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A gentle plea for chaos

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  • Author: Osler, Mirabel
    Date:
    Created
    2011
    Summary:

    "Osler's plea is not so gentle; rather, its opinionated (though never dismissive), bell-clear, wickedly humorous, brilliant--a call for cultivated anarchy in the garden that turns an oxymoron into a sensuous, sensible act. ``Why garden? God knows ... Damn those fine mornings. It's then that guilt seeps in like bad gas, '' groans Osler, one of England's best-known gardeners. Don't buy it for a minute. Her love of gardening is obvious, even if ``a great number of gardening jobs are pure slog.'' And her garden, eclectically wanton as it is, enemy of everything regimented and overly neat, shot through with the native vitality of plants for atmosphere and mystery, brings her to her knees much of the time; untidiness requires work. She wouldn't have it any other way. She likes a rude edge, to blur and enchant, the unruly ``quality that adds an extra sensory dimension.'' She loves hedges, walls, and paths--``the bones of a garden''--as long as they don't rob the garden of its sensuality. Here she offers not so much advice as the experience of her Shropshire garden: trees for their summer crowns and bare winter branches, stone for its texture and floral affinities, water for its attractiveness to humans and kingfishers and newts, bulbs for their individuality and scope. She's not tethered to flowers, but she loves them too (``who can go outside and kick a lily?''). Like her garden, Osler will not be confined, and she delights in moving off in many directions, to weather wars and the transporting quality of scent, botanical illustrations and the patron saints of gardening (Osler suggests a small figure of one in the garden ``might be just as efficacious as a blast of Phostrogen''). Osler's thinking is original, intuitive, and sharp as a tack; as a gardening writer she rightly sits up there with Henry Mitchell and Eleanor Perenyi.

    Contents:
    • Machine generated contents note: 1. Compulsion for Trees
    • Origins of the Book
    • Far East, Mogul and Ottoman Gardens
    • Glance at Italy and France
    • Word about Havoc
    • Our Garden
    • Planting Trees
    • Enchantment of Trees
    • 2. Slow Infiltration of Water
    • Vicarious Gardening
    • Picture Garden
    • Benison of Saints
    • Water and Wildlife
    • Kingfisher
    • Infinite Stream
    • Our `Temperate' Weather
    • Insouciant Disarray and the Perversity of Rareness
    • Errant Flowers
    • Childhood Scents
    • Michael's Scything
    • Plant Collectors
    • Fanatical Priests
    • Extra-Floral Vision
    • 3. Stone, Walls and Climbers
    • Generosity of Gardeners
    • Penstemon Ladies
    • Garden Visits
    • Next Time Think Bigger and Bolder
    • Verticals and Design
    • Gentle Plea for Chaos
    • Enclosing a View
    • Gardens in America
    • Wall Climbers
    • Precious Stones
    • On the Terraces
    • Unexpected Bonuses
    • 4. Will of the Rose
    • Botanical Illustrations
    • Introduction of Etching
    • Parkinson, Redoute and Margaret Mee
    • Genocide to Buttercups
    • Intransigence of Roses
    • Folly with Three Roses
    • Feral Roses
    • Ruminating, Lolling and Lazing
    • Soulless Flowers
    • In Favour of Green Gardens
    • 5. Bulbs, Corms, Rhizomes and Such
    • Why Garden?
    • Bulbiferous Pleasure
    • Tyranny of Birds
    • Out Back
    • Diversity of Gardens: Inverewe; Stone House Cottage; Miss Wheeler's Garden.
    Genre:
    Subject(s): Design | Gardening | Gardens
    Original Publisher: London, New York, Bloomsbury
    Language(s): English