased in 1972. For Geoffrey Beasley, it became the drive to create an outdoor mansion of sorts, with trees and shrubs demarcating different rooms. For Weezie Smith, a sudden impulse turned into a 50-year mission to rescue Alabama's embattled native plants from encroaching land development. And Broadway playwright Mark Bramble has given new meaning to "urban sprawl" by transforming his Manhattan apartment into an indoor gardening oasis housing about 500 plants. These fabulous pursuits, and many more, are represented with lush photography and engrossing, informative text in Eden on Their Minds.
More than a celebration of gardening in all its many forms, this book is an invitation to gardeners to be dreamers, artists, and activists, too. (Karen Burns)