Product Details
A Garden from a Hundred Packets of Seed

A Garden from a Hundred Packets of Seed
By James Fenton

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Product Description

A refreshingly simple and free-spirited approach to making a garden for pure pleasure

Forget "bones" Forget "structure." Forget trees, shrubs, and perennials. As James Fenton writes, "This is not a book about huge projects. It is about thinking your way towards the essential flower-garden, by the most traditional of routes: planting some seeds and seeing how they grow."

In this light-hearted, instructive, original "games of lists," Fenton selects one hundred plants he would choose to grow from seed. Flowers for color, size, and exotic interest; herbs and meadow flowers; climbing vines, tropical species-- Fenton describes one hundred readily available varieties, and tells how to acquire and grow them.

Here is a happy, stylish, unpretentious and thought-provoking gardening book that will beguile and inspire both novice and expert alike.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #1982351 in Books
  • Published on: 2002-04-01
  • Original language: English
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 136 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Marry the soul and sensitivity of a poet with the passion and prowess of a dedicated gardener and the result would be Fenton, who has created a wee gem of a book, hardly bigger than the packet of seeds he rhapsodizes about, based on a fascinating premise: given an empty garden and starting solely by seed, what plants would you choose to grow? Examining only a plant's essential quality, be it color, foliage, fragrance, or form, Fenton postulates that it's possible to develop a stunning garden by considering only the most inherent properties, relegating loftier goals such as design and structure to secondary positions. Speaking with obvious experience and unabashed enthusiasm, Fenton presents his Top 100 list of reliable and remarkable garden performers with erudite charm and tongue-in cheek wit, so vividly describing these garden treasures as to conjure up halcyon visions in the mind's eye. With seed catalog in one hand and Fenton's guide in the other, this unique way of producing a glorious garden becomes a sensory adventure. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"[James Fenton is a] gardener...who is surprised by the joy of a lap full of seed."
--Giles Foden, The Guardian (London)

About the Author

James Fenton is a poet, critic, and gardener. From 1994 to 1999 he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford, where he has created a noted garden. He writes about poetry, art history, and gardening for the New York Review of Books.