The SENSUOUS GARDEN [Hardcover]

Montagu Don (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 27, 1997

An elegant, deeply intelligent meditation of human sensuality and the pleasures of the garden, this is one of the most original gardening books ever produced. A leading garden expert and science broadcaster celebrates the intoxicating sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures of the natural world. 200 full-color photos.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "sensuous" to mean "affecting the senses, especially aesthetically," and Montagu Don's The Sensuous Garden provides a gardening ideal for all five senses (or six, if you count intuition) to wallow in. How often do we really experience a garden fully, with all our senses? Sight, smell, and taste are the easy ones, but the other two are too often slighted. Touch: bark, mud, a grainy handful of seeds. Hearing: birds, rustling grasses, the satisfying crunch of fallen leaves. The sensuous approach is combined with sensible gardening advice in the text, but really, you'll want this one mostly for the pictures and for the inspiration it will give you to go out and just be in your own garden.

From Library Journal

This book would be enticing even if it consisted only of the lavish photographs, but it is the text that reminds us of why we garden and suggests ways to return to the basic pleasures. Don, a British journalist, writes, "We have to let go. This means accepting failure with a shrug of the shoulders and success with delight rather than with triumph. Our gardens are out there to be enjoyed, not conquered." He advises how to do this in chapters based on the five senses, but this is not "how-to" advice. The chapter on touch, for example, talks about walking barefoot, not when to go into the garden to plant. Don summarizes this philosophy of gardening in a final chapter titled "intuition," where he emphasizes that "there are no rules" and that most experts practice a "do as I say, not as I do" approach. This book helps us experience our garden in a fresh way and enjoy what is there. Recommended for all gardening collections.?Daniel Starr, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (October 27, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684839652
• ISBN-13: 978-0684839653
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 9.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,145,876 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Monty Don is the main presenter of BBC-TV's Gardener's World. He is one of the UK's most respected gardeners and gardening writers. He has been gardening correspondent for the Observer since 1994 and is at the forefront of the environmental and organic gardening debate.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Opened my eyes when I thought I could see, October 16, 2001

By 

Carole (Suwanee, Georgia (suburb of Atlanta) United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The SENSUOUS GARDEN (Hardcover)

This is an incredible book, and it isn't just for gardeners or those who like flowers. This book can be read by all to their benefit. The pictures alone are worth the price, but what the author has to say along with his pictures has radically changed my view of the world and the beauty of nature.

For instance, recently when I was in Ft. Lauderdale on vacation I was sitting on the patio of our hotel looking at the ocean and the lovely palm trees. Suddenly I noticed patterns and shapes I had never seen before. I noticed that on the different palm trees the configuration of the palm fronds make up intricate, harmonious patterns that were fascinating. With one eye on a palm frond, I traced the source at the tree trunk up to the tip of the frond. On the inside at the branch of the frond there were openings, kind of in a triangular pattern, but each slightly unique. I must have stared at that frond for 15 minutes. My husband must have thought I was crazy.

This book opened my eyes to beauty that does not hit you between the eyes sometimes. Sometimes it does. But I am learning that there is a world within a world of the tiniest bit of nature just waiting for my senses to soak in and ENJOY.

Buy the book...and read it. You don't have to read it like you would a novel. It is one that you can put down after a time, think about what you have seen and read, then pick it up later on to learn more about how nature and beauty are more present than we can possibly conceive of.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Justly awardwinning, March 9, 2001

By 

P. van Rijckevorsel (The Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The SENSUOUS GARDEN (Hardcover)

Apparently this book won an award, but I did not know that when I bought it. In general I keep well away from gardening books, but when I saw this I could not help myself: the pictures are just too stunning. So far I only glanced at the text here and there but I am quite impressed. This book seems to be admirably designed to raise awareness of how a garden strikes the senses. I can imagine that anybody designing a garden may find this an invaluable book.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining the Sixth Sense...., April 13, 2002

By 

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

This review is from: The SENSUOUS GARDEN (Hardcover)

I garden year round, am a photographer of sorts, and I collect garden and art books. THE SENSUOUS GARDEN by Monty Don is a new kind of book with a fresh approach to garden photography, one that takes the viewer up-close-and-personal and arouses the five senses as well as what Don calls the sixth sense or intuition. I don't know if my intuition is involved, but Don's photographs affect my various senses and the whole effect is greater than the sum of the parts. This is a beautiful book filled with beautiful pictures.

In a few instances, Don has photographed places I know (gardens in Spain) but all of his photos have been taken from a unique angle which pinpoints the essence of the thing photographed. Too often, photos are taken with the frame of reference in mind..i.e. the frame. Don's photos are so physical I can hear the tinkling bells and falling water. I can taste the juicy fruit. I can touch the soft rust and white bib of the bluebird. I've seen bluebirds before, as many as five at one time. They are clever and quick and flit away before I can retrieve my camera. But Mr. Don got the photo I wanted. I can only marvel, and sit and enjoy the bluebird a while longer.