In the garden with Vita

Today’s book is V. Sackville-West: The Illustrated Garden Book, an anthology edited by Robin Lane Fox.  It includes color photos, and new botanical watercolor illustrations by Freda Titford.  Paperback published 1989 by Atheneum.

From the back cover:

During her lifetime Vita Sackville-West‘s gardening articles for the Observer, collected in four anthologies and synthesized into V. Sackville-West’s Garden Book, did more “to change the face of English gardening than any other writing.”  The showpiece for her individual style of gardening was the grounds of Sissinghurst Castle, Kent, which she nurtured over thirty years and transformed into a place of beauty and tranquillity with her husband, Harold Nicolson.  Today Sissinghurst, owned by the National Trust, is the most visited garden in England, proving that enthusiasm for Vita’s style continues unabated.

This lavishly illustrated book will appeal to readers who loved V. Sackville-West’s Garden Book and will introduce a new generation of gardeners to the magical delights of the distinctive Sissinghurst style.  Robin Lane Fox, a well-known garden writer and designer, has returned to the original Observer articles to produce this new anthology.  The best of V. Sackville-West’s Garden Book is retained, but at least eighty percent of this volume is composed of new material, articles that have been out of print for twenty years or more.

Sackville-West was also a noted poet and novelist associated with the Bloomsbury group.  She had an affair with literary great Virginia Woolf, and remained her friend until Woolf’s death.

When I think of Sissinghurst, I think of its famous White Garden, ethereal and magical, with white-flowering specimens and plants with variegated or gray foliage.  I often see plants with Sissinghurst alba in their names featured in garden catalogues and magazines.  Photos and more information about the garden are available at the National Trust site.

* * *

Also currently in stock at BrainiacBooks.com:

The Making of an English Country Garden

Who’s Afraid of Leonard Woolf?: A Case for the Sanity of Virginia Woolf

* * *

If you are interested in more particulars about the Book of the Day or any of our other featured books, search our store at BrainiacBooks.com for the title.  If the book is still in our stock, you’ll be taken to the page for that title.

Brainiac Books

Promote Your Page Too

Add to Technorati Favorites

Little guide to a big park

Today’s book is Yosemite National Park (A Golden Guide), by Douglass H. Hubbard; illustrated by Rebecca Merrilees and George Sandstrom. Under the editorship of Herbert S. Zim. Small, slim paperback published 1970 by Golden Press / Western Publishing Company.

[A] concise, comprehensive guide to one of the most spectacular national parks in the United States. This handy guide is filled with full-color illustrations of the park’s many wonders: sheer cliffs and plunging waterfalls; splendid Sequoias and brilliant wildflowers; fishes, birds, mammals and other creatures. — from back cover.

This is one of the more uncommon titles in the popular and beloved Golden Guides series.  I have quite a few of these little books in my personal collection.  I remember some of them fondly from my childhood, such as Flowers, Butterflies and Moths, Rocks and Minerals, and Trees.  The compact size and bright colors were very appealing.  I still admire the fine quality of the illustrations, and I still refer to the texts for field identification.

In Yosemite National Park (A Golden Guide), the section on animals is especially vivid. How handy to have when you want to differentiate between the four kinds of squirrels to be found there!

For more about Yosemite, visit the National Park Service site at http://www.nps.gov/yose/ .

* * *

Also currently in stock at BrainiacBooks.com:

Earth Explained: A Beginner’s Guide to Our Planet

* * *

If you are interested in more particulars about the Book of the Day or any of our other featured books, search our store at BrainiacBooks.com for the title.  If the book is still in our stock, you’ll be taken to the page for that title.

Brainiac Books

Promote Your Page Too

Add to Technorati Favorites

Flora Foolery in a Garden of Nonexistent Delights

Today’s book is Parallel Botany, by Leo Lionni.  Translated from the Italian by Patrick Creagh.  Softcover published 1977 by Knopf.

Described by Peter Staler in Time Magazine as “one of the funniest and most brilliant parodies of scientific jargon and scholarship ever published”, Parallel Botany creates a seamless world of imaginary plants, bogus taxonomy, invented science, made-up scientists, and faked  footnotes.

It is a botany alive with wonders, from the Tirillus silvador of the high Andes (whose habit it is to emit shrill whistles on clear nights in January and February) to the Woodland Tweezers (it was the Japanese parallel botanist Uchigaki who first noticed the unsettling relationship between the growth pattern of a group of Tweezers and a winning layout in a game of Go) to the Artisia (whose various forms anticipate the work of such artists as Arp and Calder — and, some believe, the work of all artists, including those not yet born). — from back cover

The protean Lionni, whose meticulous black-and-white “botanical” drawings are integral to this book, was impressively versatile and accomplished.  He held a doctorate degree in economics from the University of Genoa, was an influential advertising artist and art director, and is most known as a beloved author and illustrator of many children’s picture books.  Parallel Botany‘s combination of whimsy and erudition reminds me of Lewis Carroll; others see a similarity to Jorge Luis Borges.

* * *

If you are interested in more particulars about the Book of the Day, search our store at BrainiacBooks.com for the title.  If the book is still in our stock, you’ll be taken to the page for that title.

Add to Technorati Favorites