The Literary Garden

Rating:
Summary: Garden Inspiration
Review: Gardeners who have seen all the usual garden designs--the shade garden, the cottage garden, the water garden, etc.--will find lots of new inspiration in this book. Experienced gardeners will take the ideas and fly with them; there's practical advice here, too, and novice gardeners who need more information on specific plants or creating a garden can find it readily in any of the standard gardening books. Lovers of great literature will gain another dimension to some of their favorite excerpts, and might find a new book to read among the excerpts. And if you are an artist who loves to paint gardens, there is enough descriptive material here to keep you inspired for a long, long time!

Rating:
Summary: an inspiration!
Review: It may just be the sorry patches of snow lingering in my yard and garden, but this delightful book makes me itch to get outside and garden. It also makes me itch to catch up on some long overdue reading of people like Willa Cather and Thomas Wolfe and others. The book doesn't try to be an AHS or Taylor's volume; it just lets the literary image of a garden speak eloquently for itself, and then offers a few ideas to take up in your own backyard. With sweet illustrations, an all around lovely idea for a book.

Rating:
Summary: Gardening Fluff
Review: While the literary passages are well chosen and of considerable interest, the experienced gardener will find most of the so called "practical gardening ideas" mostly fluff, and sometimes inaccurate. In short: a very good idea, poorly executed.