Walled Gardens

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Walled Gardens
Annabell Davis-Goff
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Irish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
General | England | Europe | History | Subjects | Books
General | Ireland | Europe | History | Subjects | Books
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The Dower House

This Cold Country

ASIN: 0394568370
Release Date: 1989-09-23

Average customer rating:

A good book for ideas and guidance

Not what it looked like

This is a marketing book

A good book -- but a little misleading.

Easy-Care Landscape Plans: 41 Professional Designs for Do-It-Yourselfers
Susan A. Roth , and Susan Lang
Manufacturer: Home Planners
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Landscape | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
Garden Design | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
Landscape | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
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Home Planners Complete Book of Landscape Plans: 50+ Garden Designs to Transform Your Yard

Garden, Landscape, and Project Plans: 225 Do-It Yourself Designs

Beds and Borders: 40 Professional Designs for Do-It-Yourselfers

Book of Garden Plans

The Home Landscaper: 55 Professional Landscapes You Can Do

Accessories:

Fiskars 10-Inch Wallace Hedge Shears #91806935

ASIN: 1881955222

Book Description

-In-depth information on what "easy-care" really means.
-Landscape wizardry without the work.
-Full color renderings show what the final product will look like.
-Designs that are perfect for virtually every style of home.
-Complete construction blueprints and regional plant list available separately.

Customer Reviews:

A good book for ideas and guidance.......2007-03-08

Hmm. The previous reviews baffle me a little as one can tell from the title this is not a one-size-fits-all book as each region in the country has different requirements and the title doesn't point to any one in particular. This book has great sketches with general plant categories, quantity needed, and placement guides to help you achieve a similar look in your yard. I'm not an expert gardener by any means, but I would consider myself a bit more savvy than a novice. Not one of these plans in its entirety was what I was looking for but I took bits and pieces of several and drew up my own sketch for my yard. Then by looking around my city for things I like and talking with my local nursery personnel, I was able to select the perfect plants to fit my sketch -- all for free (well, the plants cost me money of course!). So if you are looking for someone to do it all for you, this is not the book and you are probably better off hiring someone. If you want guidance and inspiration, this is a great book and if you find a particular plan you love, you can order it and get all of the information handed to you at a reasonable cost.

Not what it looked like.......2004-05-12

I thought this book would come with the plans inside, based on the title and subtitle. But it is just a book of plans to order. There are no plant keys, just sketches of various landscaping plans that you can send away for. I am completely dissatisfied and would like to return this item.

This is a marketing book.......2003-06-12

This book has a bunch of very specific plans for designs that you must BUY. While you can get a few ideas from it, it is very vague and general, and yet, geared to a specific-lot plan. Browse it if you like, but don't bother to buy it.

A good book -- but a little misleading........1999-10-20

The book is good -- for an advertising piece for landscaping plans. It is well illustrated and does include a lot of information on landscaping. It helped me. HOWEVER, each landscaping plan has an 800 number with a plan code. For $45 plus the company will send you a detailed plan that is adapted to your zone. Frankly I would have preferred to know this up front. I should have been more suspicious when I saw the low book price. Would I recommend the book? Yes - if you want some ideas about achieving different looks in a suburban garden. But unless you are willing to pay more, don't look to this guide for plant recommendations.

Average customer rating:

A female Cheever
a great addition for a library of New York books
Phenomenal
And a beautiful garden it is

The Rose Garden: Short Stories
Maeve Brennan
Manufacturer: Counterpoint
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1582430500

Amazon.com

Addictive tales from a rediscovered mid-century master. Or maybe the more appropriate word would be mistress, since The Rose Garden is crammed to the rafters with maids and their mistresses. Maeve Brennan, a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, shows herself thoroughly in control of her fictive house in this posthumous reissue of stories from the 1950s through the '70s. Each is a witty, mean little miracle of lost chances and bruised egos. The first five stories are set in the town of Herbert's Retreat, an arty, expensive enclave on the Hudson, based on Sneden's Landing where Brennan lived for several years with her husband, New Yorker managing editor St. Clair McKelway. The Herbert's Retreat stories are linked entertainments, compulsively readable, and worthy of the adoration inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Basil and Josephine" stories. Like Fitzgerald, Brennan limns shattering loss and hilariously sends up middle-class pretentions--sometimes within the space of the same sentence. A pompous New York critic imposes his finicky will on the good wives of the community; a favorite son returns a broken man and finds that only the maids will dance with him; a bum passing through leaves his rather stinky mark.

Every character, above stairs and below, lives for the delight of recounting the disasters and drunks of the night before. The afternoon before the servants' annual dance, "jaded with talking about the dance, anxious now only to get on with it, willing even to have it past, so that they could start enjoying the discussion of it, most of the maids at Herbert's Retreat lay down on their beds for an unaccustomed ceremonial nap before getting dressed for the evening." The closed community and its inhabitants' transparent attempts to dominate each other recall E.F. Benson's utterly delightful Lucia series.

