Deep in the Green: An Exploration of Country Pleasures [Paperback]

Anne Raver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 1996

As gardening columnist for The New York Times, Anne Raver is one of our foremost authorities on making things grow. Even non-gardeners will find this book of essays a source of profound pleasure, for Raver is a writer who transcends her subject even as she illuminates it, writing with such passion, wisdom and stylishmess that her book will enchant anyone who reads it.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

She may have dirt under her fingernails, but New York Times gardening columnist Raver writes with the pen of an angel. In prose marked by eloquence, humor and generosity of spirit, she opens her garden?and her heart?and invites readers to share her enthusiasms and knowledge. The 58 essays here, her first collection, cover such subjects as earthworms, cricket manure and Latin nomenclature; push mowers and the virtues of humble peas (whose habit of enriching the soil with nitrogen makes them "like the perfect house guests?who always leave gifts after their stay"). Often hilarious, as in the discourse on an unguent created for cows' udders that doubles handily as a face cream, her reflections become poignant when matters of the garden lead to musings on such larger life issues as a parent's aging or the loss of a beloved pet. Although Raver's garden writing is both informed and practical, it's her glorious digressions that readers will most relish?her passion for the obsession called gardening?and the opportunity to visit over the back fence with a kindred spirit.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this collection of brief essays on nature, life, and occasionally gardening, the garden columnist of the New York Times ranges widely, musing on the life of the sea turtle and the dangers of chemical pest control, how weeding the vegetable patch can lead to planning a rose arbor, and the satisfaction of mowing a lawn with a hand mower. Many essays are autobiographical, ranging in setting from Long Island to Brooklyn to the family farm in Maryland as Raver explores the challenge of gardening wherever she lives with her dog, Molly, and her cat, Mrs. Grey. Raver is at her best when she describes how, against her principles, she used chemical sprays on her father's roses in order to bring blooms to his hospital bedside. For all whose minds roam while they are on their knees in the garden.
Molly Newling, Piscataway P.L., N.J.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (April 30, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679767983
• ISBN-13: 978-0679767985
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,093,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gardening for life..., May 12, 2000

By 

Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Deep in the Green: An Exploration of Country Pleasures (Paperback)

This book is more personally revealing than the garden columns Anne Raver usually writes for the New York Times. Her columns tend to be filled with practical advice interspersed with personal anecdotal information. In her book, Raver writes reflectively about her return to the family farm in Maryland and gardening in her 'single' flat in NYC after her divorce.

Ms. Raver reveals she has discovered gardening can provide a theraputic outlet, that it is a healing actitivy that helps one maintain balance through life's trials. She shares a tidbits of her inner life as she struggles to maintian equilibrium and deal with being single, aging parents, and a farm that can be a challenge most of the time. Some passages read like letters from a sister or a good friend.

The New York Times boasts several garden writers, and a circulation that encompasses much of the Northeast. I enjoy Anne's column, though I haven't seen it as much as I used to, which leads me to hope she may be working on another book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What to give your friends when they move to the country, May 3, 2000

By 

Susan Landry (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deep in the Green: An Exploration of Country Pleasures (Paperback)

Anne Raver is a gardening columnist for the New York Times, and whenever I see her byline, I settle in for what feels like a letter from a dear friend. Her observations about life, plant life, family connections to soil, her emotional links to land and growing things is deeply felt and expressed. Deep in the Green is a wonderful compilation of essays about gardens she's had, houses and communities where she's lived, people and pets lucky enough to share her warmth. She writes beautifully; I have given this book to several friends as they've discovered gardening, but I first read it when I lived in an apartment in Brooklyn, and the only gardens were in my dreams.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Garden Writing, November 19, 2002

By 

Thomas L. Ogren (San Luis Obispo, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deep In The Green: An Exploration of Country Pleasures (Hardcover)

People who get the New York Times and read the garden section are probably totally familiar with Anne Raver's writing, but those in other parts of the country may not be. For many years she was the garden editor of the NY Times and although I don't think she holds this position any longer, I still do find her articles now and then in the Times.
I am a garden writer myself (Allergy-Free Gardening, Safe Sex in the Garden) and I read the work of as many different garden writers as I can. I especially try to read as much material as possible from writers who write for newspapers, since so often they are tuned in to the most current tastes in horticulture. Then too, as a writer I always appreciate extra quality work when I read it, work such as that of Ann Raver (who by the way, I don't know and have never met.)
Deep in the Green: An Exploration of Country Pleasures is a little book but it's packed with useful gardening tidbits and the writing is superb. Like some other reviewers of this book, I too would like to see another book from her, perhaps a sequel to Deep in the Green. I am always on the lookout for neat little books on gardening to give as presents to my friends who garden, and this one is always a hit. A collection of articles published first in the Times, each chapter here is lively, charming, often darn funny, and in the tradition of great garden writers (especially some of the great English writers), the material is based on true life garden adventures, and it is always close and personal. If you've never read any of Ann Raver's work, I suggest you give it a try. Almost anyone who loves to garden and read will enjoy this book.