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V. Sackville-Wests Garden Book: a collection taken from In your garden, In your garden again, More for your garden, Even more for your garden
1968. First Edition. 250 pages. Pictorial dust jacket over paper covered boards. Book is in better condition than most examples of this age. Neat, clean, well bound pages with very minimal foxing, tanning and thumbing. Small inscriptions and neat labels may be present. Boards have mild shelf wear with light rubbing and corner bumping. Some light marking and sunning. Unclipped jacket has light edge-wear with minor tears and chipping. Mild rubbing and marking.
250 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1946
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About the author
Vita Sackville-West
131 books480 followersNovels of British writer Victoria Mary Sackville-West, known as Vita, include
The Edwardians
(1930) and
All Passion Spent
(1931).
This prolific English author, poet, and memoirist in the early 20th century lived not so privately.
While married to the diplomat Harold Nicolson, she conducted a series of scandalous amorous liaisons with many women, including the brilliant Virginia Woolf. They had an open marriage. Both Sackville-West and her husband had same-sex relationships. Her exuberant aristocratic life was one of inordinate privilege and way ahead of her time. She frequently traveled to Europe in the company of one or the other of her lovers and often dressed as a man to be able to gain access to places where only the couples could go. Gardening, like writing, was a passion Vita cherished with the certainty of a vocation: she wrote books on the topic and constructed the gardens of the castle of Sissinghurst, one of England's most beautiful gardens at her home.
She published her first book Poems of East and West in 1917. She followed this with a novel, Heritage, in 1919. A second novel, The Heir (1922), dealt with her feelings about her family. Her next book, Knole and the Sackvilles (1922), covered her family history. The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931) are perhaps her best known novels today. In the latter, the elderly Lady Slane courageously embraces a long suppressed sense of freedom and whimsy after a lifetime of convention. In 1948 she was appointed a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. She continued to develop her garden at Sissinghurst Castle and for many years wrote a weekly gardening column for The Observer. In 1955 she was awarded the gold Veitch medal of the Royal Horticultural Society. In her last decade she published a further biography, Daughter of France (1959) and a final novel, No Signposts in the Sea (1961).
She died of cancer on June 2, 1962.
This prolific English author, poet, and memoirist in the early 20th century lived not so privately.
While married to the diplomat Harold Nicolson, she conducted a series of scandalous amorous liaisons with many women, including the brilliant Virginia Woolf. They had an open marriage. Both Sackville-West and her husband had same-sex relationships. Her exuberant aristocratic life was one of inordinate privilege and way ahead of her time. She frequently traveled to Europe in the company of one or the other of her lovers and often dressed as a man to be able to gain access to places where only the couples could go. Gardening, like writing, was a passion Vita cherished with the certainty of a vocation: she wrote books on the topic and constructed the gardens of the castle of Sissinghurst, one of England's most beautiful gardens at her home.
She published her first book Poems of East and West in 1917. She followed this with a novel, Heritage, in 1919. A second novel, The Heir (1922), dealt with her feelings about her family. Her next book, Knole and the Sackvilles (1922), covered her family history. The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931) are perhaps her best known novels today. In the latter, the elderly Lady Slane courageously embraces a long suppressed sense of freedom and whimsy after a lifetime of convention. In 1948 she was appointed a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. She continued to develop her garden at Sissinghurst Castle and for many years wrote a weekly gardening column for The Observer. In 1955 she was awarded the gold Veitch medal of the Royal Horticultural Society. In her last decade she published a further biography, Daughter of France (1959) and a final novel, No Signposts in the Sea (1961).
She died of cancer on June 2, 1962.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 18, 2019
Non starò a fare una disquisizione su chi fosse Vita, chi arriva a leggere i suoi scritti sa già già di chi si sta parlando. Vorrei, invece, porre l'accento su questa raccolta di scritti scelti: divisi per mesi, vengono menzionate una quantità di piante stupefacente: erbacee perenni, bulbi, annuali, alberi da fiore, arbusti, qualche spontanea e rose. Tantissime rose. Abbinamenti, osservazioni personali, suggerimenti di coltivazione riempiono il resto delle pagine, regalando poesia e praticità.
Ultime due osservazioni per l'Italia: la signora del giardino bianco scriveva dalla Gran Bretagna per cui è inutile per noi italiani copiare di pari passo le sue idee, i risultati sarebbero deludenti; ma rimangono comunque degli ottimi suggerimenti ed interessanti stimoli.
Il titolo originale dell'opera è "The illustrated garden book" e nello stivale è uscito in più edizioni e con titoli differenti, per cui attenzione a non fare come come: l'ho acquistato due volte.
