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3.44 AVERAGE
3.44 AVERAGE
wawhale's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
relaxing
slow-paced
3.75
mintyfreshsocks's review against another edition
4.0
This was a very enjoyable read. Lively's voice is engaging, and the essays meander in a pleasant way, everything from Virginia Woolf's gardening proclivities to gardens in novels to the author's meditations on time and gardening.
readerlylife's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
A bit slow but informative. I especially loved the chapter “The Written Garden” about gardens in books. Lovely chapter.
themermae's review against another edition
3.0
This book felt both over explained and underdeveloped. I wanted to like it - and there were a hand full of lines and ideas that almost made finishing it worth it - but reading it felt uncomfortable and directionless - the opposite of how I feel in the garden.
crystaljacksonwriter's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
2.0
I wanted to like this book. The cover is lovely, and I love gardening and reading about writers who garden. I just couldn’t get past the tone deaf colonialism. There’s even a mention of garden genocide that seems deeply inappropriate. It’s fine to have garden preferences, but the consistent xenophobia made this impossible for me to enjoy. This is more of a lot of gardening opinions and little useful information or inspiration.
abject_reptile's review against another edition
2.0
I'd have enjoyed this more had it just been about gardening (though I deplore her taste for white flowers) but as so much of it was about writers and gardens and I don't care for most of the writers she references it was a bit of an up and down affair. I'd thought that the garden parts would carry me through but I became irretrievably bored somewhere around Nancy Mitford and Edith Wharton. I can imagine that many readers would love this book and, certainly, I like the sort of book it is, but in the end three stars seemed a bit of a stretch.
deborahisreading's review against another edition
4.0
A mixed meadow of biography, history and culture.
susieliston's review against another edition
3.0
This was a nice little book, nothing earth shattering but obviously written from the heart. Covering everything she could think of concerning gardens, from her own experiences to how gardens figure in famous literature. (As someone whose family owned a nursery for 30 years, I was a bit chagrined at how many times I wasn't entirely sure what kind of plant she was referring to, had to keep reminding myself that she's in England and I'm in southern California..)
leahnoel's review against another edition
2.0
The premise is the most interesting part of this book. There were brief moments of insight that redeems the second star in my review, but otherwise this book is mostly surface-level rambling drivel of gardening for color (especially white), specific plants (mostly flowers such as roses, dahlias, tulips…), and famous writers who were or weren’t gardeners. With the premise of examining the garden as metaphor for life, I was expecting a grittier discussion… instead there was an exhausting discussion about short-sighted style choices with no regard for wider or deeper implications. The author is unapologetically close-minded, out of date, and confidently colonial… even to the point that in chapter 5 she literally prefaced her gushing preference for English gardens with the statement that she is slightly xenophobic… As if that excuses it? (No!) There were several times in the book when I questioned if her editor was paying much attention, but at that statement I wondered if she had an editor at all. Like, if those ideals can’t be pruned from her mind, at least prune them from the book!
Overall, I think this might be a decent starting point for anyone interested in thinking/writing about gardens in literature, but not a source of useful perspective.
Overall, I think this might be a decent starting point for anyone interested in thinking/writing about gardens in literature, but not a source of useful perspective.