The once & future gardener : garden writing from the golden age of magazines, 1900-1940 / edited and with an introduction by Virginia Tuttle Clayton.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Clayton, Virginia Tuttle, 1946-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gardening.

Gardens.

Physical Description:

xxxvi, 312 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

Boston, Mass. : David R. Godine, 2000.

Summary:

The first four decades of this century provided the average American with the best magazines published in this country, as well as our most distinguished garden writing. The first national medium of mass communication, these journals had a formative influence on American culture. Many of their garden articles were by authors we recognize today as singularly fascinating voices: Louise Beebe Wilder, Grace Tabor, Fletcher Steele, Wilhelm Miller, and Mrs. Francis King. But some of the best were by amateurs who wrote about their gardens with wonderful enthusiasm and intelligence while earning their livings in other professions -- as artists, librarians, drama critics, dieticians, college professors, and clergymen.

Virginia Clayton has selected over fifty of these marvels of garden prose and arranged them in chapters covering everything from "Wild Gardens" and "Formal Gardens" to "A Year in the Garden" and "The Philosophical Gardener." The book also includes photographs from the articles themselves, as well as a color plate section reproducing twenty-one glorious magazine covers.

This is no stuffy, historical reconstruction of lost horticultural America. These articles are still wonderfully fresh, pungent, and pertinent. They were written by people who had their hands in the dirt and plenty of practical experience. The actual quality of the writing is uniformly excellent, and their gardening preoccupations and predilections were remarkably similar to ours. This truly is a book for the "once and future gardener," a delightful and authoritative reference work that no serious gardener, or garden historian, should be without.

Contents:

Chapter 1 A Year in the Garden 2

Chapter 2 Gardening with Trees, Shrubs, and Roses 36

Chapter 3 Flower Garden Design 84

Chapter 4 Wild Gardens 132

Chapter 5 Old-Fashioned Gardens 172

Chapter 6 Formal and Italian Gardens 206

Chapter 7 The Philosophical Gardener 246.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1567921027