Customer Reviews

Gardening at Ginger: My Seven-Year Obsession with Designing and Planting a Personal Landscape

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Raimes' recounting of his "growing" obsession is subtle, graceful and altogether involving. He includes lots of background from his English childhood, gardening experts he's consulted and absorbed, his sometimes bemused wife who nevertheless stands by his often backbreaking, daylight hour devouring transformation of a landscape into areas of inviting woods, stonework, flower beds, greensward, specimen trees and water. It made me stop and think in a new way about my own gardening and enriched my understanding of what all gardeners do.

What an amazing and enchanting book! So different from the run of the mill "how to". The author shares his plans, dreams, hopes, experiences with the reader. (After completing the chapter on Digging in Clay, I was so exhausted that I needed a lie down to recover.) Please can we have a sequel or at least a blog with photos and maps. I want to see it all.

The essays and stories that make up Gardening at Ginger are about things like greenness (the color, not the movement), the author's city-born-and-bred wife's reaction to insects that get indoors (not hospitable) and where to place a bench. James Raimes' writing is by turns personable, erudite, witty and earnest, and his book goes a long way toward explaining why gardening, an activity that regularly leaves its practitioners filthy, pooped and bleeding, also makes them so happy.

Seven years ago the author and his wife bought a country home on nine acres in upstate New York, calling it 'Ginger' and evoking in him a desire to learn about plants and gardening. Raimes grew up in England, so his instinct in this area was always there: his desire to shape a landscape proved challenging, however, and GARDENING AT GINGER: MY SEVEN-YEAR OBSESSION WITH DESIGNING AND PLANTING A PERSONAL LANDSCAPE reviews his efforts, achievements and failures alike. A vivid memoir of the 'gardening bug' involves all.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Not only for the gardener, this collection of personal essays draws you right into the writer's life, and his obsession with landscaping the gardens around his second home. His insight into the nature around him--not just the flowers, but the trees, the grass, and the dirt--will give even avid gardeners something new to think about. If his garden is half as beautiful as his writing, then Raimes has done a wonderful job.

I am actually not done with this book yet but am thoroughly enjoying it. I would think that only a dedicated, avid gardener would like this book. I, too, am obsessed with my gardens - which are still young (2 years) and I am quite impatient for improvement and growth. So, I can completely relate to the experiences this author went through. I actually take comfort in reading it and come out the other end with great hopes! It is very inspiring from a garden design standpoint and helps one realize that the sweating, aching back, itchy bug bites, and dirty finger nails are all worth it in the end. There is also subtle humor within. I only wish that there were photographs of all the gardens discussed - unless the point was for the reader to picture them in their mind's eye?