Customer Reviews

The Decadent Gardener (Dedalus Literary Concept Books)

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A wonderfully perverse book on gardening, focusing on the more fecund aspects of horticulture. Not quite sure if Lucan and Gray are fictitious or real, but it doesn't really matter, as this book abounds in allegorical delights, as the two attempt to design a garden in the decadent spirits of the past on a large English estate.

What follows is a free flow of thought on gardening down through the ages, with a special attention to the more perverse aspects. One is guided through various stages of development, focusing on love, torture, death, wisdom, etc. One wishes there were more photographs and drawings, but the authors kept that to a minimum. The imagination still stirs in reading these accounts of a garden in progress, until the parish priest closes down the whole affair after the staging of a ribald play.

This book is as much a novel as it is a book on gardening, carried by the delightful personalities of Lucan and Gray. It is guaranteed to stimulate your creative drive.