Ultime due osservazioni per l'Italia: la signora del giardino bianco scriveva dalla Gran Bretagna per cui è inutile per noi italiani copiare di pari passo le sue idee, i risultati sarebbero deludenti; ma rimangono comunque degli ottimi suggerimenti ed interessanti stimoli.
Il titolo originale dell'opera è "The illustrated garden book" e nello stivale è uscito in più edizioni e con titoli differenti, per cui attenzione a non fare come come: l'ho acquistato due volte.
September 3, 2014
A gardening book written more than fifty years ago needs to convince the reader that it still has something to offer. This reader certainly believes so. Having recently acquired a garden, I have found Vita's "Garden Book" full of recommendations which I've scrawled on scraps of paper
marking relevant pages.
You might expect someone writing in the tower at Sissinghurst to have expectations of a more exalted kind than the owner of a suburban back garden. But the writer, though privileged, was not rich and was a thrifty and practical gardener, who wrote a regular column in the Observer until shortly before her death. This book is a selection from those columns, grouping articles from different years together under the month of the year. An index, indispensable, has been added.
Well-written, the pages mix practicality with poetic description of the seasons. She writes as one gardener to another, and acknowledges her own foibles and preferences:
"It occurs to me that I have never written about pergolas ..."
The reason is simple:
"They drip."
Years later, her suggestions for planting are still relevant and appealing, though there may now be many more hybrids of the plant available to choose from. Her background, inevitably, makes itself felt, as in her reference to yew, which is:
"poisonous to cattle, so you cannot plant it where your own or other people's cows are likely to browse on it."
The photographs of the grounds at Sissinghurst ensure that the reader sees the differences of
scale between our gardens and hers. But those surroundings gave her the breadth of experience which makes her writings so useful. Passing asides about daily life bring home the different context in which her columns were published. Seeds collected from your plants, for example, can
be stored in "little air-tight tins, such as the tins that typewriter ribbons come in."
A book to enjoy on a winter's night when the hard work of gardening can be postponed.
Quotes
"When the (autumn) days arrive, with their melancholy and the spiders' webs so delicately and geometrically looped from the hedges, how grateful we are for the torch of a little tree or the low smoulder of leaves on azaleas and peonies."
On a hedge of rambler roses: "a long, angry, startling streak, as though somebody had taken a red pencil and scrawled dense red bunches all over a thicket-fence of green."
marking relevant pages.
You might expect someone writing in the tower at Sissinghurst to have expectations of a more exalted kind than the owner of a suburban back garden. But the writer, though privileged, was not rich and was a thrifty and practical gardener, who wrote a regular column in the Observer until shortly before her death. This book is a selection from those columns, grouping articles from different years together under the month of the year. An index, indispensable, has been added.
Well-written, the pages mix practicality with poetic description of the seasons. She writes as one gardener to another, and acknowledges her own foibles and preferences:
"It occurs to me that I have never written about pergolas ..."
The reason is simple:
"They drip."
Years later, her suggestions for planting are still relevant and appealing, though there may now be many more hybrids of the plant available to choose from. Her background, inevitably, makes itself felt, as in her reference to yew, which is:
"poisonous to cattle, so you cannot plant it where your own or other people's cows are likely to browse on it."
The photographs of the grounds at Sissinghurst ensure that the reader sees the differences of
scale between our gardens and hers. But those surroundings gave her the breadth of experience which makes her writings so useful. Passing asides about daily life bring home the different context in which her columns were published. Seeds collected from your plants, for example, can
be stored in "little air-tight tins, such as the tins that typewriter ribbons come in."
A book to enjoy on a winter's night when the hard work of gardening can be postponed.
Quotes
"When the (autumn) days arrive, with their melancholy and the spiders' webs so delicately and geometrically looped from the hedges, how grateful we are for the torch of a little tree or the low smoulder of leaves on azaleas and peonies."
On a hedge of rambler roses: "a long, angry, startling streak, as though somebody had taken a red pencil and scrawled dense red bunches all over a thicket-fence of green."
January 17, 2015
This is a book I pick up regularly. It's divided into months of the year, so it's a delightful refresher on what's happening and suggestions for the garden at any given time. Vita Sackville-West has an appealing, slightly dry humor that I love, and a grasp of gardening that I aspire to.
April 17, 2021
It's rather nice to imagine a world in which the potential vulgarity of one's cherry tree is deeply worrying.
November 22, 2022
A collection of articles written in the 50s and 60s for the Observer, this has to be one of my favourite books on gardening. What a joy!
January 10, 2009
I so thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. For the passionate gardener, it's inspiring, but more importantly -- for me -- it's an intimate glimpse into Vita's thoughts and world, which is a treasure.
