Over a year ago, I mentioned an intent to write a post about a few of my favorite books on gardens (bloom and seed, 30 December 2018); however, I went on to a very different topic after briefly mentioning three works: Lorraine Harrison’s, How to Read Gardens: A Crash Course in Garden Appreciation, A Short …
vestibule gardens
In my initial posts, I characterized After Eden as an investigation of gardens as places of repose in an otherwise chaotic world, as places of beauty reflective of the age they were created in, as cultivated, enclosed places that protect us briefly from the unruliness without. Or, as I wrote at the conclusion of the …
live oaks and leopard plants in Savannah’s squares
This post has been a difficult one to write. That fact that it has taken me six months to write it should be a clear indication of that. I visited Savannah, Georgia, the end of June intending a post on the squares in the historic district, providing a little background context on the Oglethorpe plan, …
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deadwood and sunrise sculpture
I’ve certainly been off of my intended schedule of one post about every three weeks. It has been a few more weeks than three since my post on the Koutoubia Gardens, also known as Lalla Hassna Park, and the Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech. The delay, though, is certainly not because I have lost interest in …
roses, bougainvillea, and cacti
I didn’t go to Morocco to visit gardens, but I definitely wanted to visit gardens while in Morocco. In particular, I was looking forward to touring through the Dades Valley, famous for its pink Persian roses and the production of rose water. Unfortunately, the time was not right and there was little to see. But …
botanic Oxbridge
I am a medievalist. I spent my academic career teaching medieval literature, especially the Middle English literature of the 14th century, and its appropriation for a vast array of artistic, social, and commercial causes by the 19th, 20th, and 21stcenturies. I like Oxford. Its spires, narrow streets, and granite and limestone walls feel familiar, warm, …
gardens small and big: part 2
Although Holehird Gardens in Windermere, Cumbria, enjoys a healthy reputation in Britain (it holds four national collections: Astilbe, Polystichum, Daboecia, and Meconopsis), had Cindy Ravenhall not mentioned it to me in a casual conversation about her flourishing front yard garden, I would have left the Lake District with associations only of Beatrix Potter, Wordsworth, and …
gardens small and big: part 1
In my initial post, I said that a garden could the size of a pot, a perennial boarder, or a park. This assertion was brought home to me on a recent trip to Windermere in the Lake District in England. We stayed at a lovely (that is the proper English word for it) award-winning B&B, …