In this "passionate, reflective, inspiring, endlessly quotable" (Allen Lacy, New York Times Book Review) book, two acclaimed landscape designers offer a month-by-month chronicle of their magnificent Vermont garden. "A gold mine of practical advice".--Anne Raver, The New York Times.

Two noted landscape artists reveal the secrets of their successful five-acre garden, offering tips on perennials, rock gardens, roses, bog gardens, wildflowers, shrubs, conifers, vegetables, and more. 15,000 first printing.

The small town of Dickens is alive with Christmas activity. Joni Smith shares the infectious joy spreading through the shoppers. There had been a time when she’d been desperate to be loved and had nearly lost her mind when it didn’t work out. Thanks to insight gained in a Sunday church service, she’s found contentment. Joni’s happy working as a home health aide for wealthy Mrs. Northrop. She doesn’t need a man in her life. She’s done looking for love. But Mrs. Northrop’s grandson, Christopher Northrop the Third, sets Joni’s heart fluttering in a way that says that maybe love isn’t done looking for her. Chris Northrup has always done what his mother wanted. He’s worked in the shipping part of his family’s company, even though there’s no chance of him inheriting the family estate, North Hill. But he has dreams of his own. One of them is to be a writer. The other is to marry Joni Smith. Sparks flew from the moment they met, but Joni’s independence has Chris wondering if he could ever be enough for her. Joni knows God loves her, but is she ready for a different kind of love? Together Joni and Chris might discover that, just like Christmas presents, love comes wrapped in all kinds of different packages. But they must be willing to open the gift that’s offered and open their hearts to each other. Author Note ***This is a small-town sweet Christmas romance. It can be read as a stand-alone but features cameo appearances of characters from other Dickens Holiday Romance series written by other authors in this anthology. ***

Gardening, more than most outdoor activities, has always attracted a cult of devotedly literate practitioners; people who like to dig, it would appear, also like to write. And many of them write exceedingly well. In this thoughtful, personal, and embracing consideration of garden writing, garden historian Elizabeth Barlow Rogers selects and discusses the best of these writers. She makes her case by picking delightful examples that span two centuries, arranging the writers by what they did and how they saw themselves: nurserymen, foragers, conversationalists, philosophers, humorists, etc. Her discussions and appreciations of these diverse personalities are enhanced and supported by informed appraisals of their talents, obsessions, and idiosyncrasies, and by extensive extracts from their writings. Rogers provides historical background, anecdotal material, and insight into how these garden writers worked. And wherever appropriate, she illustrates her story with images from their books, so you can not only read what they wrote but also see what they were describing. Since gardens are by their very nature ephemeral, these visual clues from the pages of their books, many reproduced in color, are as close as we will come to the originals. What makes Writing the Garden such a joy to read is that it is not simply a collection of extracts, but real discussions and examinations of the personalities who made their mark on how we design, how we plant, and how we think about what is for many one of life's lasting pleasures. Starting with "Women in the Garden" (Jane Loudon, Frana-ces Garnet Wolseley, and Gertrude Jekyll) and concluding with "Philosophers in the Garden" (Henry David Thoa-reau, Michael Pollan, and Allen Lacy), this is a book that encompasses the full sweep of the best garden writing in the English language. Writing the Garden is co-published by the New York Society Library and the Foundation for Landscape Studies in association with David R. Godine, Publisher.

About This Book Elna was born in 1918. She describes the foundation of her family. Then, the year Elna turned 11, she moved to the North Hill above Brandon. Moving to the North Hill was a great opening of adventure for Elna, giving her a vast space and place for admiring the natural world. Elna and her family moved to a fertile piece of property her family turned into a market garden. Elna's admiration for her father grew as he struggled through his own physical challenges to create what he envisioned. This story describes the world she saw then, including the layout of the land, the transportation, the social structures, the impacts of disease, the natural world, the economics, the access to services, the technology of her home, the family chores, the food, the difficulties of her times, and the wonderful aspects of her times. Elna describes a place on the North Hill which today has been engulfed as part of an urban dwelling. Elna places upon this time and place meanings and expressions of significance related to the word home. Home is a place captured in time and space which cannot be really understood without a gatekeeper to open the door to readers.