Garden Book Featuring Gertrude Jekyll, Other Famous Garden Writers

Gardens: A Literary Companion (Merilyn Simonds, editor) is exactly what the title suggests: a garden book for those who love literature as much as they love plants. From Pliny the Elder to Gertrude Jekyll, this book looks at the pursuit of gardening through one of its classiest prisms: namely, some of the world's most famous writers. Not a garden book you'd use to learn how to plant this or that, Gardens: A Literary Companion, is, true to its name, meant rather to accompany you through your gardening adventures. Page after page, the book reminds us that gardeners are some of the most astute folks around!

Many people ask me, with no meager amount of wonder in their voices, how it came to be that someone who studied the classics in college ended up as a garden writer. Their incredulity finds a perfect match in my own, as I wonder how anyone can possibly miss the connection between gardening and great books. Aficionados of both are essentially collectors intent on pursuing compelling connections.

Think about it. After you've read one of the classic works of literature, what do you do next? If you're anything like me, your head is swimming with questions. Perhaps the author mentioned such and such another book in some critical passage in the work; if you're unfamiliar with said book and it sounds interesting, you're bursting to read it, thereby adding it to your intellectual collection. Many of the great books are connected with each other, and you're simply not satisfied until you've taken some pains to "connect the dots" (the rough equivalent on the Web is following hyperlinks).

All of which invites comparison with the behavior of the avid gardener. Let's say I become interested in rock gardens. I build one and try a few types of plants in it; some grow successfully, others don't. If I possess any degree of curiosity at all, I'm bound to try, in the future, some new varieties related to the successful plants. Gardeners "collect" with an eye to comparing and contrasting the characteristics of their specimens. Knowledge of one plant spurs us on to "connect with" another plant.

If you share my zeal for collecting and connecting -- both in the world of books and the world of gardens-- then you'll enjoy Simond's book. It has reflections on everything from weeding to how poppies put us "over the top." John Gerard, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hardy, Gertrude Jekyll and Germaine Greer are just some of the luminaries that make an appearance.