|
|
Review by Pat Regel
Take a break from late-summer harvesting and garden clean-up and focus on using your creativity to get the most out of the rest of the gardening season.
Hardie Newton's "Celebration of Flowers" is more than a beautifully illustrated book on harvesting and arranging flowers. It celebrates the creative side in all gardeners that only begins to express itself when the first seeds are planted. Newton's book takes the skill of the gardener a step higher to create imaginative floral designs and dried arrangements that can be used throughout the four seasons of the year.
Everything the gardener needs in order to bring the bounty of the garden indoors for seasonal enjoyment is in this book, but along with Newton's encyclopedic knowledge of flowering plants, she includes her own philosophy of gardening. Her book is inspirational as well as instructive. Newton directs gardeners to reassess the reasons we all became gardeners to begin with, and through a series of short essays, she instructs, cheers, inspires, and reaffirms something every gardener knows: that we've adopted the best of all possible hobbies.
Consider this second book as you're turning over in your mind what worked and what didn't work in your garden this year. Take a look at gardening from Gene Logsdon's perspective. His thirteenth book, "The Contrary Farmer's Invitation to Gardening" is not just for farmers. Logsdon's voice is original, refreshing, and unconventional, and there is much here that is simply good sense. The book combines natural history, philosophy and an untraditional blend of environmentalism and pragmatism.
Logsdon celebrates the side of gardening that isn't a finicky, style-obsessed, expensive hobby. His is the voice of sanity and self-reliance. He attempts to break down the garden walls which have risen around this hobby over the past few years, reserving it for the snobs. Those of you who remember the down-to-earth, commonsense and superb garden writing of Ruth Stout will see the same clear thinking in Logsdon's book. As the former editor of "Organic Gardening" magazine, Logsdon has also contributed articles and essays to numerous publications including "Mother Jones" and "The Sun." This newest book will pick up where his widely acclaimed "The Contrary Farmer" left off.
Pat Regel gardens and writes in Nashville.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
Support your