Book Reviews: 9 for ’09

Posted in Shop/Book Reviews on February 25 2009, by Plant Talk

The Year’s “Must-Reads”

John Suskewich is Book Manager for Shop in the Garden.

To somebody who’s really into plants, February finds the cosmic garden center always filled with five-pints of that herbaceous perennial called hope, so I’m thinking ahead. I’m looking forward to that lengthening daylight. I’m thinking about those first snowdrops, about mud and muck, about witch-hazels and Rijnveld’s Early Sensation and seed orders and Lenten hellebores and unpaid credit card balances because of plant purchases, and then there are books.

Here are several new books that will tell me what I’m doing wrong and what plants that I don’t have that I gotta have, books about other gardens and other gardeners, books that are celebratory and books that are valedictory, books that are encouraging and books that are alarming. Some of these are out now and some will be published later in the year, but here is a selection, 9 for ’09, of books about plants and the people who are mesmerized by them.

The Edible Schoolyard by Alice Waters
At the acclaimed restaurant Chez Panisse, founder and chef Alice Waters created a style of cooking that is seasonal, market based, plant centered, and not just nutritional but nurturing. The Edible Schoolyard takes this template and applies it to education to reinvent the way we teach our kids. Her goals are our goals here at The New York Botanical Garden: to inject nature into our lives in a transformational way.

William Robinson, The Wild Gardener by Richard Bisgrove
William Robinson is one of those transcendent figures that everyone has heard of but whose achievement has been so long unstudied that newbies like me aren’t quite sure what he accomplished. One of the finest garden historians, Richard Bisgrove, reexamines the life and achievement of this icon who popularized the wild garden and the cottage garden and in whose works one finds the first intimations of a holistic view of gardening.

Listening to Stone by Dan Snow
What an inspired use of feldspar! If you need a dry stone wall with poetry as the mortar, Dan Snow is your mason. Listening to Stone is a look at his profession and an appreciation of his medium as well as a study of some of his recent constructions, which turn something weighty and substantial into works of art that are arrestingly enigmatic.

The New Terrarium by Tovah Martin
I was in college during the ’70s, the heyday of macramé plant holders, the original cast recording of Pippin, beanbag furniture, and terrariums. (A terrarium was something you made when you got tired of netting dead neon tetras out of your 20-gallon fish tank.) Tovah Martin, one of our best garden writers, rethinks the concept with new containers and new plantings and reminds us that it is still one of the best methods for bringing and keeping nature indoors.

Read about John’s other selected books after the jump.

Our Life in Gardens by Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd
Garden designers, plant enthusiasts, horticulture writers, role models: This book takes a look back over the authors’ long career together, and I am looking forward to what they have to say about both life and gardens. They are sure to mention Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Frisia’ and provide sound information on garden-making in general and on North Hill, their life’s work, in particular.

An Orchard Invisible by Jonathan Silvertown
One of nature’s most inscrutable facts and perfect metaphors, the seed is the subject of this seminal work of natural history. Here at The New York Botanical Garden we constantly encounter them and their effects. Some are as fine as dust, but even the smallest of them contain worlds of wonder and an awesome mystery. Jonathan Silvertown manages to penetrate the secrets within and reveals how seeds are key to the whole process of evolution.

Mannahatta by Eric W. Sanderson
This is an eye-popping look at New York City that dramatically matches imagined views of its pre-Gotham days with the lively metropolis we see around us. The technique is breathtaking as well as heartbreaking, because it reminds us that what has been lost can never be restored. Mannahatta is a stunning visual treat, but also a call to arms for advocates of the natural world.

Long Island Landscapes by Cynthia Zaitzevsky
This book has been in the Norton catalog for what seems like decades and finally has come into print! I actually have seen a copy, and it is not only a beauty, with some rare archival images, but a work of great scholarship and insight. Among the six designers studied here are such important figures as Beatrix Farrand, Marian Coffin, and Ellen Biddle Shipman. This is not just a critical study but also a tribute to some brave, brilliant, and pioneering women.

Parks, Plants, and People by Lynden B. Miller
Our most important public garden designer, Lynden Miller, has changed the relationship between New York, her city, and the natural world. You wouldn’t even want to start to think about what this city would be like without the Conservatory Garden in Central Park, or Bryant Park, or Wagner Park. Her first commission, and perhaps her masterpiece, is right here at NYBG, the Jane Watson Irwin Perennial Garden, and even in the rain I make sure I route myself through it to get to work. This is a book about building and caring for landscapes, parks, and gardens, and a manifesto in defense of nature in urban environments.

These books are either currently available at Shop in the Garden or will be when they are released. The Shop periodically hosts authors for informal conversations and booksignings. Raymond Jungles, designer of The Orchid Show, will be here this Saturday, February 28, and Tovah Martin on April 11.