Review by New York Times Review
FOR GARDENERS, WINTER ÍS a period of rest, if not entirely of relaxation. The trees are bare, the flower beds dormant, the pruners and trowels packed away in the toolshed. All those hours once spent weeding and mowing can now be devoted to recalling our triumphs and brooding over our failures. There's also, finally, enough leisure time to study other people's gardens and pick up a few pointers. And yet, infuriatingly, many of those gardens are also in sleep mode. What to do? The answer to that question - as to so many others - can be found in a book. Five of them, to be precise. First things first. Clear your head by taking a long walk, as the 18 contributors to Catie Marron's CITY PARKS: Public Places, Private Thoughts (Harper, $50) have done, anywhere from the Maidan of Kolkata (Simon Winchester) to Florence's Boboli Gardens (Zadie Smith) to Gorky Park in Moscow (Ian Frazier). As is often the case, their essays tell us more about the writers than they do the gardens (should it surprise anyone that in Dublin, John Banville searches for a maze he can never find, "a fancy straight out of a tale by Borges"?), and the selection process might be debatable (Prospect Park and not Central Park?), but teamed with Ober to Gili's vivacious photographs, they're an eloquent reminder of the way shared landscapes can provide intimate inspiration. Visiting Maruyama Park in Kyoto, which he likes best on a misty late afternoon in November, Pico Iyer remarks that it seems "like a public monument to privacy." This is, perhaps, why the signature serenity of what Kendall H. Brown's new book calls "places to dream" has attracted so many Western gardeners. Just flipping through the pages Of QUIET BEAUTY: The Japanese Gardens of North America (Tuttle, $34.95) will instantly lower your blood pressure. And while you may not be able to replicate the teahouses and moon bridges in David M. Cobb's elegant photographs, there are plenty of details to be borrowed for even the smallest gardens: a simple bamboo fence, a perfectly sited stone lantern, a rough pebbled path that gently curves to create heightened suspense about what lies beyond. Another kind of curiosity - sneaking a peek at finely tended properties from the luxury bracket of the real estate listings - can be satisfied in Jack Staub's private EDENS: Beautiful Country Gardens (Gibbs Smith, $50). Not many of us are able to emulate the owner of the magnificent "farm" in North Salem, N.Y., who finishes her daily horseback ride with a walk to "check the orchard, the vegetable gardens, the forest, the backside of the lilac lair." But thanks to Rob Cardillo's sumptuous photographs, we can lean over the fence and commune with her cows, even see that her blueberries are starting to ripen. This is a book packed with stupendous vistas, wildflower meadows, boxwood-bordered garden "rooms" and water features seemingly immune to pond scum. Even the animals look buffed to a high sheen in the perfect light. Contain your envy and trespass a bit further in private gardens of the Hudson valley (Monacelli, $65), Jane Garmey and John M. Hall's follow-up to "Private Gardens of Connecticut." The owners of these properties have serious horticultural credentials (one is president of the New York Botanical Garden, another is growing 250 kinds of peppers for her latest gardening book and hand-pollinates every one of her squashes), yet they can also be endearingly plain-spoken. "My aesthetic is on the messy side," confesses the owner of a Stanfordville garden whose "mess" I'd gladly replicate. And how to resist this confession from the owner of an "in-town" garden in Hudson who wasn't around when his 22 tons of gravel were delivered, by mistake, to the house next door: "That was painful." There's also some refreshing whimsy, thanks to the inventive woman from Salt Point who bought a gazebo kit, had it mounted on a platform with a motor and now floats it on her vast garden pond, "a marvelous venue for cocktails and sunset boat rides." Need to come back to reality? Do it gently With 66 SQUARE FEET. A DELICIOUS LIFE: One Woman, One Terrace, 92 Recipes (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $29.95), a month-by-month distillation of Marie Viljoen's popular blog, inspired by the compact gardens on her terrace and rooftop in Brooklyn. Starting in January and moving through the height of the growing season to the darkening days of autumn, Viljoen shows us what she finds in public parks (Siberian squill in March, hen of the woods mushrooms in October) and what's waiting back home (wisteria budding in April, yellow pear tomatoes ready for snacking in August). And throughout, holding firm to her insistence that "a garden and a kitchen - regardless of scale - are my necessities," she shares recipes to be enjoyed both indoors and out. Up until now, only the birds have gobbled up the serviceber ries in my garden, but Viljoen's serviceberry pie might tempt me to gather some for myself. Certainly I'll put enough aside for the drinks she makes with serviceberry syrup and prosecco in June. Until then, I'll comfort myself with the advice she leaves for all of us in the depths of December: "Without the wait, and without the emptiness, and without the browning and drying and blowing away, the cold, the frozen pots, the bareness, the shriveled herb leaves, the sticks of fig and rose, without the white pillows of snow, the spare horizon, spring would be nothing We need sleep. We need to be empty. It is the only possible preparation for the excess to come." ALIDA BECKER is an editor at the Book Review.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 8, 2013]
