Armchair Gardening
By ivy_clad
11 comments
A fire, a hot cuppa and a good gardening read make me one happy girl on this long, cold December night. December can be a difficult month for the gardener in me. These short, cold days and long, frosty nights, combined with the loss of light and “death” of my favorite plants are a combination that can easily make me blue.
I’m taking refuge in an old gardening book recommended by a friend, Down the Garden Path by Beverley Nichols (Timber Press). It is the story of a 1930’s jazz-age playboy-turned-gardener upon the purchase of a Tudor cottage built in 1520 in the village of Glatton, England. The book is in no way a gardening how-to, instead, a chronicling of the trials and triumphs of a newbie gardener written with candor and wit that continually take me off guard and keep me laughing every few pages. Nichols, himself, proudly acknowledges his status as a newcomer to the gardening world proclaiming that, “..the best gardening books should be written by those who still have to search their brains for the honeysuckle’s languid Latin name..”
So if you need a little gardening entertainment while you wait for spring, give this book a try. Available here: “http://www.amazon.com/Down-Garden-Path-Beverley-Nichols/dp/0881927104”
As Beverley Nichols put it, “No, I fear that this book holds little practical wisdom. But if any gardeners should honour me by turning its pages, idly, after their day’s work is done, I hope that from time to time they may be tempted to smile, not unkindly, at the recollection of their own early follies. And I hope that there may come to them, once more, a faint tremor of that first ecstasy which shook them they they learnt that a garden is the only mistress who never fails, who never fades..”
16 Dec, 2012
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Comments
My pleasure. Happy reading, & thanks for your comment!
16 Dec, 2012
Cosy winter evening reading.
Nice blog :o)
16 Dec, 2012
Thanks for sharing. Enjoy!
16 Dec, 2012
Thanks I,ll go and look.......wonder if its on kindle.......
16 Dec, 2012
Hmm a bit expensive, I'll go to the library......
He seems to have written a lot of books, I,d not heard of him
16 Dec, 2012
It's rare to find an amusing gardening book!!
16 Dec, 2012
I'm sure I've heard of this book. It sounds interesting.
16 Dec, 2012
I too have read this book many years ago and loved it, thanks for the memory.
16 Dec, 2012
Thank you all for your kind comments!
16 Dec, 2012
Hi Ivy clad I know of Bev Nick due to my age group. Unfortunately the book was rather pricey on Kindle when I looked recently. Dear Friend and Gardener (letters on life and gardening) by 2 well known English gardeners. They visited and wrote to each other in their mature years. Christopher Lloyd is no longer alive and Beth Chatto, a brilliant gardener, is well into her eigthies now, but still has a garden to run plus a retail outlet. Christopher Lloyd was a journalist with a garden column. Very witty, out spoken, unconventional gardenwise. Great Dixter was his garden. His pa gardened Dixter before him. There is a biography By Stephen Anderton. Both Lloyd and BN were quietly gay. There is also CUTTINGS which is a collection of Christo's gardening articles. All are good for dipping into by the fireside of a winter evening.
23 Jan, 2013
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23 Jan, 2013
Ah, there it is ! I had forgotten the title but remember how I loved it, as a teenager. Thank you Ivy, will order it.
16 Dec, 2012