Rating: 
Summary: Revelatory and restorative.
Review: Ackerman displays a naturalist's powers of close observation, a poet's exquisite language and adoring heart, and a philosopher's unsentimental intelligence. One haunting chapter begins with the author discovering a birdhouse lying on the grass, its inhabitants gone, and in the following four pages she explores mortality, vulnerability, terror, and feelings of "horizonless sadness." Life feels so full and continuous each day," she writes, "and then without any warning, despite all the relationships, appointments, investments of time and emotion, it can vanish, leaving only a lull where a life was." She ends the chapter in a hopeful vein, noting that "a vital part of gardening is learning to trust change." Ackerman is as intimate with the wildlife that visits her garden as with the sumptuous palette of plants she uses. Her description is often completely fresh: Roses, for example, "mumble scent." She characterizes the ambiguous color of her favorite rose, 'Abraham Darby', as variously "orangey-cream tinged with pink," "a lightly stirred mix of apricot, pink and yellow" and "sunrise colored." Her memory of this particular rose's "sense-drenched smell" in winter leads to a brilliant sketch of famed gardener and author Gertrude Jekyll. She writes that Jekyll "had a breathtaking gift for sensuality." The same can be said of Ackerman. There are also wonderful cameos of Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Muir, as well as Johnny Appleseed. Ackerman displays a genius for using her experiences in her garden as well as her tenacious, omnivorous intellect to get to the heart of delight. I plan to begin rereading Cultivating Delight in January, savoring a chapter a week over the year. But I will cheat a little and start my New Year with the brilliant last page, which begins, "I want time to pool, not race, but tonight I'm madly impatient for the growing season to begin." It ends with the words "...and the air tastes green at last."
Rating:
Summary: An inspiring book, a sheer delight.
Review: Ackerman's rich prose is a bridge to a world of discovery. Her insatiable interests travel in so many directions, combining the lyrical language of the poet with the precision of the scientist. Her ruminations on life and nature are especially charming. She's a wonderful combination of poet, naturalist and gardener. An inspiring book, a sheer delight on every page.
Rating: 
Summary: A Florid Disaster
Review: As a devoted gardener, I looked forward to reading Ackerman's book. It was all I could do to bring myself to finish it. The only order imposed on this tangle of reflections appears to have been a seasonal one; the book opens in spring and ends in winter. Otherwise, it is too long, too heavily reliant on adjectives, and highly repetitious. In particular, all the sniffing, arranging, and swooning over her roses began to make me wish the Japanese beetles would win. This book could have used a good pruning, perhaps by an editor who had read Hemingway.
Rating:
Summary: Not vintage Ackerman!
Review: CULTIVATING DELIGHT lacks the charm and sense of wonder that
captivated me in THE MOON BY WHALELIGHT and A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES. Other gardeners, e.g., Vita Sackville-West and
Beverly Nichols, wrote in a way that allowed others to share their experiences much more so than does Ackerman. Although the book is organized seasonally, "staying with" it is difficult because her thoughts ramble so much. The connection between each season and her thoughts and activities is often vague. There is a place for anecdotal material and for sharing thoughts. However, when these seem to become "insertions" or an "oh-by-the-way . . ," they prevent the writing from being seamless and flowing -- and effective. A personal reaction: It's hard to believe that someone who shifts hated gardening chores to others is at heart a true gardener. Only when one gets "down and dirty" and does the dreaded chores does she truly experience delight in cultivating a garden that pleases her. The "Plant Inventory" with which the book closes adds little to the education and nothing to the pleasure of the reader. A sketch of the overall garden would be helpful. If the book is meant to be a memoir of one gardener's responses to her garden, it succeeds. If it is meant to invite others to share her pleasure, it fails.
Rating: 
Summary: Unoriginal and uninspiring...
