Product Description

This is a perfect bedside book for the literate gardener and makes a terrific gardener's gift book. It is an entertaining survey of 80 plant genera, with a multitude of references to, and extracts from, myth and literature from Shakespeare to the Victorian language of flowers. Based on prodigious research, it includes much literature that has fallen into undeserved obscurity, as well as selections from the great poets. It is a delightful study of the influence of the world's flora on humanity, from the mundane to the mystical.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1984712 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-09
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.42 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 447 pages

From Amazon.com

"The snowdrop, in purest white arraie,
First rears her hedde on Candlemas daie;"
From an early church calendar of English flowers, ca. 1500

As you pick up spade and shovel and head out into the garden, you might want to offer up a prayer for sunny days and rainy nights to one of the patron saints of gardening described by Bobby Ward in this fascinating compilation of horticultural wit and whimsy.

Have you ever wondered how flowers get their names, both common and scientific, or what Shakespeare or Milton had to say about roses or honeysuckle? Collected in this fat, satisfying volume are quotations from poetry, plays, and stories written by the ancient Greeks up through the Victorians that trace the rich history of the natural world as captured in myth and literature. Symbolism, traditional medicinal uses, and most of all lyrical tributes to favorite plants from acanthus to zinnia fill the pages of this book, to be read for sheer pleasure or dipped into for information about specific flowers. The book is easy to use compared to many such compilations, in part because it is arranged by type of plant, and because Ward has masterfully woven it all together with a blend of historical and botanical commentary for context.

You won't learn from this book how to plant a bulb or grow a tomato, but there are more than enough books on the practical matters of gardening. Rather, folk tales, myths, legends, and lore of the flowers, in the words of sages, saints, herbalists, and poets provide inspiration, humor, and fine reading. --Valerie Easton

From Library Journal
Ward, a retired environmental scientist and gardener, has gathered quotations from poems, myths, novels, and plays from ancient Greece to the 19th century to illustrate the literary history of 80 garden plants. He traces the origins of the scientific and common names for each plant and provides its mythological and religious contexts, symbolism in the arts, and traditional medicinal uses, as well as its meaning in the language of flowers. He also mentions unusual uses of flowers as food, for example oil made from the seeds of snapdragons. The most challenging part of his research was verifying that a recognizable common name was applied to the same plant over the years by different writers. Ward is meticulous in identifying the particular plants referred to in the literary selections he quotes, whose sources range from the familiar to the obscure. This book offers much information and entertainment for patrons of large public and academic libraries.ADaniel Starr, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Ward mentions in his introduction that the word anthology derives from the Greek word for flower gathering--a perfectly apropos description for the impressive bouquet of garden plants presented in this compilation. From acanthus to zinnia, plants have been praised and pondered for centuries. Each entry's plant profile includes fundamental information about a plant and its related species, then goes on to relate historical background. For gardening aficionados who enjoy intriguing bits of little-known lore, the book's references to myth, legend, and the romance of flowers (the begonia symbolizes dark thoughts) will prove satisfying. Calling upon diverse sources that span ancient herbals, the plays of Shakespeare, the poems of Poe, and a wealth of botanical and literary works, Ward engages readers with myriad facts and fantasies that are anything but obvious when pottering about in the garden. If a gardener's curiosity about plants seems to increase the longer one plants, prunes, and propagates, this excellent meditation on plants will help appease such inquisitive tendencies. Alice Joyce