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
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.
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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
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