Review: Diane Ackerman says, "I must confess, I am not a master gardener by a long shot, nor even a particularly expert one." In CULTIVATING DELIGHT, Ackerman proves this by sharing the contents of a journal she kept following an accident in which she was struck by a motorist while riding her bicycle. DELIGHT is not a gardening book, it is a synopsis of a journal kept by a convalesing writer who happens to have a garden. Ackerman lives and gardens in Ithaca New York, home of Cornell University and one of the most beautiful and idyllic college towns in the United States. In her book, Ackerman describes her life of privilage: swimming in her backyard pool with friends; riding her bike around town, along the lake, or into the countryside; collecting roses from her many and various garden beds (1,500 roses over the summer); resting in the bay window of her study to watch wrens house hunt and breed or hummingbirds whom she has named Ruby and Gizmo stop by for a snack from one of the various feeders she has hung; shopping at craft fairs; stopping by the garden center; and myriad other tasks. Ackerman uses the four seasons to stucture her book--an overworked device that fails (A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES was much better organized). A few passages are good--she's somewhat eloquent when it comes to describing birds--but mostly I found her writing irritating and repetitive. She too frequently makes use of cliched phrases and/or awkward metaphors. As an avid reader of books on gardening and nature, I found her thoughts unoriginal and uninspiring. I recommend one consider resisting the beautiful cover of this book (which is relatively original and apparently matches the colors in the wall paper in Ms. Ackerman's study), and read THE INVITING GARDEN by Allen Lacy. Or if you are looking for book on gardening that is truly profound, try Jim Nollman's book, WHY WE GARDEN.
Rating: 
Summary: I loved it, and I¿m not even remotely a gardener
Review: Gardens. They're great, and I have a lovely one in my front yard. But I can claim exactly none of the credit. My style of gardening is to sit on the front steps chatting with Teri, my gardener, while she prunes the shrubs and tucks primroses and lobelia and cyclamen into the little bare spots.
But I love reading about people who DO enjoy gardening, and Diane Ackerman is a consummate writer on the subject. I've read The Moon by Whale Light and A Natural History of the Senses, two others of her several books, and find myself equally charmed by this one. It's a casual tour through the four seasons of her upstate backyard garden. But, as she's a naturalist, a poet, and a philosopher, she doesn't stop with just the plants; she uses the plants and their interdependent roles as metaphors to browse mentally through a wide variety of topics, including what gardens can do for people more than how people can tend a garden. It's like a role reversal of sorts. Some of the subjects that her free- and far-ranging mind roams over include: how we are like plants, plant's self-defense mechanisms, why we see faces in nature, etc. Her lyrical writing and vast, encyclopedic curiosity sometimes remind me of Annie Dillard's nature writing, a comparison that should be considered a compliment to both authors.
Rating: 
Summary: Quite disappointing
Review: I had never read one of Diane Ackerman's books so when I saw this well-reviewed in the NYT, I decided to check it out. As someone who's read a fair number of reflective garden books, I found Ackerman's prose weak and lacking in much real service. From a natural history standpoint, she wrote nothing that surprised me. I can't comment on how it compares to her previous work, but I can say that I wouldn't buy this book again.
Rating:
Summary: a gardener's deligh
Review: I read this book from the library and then bought it for myself because it is definitely a re-reading book. I have read it several times now and it amazes me every time. The depth of knowledge and the decriptions of her plants along with the distractions of her life are interesting, engaging and wonderful to read. Diane is one of my favorite authors but this book combines her scientific wordy writing style with one of my loves - plants and gardening. I read it when I'm sad and it reminds me of the wonders in the world and in my yard and neighborhood. I envy her spending so much time in her garden. I highly recommend it to plant people who like to read books besides the plant manuals that tell you how to grow things, enjoying the plants is the ultimate pleasure.
Rating:
Summary: My steady companion.
Review: I received this beautiful book as a Christmas present, read it through with relish, and am now reading it again, this time week by week, the way it was written. It's an amazing appreciation of nature, and so wise about the human condition. It's my steady companion as I await the spring garden.
Rating:
Summary: A total delight.
Review: I'd never read anything by this author before, but I read several appreciative reviews in magazines and thought I'd give her latest a try, hoping it might make a nice gift book for gardener friends. I'm so glad I did. It surpassed my expectations and is a total delight.
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