Customer Reviews

Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden

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Although I have not gardened in years and have no plans to start now, I have been enchanted by "Green Thoughts." Ms. Perenyi's writing is crisp, intelligent, and witty. Anyone who can take such non-riveting subjects as worms, mulch, and compost (to name a few) and turn them into elegant, fascinating essays deserves some sort of prize. If E.B. White had written a gardening book, it would probably resemble this one. A real treat.

I must have blinked when this book went out of print; I've had a stockpile of copies for years to give to deserving friends. Now my children are old enough to have gardens and I NEED Eleanor Perenyi. BRING HER BACK! PLEASE, PLEASE! This is the best book for gardeners ever written.

If you love amateur gardening and you love food, you have to love this book. Perenyi is informed, witty and timeless and she writes like a dream. She is way up there with one of my other all-time favorites, MFK Fisher. I've given this book as a gift at least a dozen times and now that I want to again, I find that it's out of print. What a travesty. Bring it back!

Eleanor Perenyi's book GREEN THOUGHTS is a memoir of sorts. She apparently never wrote another book on gardening, but as Alan Lacy says, sooner or later every writer who gardens will write a book about gardening. At the time her book was published in 1981, she had worked in her own garden in New England for a number of years. She says she had been gardening for 30 years, but does not indicate if she is including the years she lived in Hungary her birthplace. She was an immigrant who migrated first to Europe and then to America where she worked in New York as editor of Madamoiselle and lived and gardened in New England. Her detailed observations about gardening are of limited use to those who live and garden elsewhere in the States. However, Perenyi has many wise 'thoughts' that can be acted on in almost any garden, including the advice `don't be overly neat' - something that's taken me a while to appreciate.

Perenyi's book contains many original insights and much information not widely available at the time she wrote her book - such as gardening tips from `Organic Gardening Magazine'. Perenyi wrote only one book on gardening but she is often quoted-the main reason I wanted to read GREEN THOUGHTS. She organized her comments Alpha to Zeta (actually ends with `W' for Woman's Place), which are literally a set of small essays ranging from a paragraph in length to several pages on various topics from hedges and lawns to onions and potatoes.

My favorite essay is "Woman's Place" which appropriately enough covers the history of women in the garden from Eve to Eleanor Perenyi. She reveals the sad truth that women invented horticulture while men were off hunting in packs, only to be thrown out of the garden at a later date when men "took charge" of the fields. Over the eons, women were relegated lower and lower positions garden-wise until they became decorative ornaments - well at least in upscale gardens East and West, whether the Seraglio with it's harem or the Virgin's Bower.

In the gardens (er..vegetable patches) of traditional societies she says women became beasts of burden. Perenyi notes that Oriental women do the weeding in the rice paddies and carry the firewood in Africa. At any rate, while European upscale men were busy adapting their posh Renaissance gardens to the latest `Arabasque" notion or plowing up the 18th Century landscape under the guidance of Sir Humphrey Repton (and still hunting in packs one notes), enterprising nuns and country women with their "messy" cottage gardens preserved the diversity of the native species of plants. In the 20th Century, Gertrude Jeckyll and William Robinson discovered what the old wives had been up to and introduced "native" plants to upscale country gardens. The moral of the book is that men's overly tidy and rational gardening habits are bad and women's messy garden habits are good. Rational agriculture destroys, messy gardening preserves.

What a wonderful experience to spend time with this intelligent, funny, morally secure woman. She's an elegant writer with a wealth of gardening knowledge. Her views on organic gardening, composting, etc. are now widely recognized as correct. Her taste, which she does not hesitate to reveal, is impeccable. One of the best gardening books I've ever read. I hope the years since this book was published have been very kind to Ms. Perenyi and her Stonington, Conn. garden.

Bless, oh, bless Modern Library for bringing this book back into print. When I wrote the review below, it was still unavailable, so I'm delighted by its return. This time, I will be buying several copies to give as presents. One could hardly do better.

Original review:

Eleanor Perenyi is one of those people who can make anything interesting. Knowledgeable, opinionated, at times cranky, her writing is at once delightful and profound. With wit and whimsy, the books skips from the trials and tribulations of trying to find good help to the horticultural explorations of the Spanish conquistadors. The book is a real treat for anyone who loves gardens and words. In fact, I think I'll read it again.

05/29/2009
It is with deep sadness that I report the recent death of Eleanor Perenyi. In Green Thoughts, she has left us a gift we should treasure for all time.

The best garden books have to be idiosyncratic, just like the best gardens. Every plot of land has its own quirks, good and bad, and no chart or theory can ever be adequate to the particularities of every corner and every microclimate. Similarly, garden writers are only interesting if they give us a taste of their own particular place and the place of their own peculiar character. There are few more peculiar characters in garden writing than Perenyi. I can't imagine anyone reading her and not finding something to object to, and yet she is no snob. There is room for the gaudiest dahlia in the midst of her sometimes infuriating strictures. But when you finish the book, you feel as if you know her as you know few others, at least in regard to her garden. She is a spectacular crank, and in that crabby, opinionated eccentricity there is the authentic voice of a gardener and an authentic sense of place

Adding to Carol Summers words I too have given at least a dozen of these books as gifts. It is simply a great read and I don't even have a garden. The cover is absolutely a stunner. I would love to have a print of it.That quality continues to the last period. Bring it back !

I checked this book out of my local library about four years ago and liked it so much that I bought it so that I could re-read it at my leisure.

The author and I are kindred spirits. We garden organically, prefer heirlooms, abhor lawns and lawnmowers, and adore compost. I have to keep reminding myself that she was writing in 1981, long before any of these things were "fashionable".

Her writing is lighthearted and very readable. Even the essays on vegetables, which I don't grow, are enjoyable. I especially like her exasperation at unclear directions. It's nice to know that other gardeners have the same difficulties with unclear instructions that I do.

Each essay is complete in itself, so the book can be read right through or you can skip around. I'm so glad that I finally have my own copy. It's one of those books that I will read over and over.

I had recently read the author's obit that included several reviews of book - all positive. I throughly agree. The author is an amateur but the writing may be stronger because of she approaches the subject from that unique perspective. The alphabetical organization is great and each section a thoughtful essay on selected topic. I recommend this book to either the casual or serious gardener.