Time and the Gardener: Writings on a Lifelong Passion

by Elisabeth Sheldon

Book Overview

From her vantage point as an octogenarian gardener, Elisabeth Sheldon knows that one of the most important elements in the making of a garden is the passage of time. This is true in the making of a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080708557X
• ISBN13: 9780807085578
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Length: 276 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Time-tempered gardening wisdom

This book is a gem among gardening books. As a beginning gardener, I've benefitted tremendously from Sheldon's experienced perspective. It's easy to get caught up in reading, planning and toiling and worry a little too much about the details I can't control anyway. Sheldon reminds the reader that sometimes things just grow, or not. She discusses many kinds of plants, so it is a book I will visit repeatedly as I learn more (the first time through, I knew hardly any of the plant names and still enjoyed it). Reading her book also helped me remember to stop and take it all in, not just rush about the yard with my shovel. I imagine that's the result of so many seasons of gardening - an understanding that the garden is significant because we get to enjoy it, not just because we get it done. The book is composed of short essays, so it's easy to pick it up and read a small, stand-alone section - perfect for a break in a busy day.

Elisabeth et son jardin de fleurs

Le livre est un recueil des ecrits nonpublies, sur le jardinage des fleurs, par l'auteur. L'auteur dit que jardiner ca veut travailler la terre, planter, arracher les mauvaises herbes, et apprendre, surtout par lire. Mais n'importe ce que l'on fasse, les jardins ne durent pas pour toujours, a cause du mauvais temps, des betises et des betes. Dans les dernieres pages du livre elle nous parle de ses fleurs preferees: les ancolie, astilbe, chrysantheme, clematis, gaura, lysimachia et nepeta. Dans le nord ou elle se trouve la fleur la plus preferee de toutes c'est Dianthus caesius, dans le sud la marguerite jaune pale ou blanche. Le livre se termine, a merveille, avec la frase tellement sage de la jardiniere peut-etre la plus estimee des anglais, Gertrude Jekyll: lorsqu'il s'agit des fleurs, la beaute avant tout!

Gentle garden wisdom

Reading "Time and the Gardener" is like visiting an elderly gardening friend whose gentle wisdom and time-honed observations cloak an educated, highly literate mind and an acute wit.Elisabeth Sheldon is an experienced gardener - her experience is marked in decades rather than years. Gardening in New York State, she seems to have tried most species of flowers, trees and shrubs that might grow in that area and climate zone, and she has tried many varieties of each of the spcies. She writes about them gently, understanding that some grow politely wile others lean on their neighbours and others scramble over everything within reach.I found myself smiling through the first section "What I've learned over time" and learning a great deal from the second section, "Timeless Plants: some of My Favourites". In the third section, "Gardeners of Other Times" I re-visited old acquaintances such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and found a sharp and insightful mini-biography of Jane Loudon.This is a delightful book from a writer of great experience. Treat yourself, or a friend, to a copy and curl up beside a winter fire, or under the shade of a tree in summer to relax, learn and enjoy.

Elisabeth and her colorful garden

TIME AND THE GARDENER brings together Elisabeth Sheldon's unpublished writings, from the last 13-14 years, on flower gardening. The author begins by calling gardening "delightful, absorbing, intensely gratifying, maddening, and exhausting" digging, planting, weeding, working, and reading, reading, reading. It's also mind-changing, because of "lost plants and new ideas."Sheldon once gardened properly, in white, silver and pale yellow or grey and pink, lavender and lime. Then she gardened flamboyantly, in hot-colors. Next, she border gardened, with purple flowers and leaves. That took her garden full circle. In fall, purple looked so good, with Lespedeza thunbergii 'Pink Fountain', 'Ballerina' rose and Dianthus; dwarf sage, grey 'Hidcote' lavender, and helianthemum; and white-leaved prickly poppy.Just as with color combinations, plant dislikes and likes change. Hot-color gardening got Sheldon to plant dahlias, marigolds, petunias, and zinnias. Border gardening in sulphur and wine let in yellow-leaved plants. So gardening might well leave the gardener with "nothing to hate." But it won't always grow better people or weed out curmudgeons. For example, on a cold winter night, nineteenth-century gardening know-it-all William Robinson opened windows and put out stoves in a hated former employer's greenhouses.In large part, though, Sheldon finds gardeners "exceptionally" gentle, as students of humbling lessons. In the second part of her book, she therefore shares gardening trials and errors, in central New York. There, on a Cayuga Lake area farm, her garden shows its age. How can it do other than sicken and die along with, or shortly after, her? It's the only way, what with the three "b's" of bad weather, beasts and blunders.It's blundering over trees Sheldon regrets. To her, they were thirsty rivals to plants for nutrients and water. Now in her 80s, she wishes that she had long ago set aside one of her fields as an arboretum. It's not just because of what trees do, for air and dirt. It's also for color and looks. What can beat the year-round "silky" grey bark of European beeches, the ruby red of sour gum in fall, and the flaming torch patterns of apricot-, crimson- and flame-colored Korean maple leaves against the sky?Sheldon's practical lesson-learnings are helpful and well-written, with excellent examples. They cover all bases, from seed collecting and growing; through plant breeding; to shady and woodsy gardening and mixed shrub and tapestry bordering. But it's the ending sections, on favorite plants and history-making gardeners, that stay with me. Plants that pass Sheldon's test of time are astilbe, border clematis, chrysanthemum, columbine, gaura, lysimachia, and nepeta. If she lived more southerly, she might favor the pale lemon or white marguerite. Up north, though, Dianthus caesius (gratianopolitanus) is where she hopes to end her days.Finally, her five history-making gardeners are Gertrude Jekyll, Jane Loudon, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Alexand