May 19, 2024
This collection of gardening articles, running from January to December, were originally written for The Observer between 1947 and 1961. Although the earliest articles are now over 75 years old, they are full of good ideas written in a fresh, accessible and humorous style, which make them relevant even today. It is splendidly opinionated book, whether campaigning for justice for a despised bedding plant or pouring out vitriol on an unsuspecting rose:
“I should like to put in a good word for the lobelia...[it] has suffered terribly and most unjustly from its traditional use...I think our lobelias deserve to be grown with more imagination than is usually vouchsafed them.”
“...American Pillar, a rose which, together with Dorothy Perkins, should be forever abolished from our gardens. I know this attack on two popular roses will infuriate many people; but if one writes gardening articles one must have the courage of one’s opinion. I hate, hate hate American Pillar and her sweetly pink companion Perkins.”
Don’t hold back, Vita. Tell us what you really think.
She’s also a realist, being not “quite sure that pergolas are altogether suitable for Britain. They drip.” And anyone who doubted that she was a hands-on gardener would be reassured by her remarks that “The Bourbon roses should not be heavily pruned...Dead and twiggy wood should be cut out. How easy to say and how scratchy to do.” And while she includes many hints for those with large gardens and garden staff (such as being careful not to plant yew where it can harm your cows!) many of the articles are on how to make the most of tiny gardens or how to garden on a low income.
Some things have changed - the stone drinking-troughs “with which pigs and cattle were once content before they heard of concrete” will cost far more than the equivalent of a few shillings now, as will “the old fashioned stone sinks”, although the rest of the advice on miniature gardens is spot on.
This isn’t a book to read through in one sitting, but rather one to dip in and out of. I’ve enjoyed reading a couple of articles per coffee break over the past couple of weeks, and have relished the wide range of topics covered, from making garden pools (pools, not ponds, because “Pond is an ugly word”) to the reason the white Christmas rose is called Helleborus niger (its roots are black), from an appreciation of rose-leaves to the joys of dead-heading, from ‘The Small Garden’ to ‘Shrubs in Winter’ (Callicarpa must be planted in groups of two or three to get berries - “It is not a case of male and female plants...the explanation seems to be simply that it enjoys a party”)
A delightful book to be read and reread. An ideal bedside or potting shed book for the keen gardener.
“I should like to put in a good word for the lobelia...[it] has suffered terribly and most unjustly from its traditional use...I think our lobelias deserve to be grown with more imagination than is usually vouchsafed them.”
“...American Pillar, a rose which, together with Dorothy Perkins, should be forever abolished from our gardens. I know this attack on two popular roses will infuriate many people; but if one writes gardening articles one must have the courage of one’s opinion. I hate, hate hate American Pillar and her sweetly pink companion Perkins.”
Don’t hold back, Vita. Tell us what you really think.
She’s also a realist, being not “quite sure that pergolas are altogether suitable for Britain. They drip.” And anyone who doubted that she was a hands-on gardener would be reassured by her remarks that “The Bourbon roses should not be heavily pruned...Dead and twiggy wood should be cut out. How easy to say and how scratchy to do.” And while she includes many hints for those with large gardens and garden staff (such as being careful not to plant yew where it can harm your cows!) many of the articles are on how to make the most of tiny gardens or how to garden on a low income.
Some things have changed - the stone drinking-troughs “with which pigs and cattle were once content before they heard of concrete” will cost far more than the equivalent of a few shillings now, as will “the old fashioned stone sinks”, although the rest of the advice on miniature gardens is spot on.
This isn’t a book to read through in one sitting, but rather one to dip in and out of. I’ve enjoyed reading a couple of articles per coffee break over the past couple of weeks, and have relished the wide range of topics covered, from making garden pools (pools, not ponds, because “Pond is an ugly word”) to the reason the white Christmas rose is called Helleborus niger (its roots are black), from an appreciation of rose-leaves to the joys of dead-heading, from ‘The Small Garden’ to ‘Shrubs in Winter’ (Callicarpa must be planted in groups of two or three to get berries - “It is not a case of male and female plants...the explanation seems to be simply that it enjoys a party”)
A delightful book to be read and reread. An ideal bedside or potting shed book for the keen gardener.
January 9, 2008
Vita is a wonderful writer, all the way around, but her writing on gardening is really a pleasure to read. This book set me to dreaming about the garden I'll have one day-- a true inspiration and highly readable.
December 23, 2013
In realtà più che un libro è un manuale di giardinaggio, ma la vera cosa bella è l'oggetto libro in sè, con le foto del giardino dell'autrice e le illustrazioni dei fiori. per veri appassionati, comunque, o per chi capisce qualcosa di piante.
April 11, 2012
fantastically descriptive of true gardening. captures the seasons - quite poetical
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews