Meteor Garden

The first four decades of this century provided the average American not only with the best magazines ever published in this country, but also -- in journals like House Beautiful, House and Garden, Ladies' Home Journal, and The Garden Magazine -- our most distinguished garden writing. These early magazines were the first national medium of mass communication and had a formative influence on American culture. Many of their garden articles were by authors we recognize today as singularly enchanting and competent voices: Louise Beebe Wilder, Grace Tablor, Fletcher Steele, and Mrs. Francis King. But some of the best were by amateur gardeners, skilled and articulate devotees who earned their livings as artists, drama critics, fiction writers, clergymen, architects, poets, and dieticians. Virginia Clayton has selected over 50 of these marvels of garden prose and arranged them in chapters covering everything from "Wild Gardens" and "Gardening through the Seasons" to "The Philosophical Gardener." The book is enhanced with photographs from the articles themselves, including a color plate section reproducing sixteen 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. Moreover, the actual quality of the writing is uniformly excellent; these were men and women who knew how to construct a sentence as well as a perennial bed. Their gardening preoccupations and predilections were remarkably the same as our own, making this truly a book for the "once and future gardener, " a delightful and authoritative reference work that no serious gardener, garden historian, or garden library should be without.

Ken Druse's passion for gardening has always been the unmistakable force behind each of his books. Now, with The Passion for Gardening, Druse writes about this inspiration, the underlying spirit that is shared by all gardeners. This is not a simple how-to book, but a why-to. Why do we garden? And how are our lives immeasurably enriched by the process? As the world around us grows more chaotic each day, Druse, in rich and thoughtful prose, reminds us to slow down, put a trowel to the earth, and consider the wonders and healing powers of tending a garden. Gardening, he tell us, is an antidote for today's hectic pace. In The Passion for Gardening, Druse meditates on the issues close to heart of all gardeners: the notions of giving back and of conservation, of taking risks and the creative process of collaborating with nature and one's community. Along the way, he introduces us to a variety of extraordinary gardeners and their gardens, revealing how they have cultivated their natural spaces and, in turn, have themselves been transformed in the process. Druse visits ten remarkable gardens, including a Michigan landscaper's 60-acre natural habitat, a West Coast garden inspired by "the Japanese aesthetic," and Chanticleer, a delightful public estate on Philadelphia's Main Line that Druse dubs "a paradise in progress." Of particular note is a special section on Druse's own garden, including an unprecedented view of nature's contribution through the seasons that provides us with a deeper understanding of how gardens truly live. With more than 250 dazzling color photographs, as well as practical advice on replanting shrubs and trees, creating garden paths and sculptures, and controllingpests naturally, The Passion for Gardening is an inspirational and intimate look at gardening for a lifetime.