Notes from Madoo: Making a Garden in the Hamptons [Hardcover]

Robert Dash (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 20, 2000

Madoo is an artist's unusual and beautiful garden at the far end of Long Island. Described in the New York Times as "Robert Dash's ever-changing masterpiece," it has been pictured in many books and magazines and visited by lovers of gardens from this country and abroad.
Now the author/artist/gardener describes his making of Madoo in a book that is as charming and entertaining as it is enlightening. Dash’s artist's sense --or senses -- of the movement of air and the effects of light and color suffuse all his writings, and show us new ways to look at our own gardens.
As with Henry Mitchell's books, one learns more from reading these essays than from a dozen how-to books. And whether we like to make gardens or simply to look at them, Dash has given us a book to keep by the bedside, where we can read and reread our favorite pieces ("Fairies"? "Manuring"? "The Name of the Rose"? "The Garden Tour"? Too many to list!) over and over again.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In 1976, artist, writer, and gardener Robert Dash bought 1.98 acres in the Hamptons, on the far Eastern end of Long Island. Intending a private hideaway where he could paint in peace, he created Madoo (Scottish for "my dove"), a unique and intriguing garden which after decades of his thoughtful and loving attention has now become a conservancy.

Inspired by time spent in his garden, Dash began writing a biweekly gardening column in the East Hampton Star. Dash reflects on the seasons, the gardeners he has known, interesting or frustrating plants, the naming of roses, and the existence of fairies, to name only a few of the essays sparked by life at Madoo and now gathered in this collection.

Dash infuses his essays with a gentle wistfulness, but he also doesn't pretend to love every growing thing. Forsythia, he states in the like-titled essay, is "an absolute ass of a color" whose "high-colored blooms annoy as much as hyperactive children and little yapping dogs." Dash's irreverence is a fine balance to his passion.

An advocate of not just working in your garden, but truly enjoying it, Dash says, "Doing nothing but hanging about and musing and letting one's feeling roam is also what a gardener is all about." One gets the idea that Dash has done quite a bit of loitering and lolling at Madoo, and we, the recipients of his thoughtful and witty musings, are the better for it. --Dana Van Nest

From Publishers Weekly

Extracted from the author's gardening columns in the East Hampton Star, these short, exuberant essays tell of 1.98 acres on the far eastern end of Long Island, where Dash has made a garden he calls Madoo, "My Dove" in an old Scots dialect. Dash is a painter, and it shows in every line as he takes readers through a year in a garden characterized by "continuous involvement with the patterns of abstract expressionism." There are descriptions of his favorite plants, bits of garden history, some gardening advice (suited mainly to his area of Long Island) and, in pieces on garden fairies and the tribulations of Adam and Eve in Eden, a few amazing flights of fancy. Opinionated and eccentric, Dash doesn't mince words about his dislikes--the loss of a neighboring field to a housing development, weather forecasters, forsythia ("an absolute ass of a color")--and he freely admits that the hues of his garden's fences would "make indoor eyeballs wince." Dash's lush prose is best taken in small doses, like an over-rich dessert, but he has a gift for evoking what he sees, as when he speaks of wild daisies "making marvelous stops and explosions throughout the garden and in the fields." His observations about the after-colors of winter's withered perennials, the "smell of nameless turnings in the woods" and the taste of a good lettuce, "like dew," should refresh any garden reader. (June) FYI: Since 1994, Madoo has been an independent charitable trust, the Madoo Conservancy.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; None edition (June 20, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618016929
• ISBN-13: 978-0618016921
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,374,528 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A Winter's Tale, February 6, 2001

By 

Janice Pfaus (Kings Park, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Notes from Madoo: Making a Garden in the Hamptons (Hardcover)

It's winter and I can't work in my garden, and I've already ordered seeds and plants for Spring. I miss gardening! Well, I discovered a really great book about gardening. It's Notes from Madoo by Robert Dash. He is a painter,author and gardener who has had a garden in eastern Long Island NY since 1967. His book is all about his experiences, what plants survived, which ones didn't, his tips and techniques. For example, he uses hand tools and no chemicals. It's not a reference book or highly technical. No pictures and no index. Mr. Dash is not preachy (he's no Martha Stewart, if you catch my drift). But it is a beautifully written, almost poetic collection of articles from a man who clearly loves gardening. And I love this book!