Regional Gardening - General & Miscellaneous, Gardening - General & Miscellaneous, Gardening History

The American Gardener

Name: The American Gardener
Author: William Cobbett
ISBN: 9780812967371

by William Cobbett, Michael Pollan (Editor), Verlyn Klinkenborg

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Overview

Back in print after 150 years
Out of print since 1856, The American Gardener is perhaps the first classic work of American gardening literature. In it, William Cobbett, Victorian England’s greatest and most gifted journalist, draws upon his experiences during a two-year exile on a Long Island, New York, farm to lay out the rudiments of gardening for American farmers and, ultimately, to tailor principles developed in wet, drippy, weed-prone British gardens to their fine, sun-drenched counterparts in America. Full of practical knowledge memorably imparted with Cobbett’s gift for the indelible phrase, The American Gardener offers advice still useful today on all aspects of gardening, with special attention to those plants successful in the New World, including the artichoke (“indeed, a thistle upon a gigantic scale”) and the increasingly ubiquitous potato. Rediscovered 180 years after its composition, The American Gardener is evidence of a great mind and pen at work in the earliest days of American gardens.
This Modern Library edition is published with a new Introduction by Verlyn Klinkenborg, a New York Times editorialist and the author of The Rural Life, Making Hay, and The Last Fine Time.

Author Biography:

Synopsis

British journalist William Cobbett's 1819 work is considered one of the first classics of American gardening literature, written specifically about his time farming on Long Island, New York. For modern day gardeners, Corbett's 19th century ideas on self-reliance, family strength through agriculture, and gardening before chemicals and genetic modification are certainly timely - and "organic!"