North American Gardens, Gardening - General & Miscellaneous
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Overview
"If, when you think of a garden, you visualize prize-winning delphiniums and trimmed hedges, this book is not for you. But if your imagination, like mine, shows you the Garden of Eden before Adam started in with his hoe...then read on. That is the kind of garden this book is about." So begins this thoroughly charming book on the gardening passion. Olive Pitkin turned away from year-round city life some twenty years ago and bought a country house surrounded by a small patch of land "almost totally covered with a thicket of typical Rhode Island bush, several largish stands of red cedar...some sumac, wild grapevines, and a truly astonishing amount of poison ivy." How she turned this horticultural mess into a garden, and herself into a gardener, is the story behind this book. Along the way she tells us what she has learned about transplanting wildflowers, making compost, the stubbornness of rock gardens, and the capriciousness of bulbs. She speaks of the plants she loves (most) and those that don't seem to reciprocate the emotion (many). And above all, she tells of the simple joy of slowly shaping a plot of earth with things that grow. My Garden and I is a warm, wise, deeply satisfying and beautifully written book for any gardener.Editorials
Alice Joyce
Pitkin's first literary endeavor is a most appealing gardening memoir. As she chronicles the years spent slowly planting the land around the family's second home in Rhode Island and becoming a full-fledged gardener in the process, other gardeners cannot help but identify with the author's trials and tribulations. This journal is made up of charming, insightful observations on the natural, even wild, garden that developed as a result of the trial-and-error lessons conveyed here. A charming and captivating pastoral odyssey.Book Details
Published
December 1, 1992
Publisher
The Lyons Press
Pages
208
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9781558211803