Rita Rudner

Book Cornerby Debbi HonorofSpring feverGaining Inspiration from Garden Writerswatercolor by Vivian SwiftMy friend Rhea is an avid consumer of gardeningbooks. I love riffling through the pages of her largecollection of books about gardening and listeningto her commentary about why she enjoys each andevery one. I’ll bet that by now you are imaginingher large garden overflowing with flowers, shrubsand vines. So it may surprise you to learn that Rhealives in an apartment in Manhattan and doesn’town so much as a houseplant. Why her fascinationwith gardening?“It’s exactly because I don’t have a garden,” sheadmits. “I love the world of growing things, butI’m cut off because I live in the City and don’t evenWharton.have a window box.” Having grown up surroundedby farms in rural New Jersey, Rhea misses thatworld, so she devours gardening books to fill the void. As a recently retiredlibrarian and fervent reader, she appreciates garden writing. “Like any otherkind of good literature, there’s a lot of beautiful writing and you meet fascinatingpeople.”One of those fascinating people is Ray Stannard Baker, a Pulitzer prizewinningauthor and muckraking journalist who lived from 1870 to 1946 andwrote a series of books under the pen name David Grayson. Adventures inContentment, Adventures in Solitude and several other books touted thepleasures of rural living in upstate New York. Grayson used his experiencewith farming not just to cultivate the soil, but to learn about himself.Beverley Nichols is another well-known name among garden writers. Helived in England from 1898 to 1983 and wrote more than a dozen books inthe genre. Now, one of his admirers from North Carolina, Roy C. Dicks, hastaken the wit and wisdom of Nichols and edited them into a delightful littlebook, Rhapsody in Green. Dicks also was the driving force behind gettingTimber Press to republish all of Nichols’ gardening books.Another prominent personality in the world of garden writing is ElizabethSomeone youmay not havethought of as agarden writerwas the famousnovelist EdithLawrence, whose books of essays overflow with charm and beauty. Lawrencedrew much of her inspiration from her 40-year correspondence with fellowgardeners in the rural South, who shared their seeds and plants by placingads in market bulletins that sold everything from peonies to puppies.Allen Lacy, a former garden columnist for both the New York Times and theWall Street Journal, has enjoyed a long career in garden writing. One of themost prolific writers in the genre, he has often collaborated with other writers.His books are entertaining, informative, and a pleasure to read.The Essential Earthman by the revered garden writer and longtime WashingtonPost columnist Henry Mitchell, is a collection of some of Mitchell’scolumns, filled with invaluable tips for novice and seasoned gardeners, alongwith his pithy observations and contagious enthusiasm.Eleanor Perenyi wrote only one gardening book, Green Thoughts: A Writerin the Garden, but it is also considered a perennial in the genre. The author,who died at age 91 in 2009, was originally from Washington, but marrieda Baron from Hungary and lived in a castle on a 750-acre farm. When thecouple left Europe in 1940 to escape the turmoil of World War II, Eleanorworked her garden in her new home in Connecticut with the same passionthat she had worked the farm.Sir Roy Strong is a British art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcasterand landscape designer who has been director of both the National PortraitGallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Over a period offour decades, Strong and his late wife, designer Dr. Julia Trevelyan Oman,created the Laskett Gardens, the largest private formal gardens to be createdin England since 1945. Their book, A Country Life: At Home in the EnglishCountryside, tells their story.Someone you may not have thought of as a garden writer was the famousnovelist Edith Wharton. Wharton was a talented interior and landscape designerand, in 1904, authored Italian Villas and Their Gardens. The Mount(themount.org), her elegant home with exquisite gardens in the Berkshires,reflects her passion for European gardens.Sadly, many of the best gardening books are either out of print or hard tofind, and so far, very few are in ebook format. Fortunately, we have a newerbreed of writer who keeps us connected with the soil: Michael Pollan, whogrew up in Farmingdale, Long Island. In one of his earlier books, SecondNature: A Gardener’s Education, we learn how his love for nature developed.And, of course, there are spectacular art books about famous gardensaround the world, including those of Chatsworth House, which is consideredthe inspiration for Pemberley, Mr. Darcy’s sprawling estate in Jane Austen’smasterpiece, Pride and Prejudice. In her charming book, In the Garden withJane Austen, author Kim Wilson takes us on a tour—with words, drawingsand breathtaking photographs—of English gardens that may have inspiredthe lush descriptions in Jane Austen’s novels.And finally, for a brilliant book about gardens, nature and so much more—with exquisite miniature watercolor paintings on every page—pick up LongIslander Vivian Swift’s book, When Wanderers Cease to Roam. The watercolorimage that adorns this column is from her book, which is part travelmemoir, part art journal, and part other genres, but all of it immensely enjoyableand inspiring! 10April 2012To advertise: 516-505-0555 x1 or ads@liwomanonline.com