Heirloom plants are the varieties grown in our grandparents' gardens, before hybridization created standard plants with less variety. These "antique" plants are coming into vogue with many gardeners who enjoy the nostalgia and boundless diversity of heirloom plants. Heirloom Country Gardens offers a plan to grow these beautiful plants to their best advantage. This unique guide focuses on 6 heirloom garden designs created especially for this book. It includes regional garden styles from the plantation South to New England kitchen gardens. Readers will gain inspiration from experts such as William Ways Weaver and Kent Whealy of Seed Savers Exchange. Chapters on projects and 19 "living history" recipes add the finishing touch, from forming a rustic arbor to Iroquois Roasted Corn soup. Readers will delight at the extensive reference section which includes directories of the best heirloom flowers, herbs, vegetables and fruits available. Lavish 4-color photos and illustrations attest to the pleasure of designing, planting, and enjoying an heirloom garden.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Love history as much as you love plants? Interested in resurrecting some nearly forgotten and delicious garden vegetables? Heirloom Country Gardens offers a wealth of suggestions in a lovely format that mixes gorgeous photos with fascinating text. Author Sarah Wolfgang Heffner begins with an introduction to many types of regionally preferred layouts--traditional Amish, New England, Southern, Victorian, and Southwest Mission are but a few. Whether you're interested in reinventing your entire garden in a particular style or simply incorporating a few elements, you'll find the detailed descriptions and bulleted lists to be helpful companions.
The alphabetical listing of vegetables, flowers, herbs, and fruits includes both general notes and specific types of special heirloom plants. Purple carrots? White cucumbers? Each category offers at least four choices--some, like the Moons and Stars melon, are famous in the move to restore older breeds. Plant history is included in this section--did you know it was once believed that basil could actually turn into a scorpion, if two leaves were left under a rock? Flowers are given the same loving attention, while fruits are treated a bit differently.
As local conditions can vary so drastically for optimal fruit growing, Heffner urges you to get recommendations from local nurseries, while including interesting historical facts and a few general suggestions. Organic methods of disease and pests control are emphasized, and the instructions for training plants and retaining seeds excel in their completeness and simplicity. --Jill Lightner
From Publishers Weekly
Heffner provides six different heirloom garden designs to reflect early regional gardens from New England to the Southwest. Initially, she discusses how both climate and the ethnic background of area settlers contributed to each design, then she offers such particulars as the type (and even the number) of plants to include, along with their cultivation habits and growth requirements. Of special interest is the history and evolution not only of each type of garden but of individual plants. Onions, bachelor's buttons, grapes and nasturtiums all receive equal billing. Since, according to Heffner, country gardens "reflect a wonderful combination of creativity, thriftiness, regional character and love of gardening," she also includes chapters on creating garden ornaments, utensils and crafts along with old-fashioned recipes contributed by living history museums. Valuable appendices include resources for heirloom seeds and sources of information about historical gardens. The book offers so many attractive ideas, it will be difficult for gardeners to limit themselves. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great for teenaged kids.....,
This review is from: Heirloom Country Gardens: Timeless Treasures for Today's Gardeners (Rodale Organic Gardening Books) (Hardcover)
Once upon a time I worked as a docent at Guston Hall (home of the Revolutionary George Mason who who wrote the Fairfax Resolves which became the Virginia and then the U.S. Bill of Rights). Located in Fairfax Country Virginia, Gunston Hall is a lovely place with extensive grounds whose plants reside in a climate a shade cooler (Zone 7) than Williamsburg Virginia (Zone 8), and hotter than Monticello (Zone 6). Mr. Mason and Mr. Jefferson were friends who exchanged information on gardening in Virgina. Unfortunately, most of what the maintenance staff grew in these historical gardens 30 years ago wasn't very historical, but things have changed. Archeologists have excavated the garden beds and identified seeds discovered in the old earth, and from them been able to deduce what grew 200-300 years ago. Also, the correspondance, business papers, and gardening diaries of the gardeners have been used to determine the layout and design as well as daily events in the annual growth cycle. (Thomas Jefferson's diaries are the best known) "Heirloom Country Gardens" by Sarah Wolfgang Heffner (Rodale Press) provides a brief overview of old country gardens mostly found in the United States. Her book is well illustrated with beautiful photographs. Ms. Heffner's selection of gardens includes parlor gardens of the 19th century, Mission gardens of the West, and the Medieval Herb Garden of Europe -- a replica of which can be found in The Cloisters of the Metropolitan Musem of Art in New York. Williamsburg, Monticello and other famous gardens are not featured. Ms. Heffner's selection criteria has more to do with pluralism than anything else (corn-bean-maize from the Ameican Indians, okra and greens from the Africans, and Mission gardens planted by Spanish Indians). On the one hand, if you're looking for a way to restore a colonial bed based on the "Dutch" gardens at Williamsburg you may be disappointed. On the other hand, the book could be used in a classroom setting and most children would not feel excluded. While her selection of garden layouts and plant designs is adequate for the beginner, the plants themselves require an intermediate knowledge of gardening. The photographs show the plants co-existing in perfect harmony. They don't. Some are thugs--take Gooseneck Loosestrife for example. Goodness it's pretty in the middle of summer as it holds it's own against heat and drought. However, if you give it an inch, it will take a mile. That plant should never be turned loose in a common bed. Spider lillies are another prolific breeder. My mother planted them one year and the next year they came up all over the yard. I wouldn't touch a Spider Lilly with a ten-foot pole. And, Johnny Jump Ups? You better like them a lot because once you plant them they're with you for life. You can visit replicas of restored gardens all over the country. But, bone up on the nature of any plant before you stick it in the ground.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is what I should have started with!,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Heirloom Country Gardens: Timeless Treasures for Today's Gardeners (Rodale Organic Gardening Books) (Hardcover)
In establishing my first-ever vegetable garden this year, I gradually became aware of the world of heirlooms through catalog sources and brief mentions in other books. If I had only started out with Heirloom Country Gardens: Timeless Treasures for Today's Gardeners, I would have been inspired to double my growing space to include the gorgeous flowers and kitchen edibles described in this book. The first section is devoted to exploring the most typical varieties of heirloom gardens; starting with historical tidbits, followed by planting and growing tips, and ending with a sample layout for 21st Century gardeners complete with suggested varieties. Next, we have categorical descriptions of vegetables, herbs, fruits and flowers alongside the author's notes on recommended strains. This section actually comprises more than half the book and is a great introduction for beginners. Following up are tips and general guidelines for heirloom gardening, including seed saving and organic techniques. This is strongly stressed thoughout the book as important aspects of preserving our heritage of genetic diversity in crops and sound stewardship of the planet's resources. This isn't going to cover the complete world of heirlooms(is that even possible?), but the novice reader will have had enough to digest with what is presented here. It will be as if a whole new world has been exposed behind the well-advertised facade of hybrids and chemical-based gardening. Fortunately, it is also presented in clear, direct language that neither overwhelms nor dumbs down the subject for newcomers to heirloom gardening. A very motivating and useful guide that I will be sure to revisit often!
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love gardening,
By A Customer
This review is from: Heirloom Country Gardens: Timeless Treasures for Today's Gardeners (Rodale Organic Gardening Books) (Hardcover)
Heirloom Country Gardens is a great holiday find or for anytime of the year. There are many good ideas for food for thought while sitting around the old cookstove during this frigid winter!
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