The Invisible Garden [Paperback]

Dorothy Sucher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 27, 2001

A longtime city dweller and expert storyteller takes a fresh look at gardening in Vermont, tapping the connection between the mysteries of the earth and those of the human spirit. "DelightfulThere is an irresistible charm about her forthright revelations of eager expectations, disappointments and frustrations and occasional triumphs, known to gardeners ever since Adam first tilled the ground east of Eden."-Lee Pennock Huntington, Vermont Sunday Magazine"Few commune so keenly with their landscape as Sucher, whose sense of place is bona fide and imaginative."-Kirkus Reviews"Sucher is a consummate storyteller whose lively essays burst with love of the land and delighted wonder at the resilient bonds between plants and folks, making this a most inviting collection."-Publishers WeeklyWith vividness and humor, Dorothy Sucher explores both her corner of Vermont and the many aspects of gardening-the satisfaction of shaping a landscape, the spirit of generosity in a land-based community, and the individuality expressed in a neighbor's flowerbeds. Like Under the Tuscan Sun and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, The Invisible Garden is a narrative celebrating the sublimity of nature and the soul's inner reach.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The genesis of each gardener is unique, as New York City native Sucher reveals in this delightful collection of gardening essays. Sucher wasn't interested in gardening until she fell in love with a blue farmhouse nestled near a stream while she was visiting a friend in Vermont. As with every love affair, this one initially blossomed with romantic illusions. Sucher admits that "the exasperating, sweaty, grappling with nature that is gardening" came later. She details the transformation of her 10 overgrown Vermont acres and her growing kinship with the soil, as well as the relationships she built with her Vermont neighbors. Just as the most perfectly planned garden often follows a direction differing from the gardener's original dream, so do Sucher's essays. Her joy in the exuberance of her daffodil border reminds her of the garden's creator, a friend who left behind a tangible legacy after her untimely death from cancer. Essays on clearing brush, building huts and creating paths are springboards to thoughts of a beloved grandfather, childhood vacations, an elderly neighbor who practices "Evil Eye Gardening" and the taciturn Vermonters whose creativity and brawn enable her to realize her landscaping dreams. Sucher is a consummate storyteller whose lively essays burst with love of the land and delighted wonder at the resilient bonds between plants and folks, making this a most inviting collection. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Sucher writes that "invisible gardens [are] unpredictable, because they are carried around by individuals who bring to them their own unique store of memory and experience." This graceful book, illustrated with woodcuts by Mary Azarian, is not so much about gardening as it is about the associations and memories that are called up by a plant, a landscape, a pond, or a garden hut. Sucher purchased her property in Vermont on impulse because it had a stream and waterfall. With her husband, she has spent part of the past 15 years there, gardening and writing (she is the author of two mysteries). Her stories relate the loss she felt when a ferocious storm destroyed the woods behind her house and her gradual recovery. She tells of her physicist husband's slowly awakening interest in one hanging basket and of planting a tree with her grown daughter. Other characters in her life are men who dig ponds or clean up after storms, neighbors who share plants with her, and her dying mother. While well written, this book will be of most interest to local and regional collections.ACarol Cubberley, Univ. of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg
Copyright 1999 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: 256 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (March 27, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582431272
• ISBN-13: 978-1582431277
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #509,244 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A meditative delight, December 15, 1999

By 

a Greenhouse gardener (Annapolis, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Invisible Garden (Hardcover)

My bookclub has just finished reading this wonderful book. We all loved it; one member compared it to "Gifts from the Sea" with its evocation of quietude and solace. This is a book for gardeners, who will delight in the delicious insights Dorothy has as she hacks her way through the brambles beside her stream, as well as nongardeners, who will finally gain some insight into why gardeners delight in working the earth and transforming the landscapes outside ourselves into things of beauty. I found reading the essays enjoyable, humorous, and deeply satisfying. Each essay is easily read on its own, but together the book becomes a gardener's journal, a transcription of what goes on in a gardener's mind as she designs and transforms the land around her.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Invisible Garden, November 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Invisible Garden (Hardcover)

This is an enchanting book, subtle in working on many levels to capture and to hold your attention. The theme, intertwining the impact on her life of some family and friends with various aspects of gardening life, works surprisingly well. The workmanship is fine, in many senses of that word; as in grading gems, or in the weave of a great tapestry. It is something that her grandfather, or her neighbor Tom--both craftsmen in their own right, and important in her life--would recognize and admire. The style is somewhere between early John McPhee in The New Yorker, and Bill Bryson's latest book of essays, "I'm A Stranger..", between straight autobiographical and first-person commentary. It comes off very well, and you put down the book with some insight into a complex person still exploring herself and the world around her. The insight reflects into our own life, giving pause for reflection and reevaluation of important things we might have slighted in passing. Her sketches of the individuals she chooses to illuminate aspects of her own growth are simultaneously detached and loving. The chapter on her physicist husband's encounter with flowers shows the tender exasperation that any non-scientist wife of a scientist would instantly recognize. The vividness of a flashback to her grandfather's youth, spanning more than a century, pays a debt to his memory while showing us the unbroken chain of generations. So, too, the balance in "The Pond" chapter on her mother; and the nostalgia in the chapter on "Little Houses" grips each of us and thrusts us back to our childhood, where "-all the polyurethane of life-" can not intrude. A wonderful book, well worth reading.

November 29, 1999

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Autobiographical and interesting...., June 28, 2000

By 

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

This review is from: The Invisible Garden (Hardcover)

Dorothy Sucher is a therapist by trade, and a gardener by avocation. As I read her book, "The Invisible Garden" I had a sense that she would make a good friend. She seems to have an appreciation of human limitations and frailties, and probably lives up to the old axiom "A friend is someone who forgets your shortcomings." Well, maybe not where her husband is concerned, but what can a gardener do with a guy whose allergic to the great out-of-doors and can't tell a Dandelion from a lily.

Ms. Sucher's book is not so much about gardening as it's about coming to terms with a yourself. Sure, she cultivates the garden, But she also understands it's existence is as ephemeral as the life of it's author.

Each of us carries our own memories of past gardens. I will always be reminded of my parents garden in North Carolina when I see daffodils blooming in the spring. My folks grew thousands of daffodils. I don't think my father ever met a daffodil he didn't try to grow. And everytime I see a Brunnera I think of my mother, standing over the little blue flowers and saying, "What are these things? I can never remember their name!" We all laughed because it's colloquial name is "forget-me-not."

The invisible garden consists of the cumulative memories of gardens past that you carry in your heart.