Customer Reviews

The World Was My Garden: Travels of a Plant Explorer

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Dr. David Fairchild truly pioneered the field of plant exploration. He introduced literally hundreds of plants to the United States, many of great economic importance, such as winter varieties of wheat and long fiber cotton, as well as fruits and teak oil. This excellent volume is a saga not only of his own fascinating work and travels worldwide, but touches on the lives of many great scientists of his era (he married the daughter of Alexnader Graham Bell). Truly a must read. I have the priveledge of living near his old Florida home, The Kampong, and to visit is is a step int the life of an extraordinary yet modest individual

This book was written & published in 1938. Writing style is typical of the era but on the overall is totally engrossing. The many period pictures are excellent. Fairchild's travels and his plant discoveries/introductions are incredible. His entire life story is a real botanical trip. This 481 page memoir definately deserves to be re-published. If you are a "plant person" & interested in the history of how many of our presently taken -for- granted plants arrived in the U.S. this book is a must read treasure.

This is the begining of the USDA United States Department of Agriculture when there were only a handful of people. David Fairchild, a botanist, traveled the world and sent back plant specimans inorder to send them out again to different regions of the United States to be cultivated. We owe much to him for all the seeds, roots and cuttings that were planted during the first sixty years of the last century.

I was lucky enough to find a copy of this wonderful book in an antique store and "stole" it for about 5 dollars. I am now on amazon.com buying a couple more copies as gifts for friends. As a horticulturalist I found this book sheer joy and I couldn't put it down. It is very well written and follows the adventures of David Fairchild as he works traveling around the world to obtain new plant introductions for the US in the 1890's thru the 1930's ... If you are a serious 'plant-nerd' you will love this book.