Farther Afield: A Gardener's Excursions

In this splendid collection of short essays, gardener, writer, and professor Allen Lacy takes readers on a series of garden excursions, beginning at home. Lacy writes of his experiences with a variety of plants—evening primrose, prairie gentian, sumac, coreopsis, fuchsias, gloriosa lilies—in his own garden in New Jersey. Then he charts his travels to other gardens, in the United States, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands. Final essays in Farther Afield include a discussion of garden writing, profiles of other horticulturists, and humorous pieces on cats and houseplants, and, of course, flamingoes.

Allen Lacy received the 1985 citation for gardening writing from the American Horticultural Society, and since 1986 has contributed a regular column to The New York Times. Farther Afield is his second book, following Home Ground.

In this splendid collection of short essays, gardener, writer, and professor Allen Lacy takes readers on a series of garden excursions, beginning at home. Lacy writes of his experiences with a variety of plants—evening primrose, prairie gentian, sumac, coreopsis, fuchsias, gloriosa lilies—in his own garden in New Jersey. Then he charts his travels to other gardens, in the United States, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands. Final essays in Farther Afield include a discussion of garden writing, profiles of other horticulturists, and humorous pieces on cats and houseplants, and, of course, flamingoes.

Publishers Weekly

An author who can describe his own garden as a ``living record of my successive enthusiasms'' will immediately strike a responsive chord in other gardeners. Lacy, gardening columnist for the Wall Street Journal and author of Home Ground, is a source of delight to readers interested in plants. In these essays, he takes us to a flower-seed farm in Costa Rica, the oldest American botanical garden, the British headquarters of a major international seed company, allotment gardens in Zurich, ethnic gardens near Miami and a vineyard in southern New Jersey that has survived in suburbia. He takes us into his own garden, too, pointing out his mistakes and failures as well as some favorite plants. Lacy discourses on garden snobbery, petty plant larceny (``finger blight'') and gardening books, and defends the place of annuals in the garden. For both active and armchair gardeners. First serial to American Horticulturist, American Photographer, Connoisseur, Horticulture, Organic Gardening and Garden Design. (May 27)

Allen Lacy is professor of philosophy at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey and the author of numerous books on gardening, including The Garden in Autumn and The Glory of Roses. He lives in Linwood, New Jersey.