Gardens of Use & Delight offers the deep pleasure of their story, one filled with the lessons of hardships overcome and the rewards of independent living. It also gives gardeners everywhere, regardless of the extent of their landscape and ambitions for it, the tools to succeed in blending garden form with function. In their charming narrative, the Gardners tell tales of hit-and-miss garden experiments, sharing boundless practical information, from recipes for homemade catsup, to successful methods of enhancing soil, to tips on roses and suggestions for flowering herbs that both decorate the landscape and season food. Additionally, Elayne Sears's stunning watercolors detail the plantings in the actual gardens, landscape, and other features that comprise the Gardner farm. Most of all, the Gardners' plant-by-plant philosophy offers lasting insight into the joys of an integrated garden. Before adding hardscape and trees and shrubs to create the "bones" of a garden, the Gardners show that the most satisfying way to develop a landscape is to let it evolve, taking time to know the contours of the land and the needs the garden must meet. As they counsel: "Life itself, combined with a love of growing things, will push you in the right direction."
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Book Description
Thirty years ago, Jo Ann and Jigs Gardner moved their family of six from New England to a remote farm on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. In an environment wracked by extremes of weather and blessed only with thin, rocky soil, this couple wrested beauty and sustenance from the land.
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From the Publisher
Wisdom for creating a garden that sustains body and soul!
About the Author
Jo Ann Gardner has published several highly regarded gardening books, including The Heirloom Garden, Living with Herbs, and Herbs in Bloom, and lectures widely. She and her husband, Jigs Gardner, a published essayist and fiction writer, have dedicated many years to living in the garden, from growing flowers to cultivating food. This is their first book together. Jigs Gardner, a published essayist and fiction writer, has dedicated many years to living in the garden, from growing flowers to cultivating food. This is his first book together with his wife. They now live and garden in Essex, New York.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Book Useful & Delightful in Many Ways,
By K E Kilgren (Lawrence, KS) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Gardens of Use & Delight: Uniting the Practical and Beautiful in an Integrated Landscape (Paperback)
It would be hard to overpraise this exceptional book. Written by two people who are master practitioners of our grandparents' ways of living as well as master gardeners, this book is a gem! It is at once a book on gardening (flowers, herbs, fruits & vegetables) and independent living, a book of recipes and remedies, and an arresting narrative of thirty years of work creating a self-sufficient life (and all manner of wonderful gardens) on the bare bones of an old, abandoned farm on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. It is also a book of considerable visual beauty, being generously illustrated in vibrant watercolors by Champlain Valley artist Elayne Sears. I found Gardens of Use and Delight not only meaningful and enjoyable reading, but also a very useful reference for many aspects of flower, herb, fruit and vegetable gardening, and for all manner of things "homemade." The recipes in the chapters, "The Kitchen Garden," "The Contained Garden," and "An Old-Fashioned Fruit Garden" are mouth-watering gems often rescued from the cookbooks of yesteryear (the Herb Salt and Apple Ginger recipes to name two favorites!) And the wisdom and humanity distilled from the lives of these two people who decided to truly live their beliefs is instructive and inspiring. Perhaps more importantly, though, the book is a reminder of the elements of a rich and healthy life that have been forgotten, if not lost, in these times. I recommend it highly!
5.0 out of 5 stars
A practical and beautiful book,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Gardens of Use & Delight: Uniting the Practical and Beautiful in an Integrated Landscape (Paperback)
This is a fascinating book full of practical information on growing and using what you grow. The illustrations are beautiful. I'm very happy with this book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gardens of Use and Delight: a review,
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This review is from: Gardens of Use & Delight: Uniting the Practical and Beautiful in an Integrated Landscape (Paperback)
Jigs Gardner and his wife Jo Ann went off to farm and teach troubled boys in northern Vermont. Next they moved with their four small children to an abandoned farm on Cape Breton Island and lived there for thirty years. With no motor vehicle, they plowed and moved the hay wagon with draft horses. On the thin, poor soil they raised livestock for meat, they grew vegetables and herbs, and everywhere they grew flowers. Their life on Cape Breton is the thread running through this splendid book; but, subtitled, Uniting the Practical and Beautiful in an Integrated Landscape, it is mostly a thoughtful guide to productive farming while living in harmony with one's natural surroundings.
Simply reading the table of contents is a treat: Part One: The Whole, Chapter One - The Farm Today, Chapter Two - The Evolving Landscape Part Two: The Gardens Part Three: The Integrated Landscape - Practice & Philosophy The Gardners are intelligent, well educated, write superbly and, for thirty years supported their family with no institutions to mediate between them and the wolf at the door - remarkable bona fides. For decades they have contributed to small farming journals and literary magazines around the United States. Jo Ann began growing herbs and selling them at Nova Scotia fairs. As her expertise grew, she published Living with Herbs and other well-written and useful books still in print. And Gardens..., besides a pleasure to read, is filled with useful information for and guides about growing. The lovely illustrations by Elayne Sears are far better suited to this book than photographs would be, just as my best bird field guides use drawings, not photos.
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