The Rose Garden is rounded out with several of Brennan's acclaimed stories of bereft Dublin life, a couple of experimental, stream-of-consciousness pieces, and, of all things, a handful of dog stories. Her forays into the interior life of her Labrador, Bluebell, might read as twee indulgences, except they're so rife with breathtaking, careful observation:

That was an unearthly morning--one mislaid at the beginning of the world and recovered in East Hampton under a high and massive sky of Mediterranean blue.... The wind was so new that it blew cold, in its first rush across the world, but the air was soft. The pheasant's head and body were almost buried in the powdery sand, but he had fallen with his wings wide open, and one of them slanted up to make a wedge of color in the air.

Such quiet, perfect sentences stud Maeve Brennan's stories. This is a book full of intelligent diversions, a book that makes a good, lasting sound. --Claire Dederer

Book Description

From the author of The Springs of Affection, a second collection of masterly short stories from the glory days of The New Yorker.

Maeve Brennan's collection The Springs of Affection was one of the best reviewed books of 1997. A volume of linked tales of the author's native Dublin, it enlarged the reputation of a too-often overlooked writer, a Flaubertian perfectionist revered by her New Yorker colleagues as one of the finest stylists the magazine ever produced. Now, with The Rose Garden, the remainder of her fiction-much of it previously uncollected-is at last restored to print, and Maeve Brennan stands revealed as one of the century's great short-story writers.

In five of these twenty stories, we return to Brennan's Dublin, which like Joyce's is a place of paralyzed souls, unexpressed love, and scaldingly wicked humor. Another group of stories-a satirical study of Herbert's Retreat, a snug and smug community just up the Hudson River from New York-concerns the Irish in America, the hired help of a set of money-conscious, social-climbing suburbanites. Still others take us into the cheap hotels and inexpensive restaurants of Times Square and Greenwich Village, and into the mind of Bluebell, an aging city dog-a female black Lab, to be exact-who lives on her memories of the country and the seashore. Together they form a collection that, as The New York Times Book Review said of The Springs of Affection, is "wide-ranging, savage, and poignant," and that "brings Brennan back to the table of modern fiction, where her place has been empty for too long."

Customer Reviews:

A female Cheever.......2005-03-08

Maeve Brennan wrote for THE NEW YORKER for many years, as did John Cheever, but that is only one thing they had in common. The other is their talent for observing--with only a little smidgen of a judgmental attitude--the foibles and hobbies of the wealthy and the social climbers of their particular world (specifically, Manhattan in the 1930s through the 1950s).

In THE ROSE GARDEN, Brennan--an abundantly talented Irish native who spent many years living and writing in New York--examines most particularly the social comings and goings of the residents of a neighborhood closely modeled on Sneden's Landing, the clubby, cloistered, wealthy weekend getaway for many Manhattanites. Brennan repeats characters freely from story to story, which lends the book a richness it might not otherwise have, and she skewers with extraordinary precision and delicacy the foolishness her characters indulge in--knowingly sometimes, but mostly in complete oblivion to their idiocies.

Special treats in THE ROSE GARDEN include "The Divine Fireplace" (which features possibly the funniest conversation I've ever read between a wife and a woman she sees as a threat to her marriage); "The Stone Hot Water Bottle" and "The Servants' Dance," which brings into sharp focus the "Upstairs, Downstairs" observations at which she excels. These stories are deliciously readable--and re-readable.

a great addition for a library of New York books.......2002-07-30

The Rose Garden is a collection of short stories by the late New Yorker writer Maeve Brennan. The book feels split into two collections. The first half of the book is a collection of stories about the fictional "Herbert's Retreat" an exclusive enclave of a few dozen houses 30 or so miles up the Hudson from New York City. Brennan captures the minor social adventures of the wealthy denizens through some of the sharpest humored dialogue and descriptions I have ever read. At the same time as the homeowners vie to capture for the best river view and to throw successful parties with the most desirable guests - in short, to be the envy of their neighbors - their Irish maids ruefully observe - and occasionally subvert - their antics.

Unfortunately, the Herbert's Retreat stories only constitute half of this book. The second half of the book is less enjoyable. The remaining stories rely heavier on description rather than dialogue, and the characters - which range from cafe regulars to a dog named Bluebell - are far less entertaining or memorable. Nonetheless, Brennan is an expert in capturing New York, and this book is must have in a library of books describing 20th century New York, to be placed in the vicinity of fellow New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell's great social observations. The Herbert's Retreat stories alone make the book essential reading.

Phenomenal.......2001-06-05

Ms. Maeve Brennan wrote for and about, "The New Yorker", magazine for over four decades. The New Yorker is many things including a publication known for excellence. To have been a part of such an institution for so long is enough to place this woman in a very small group if not alone for her tenure there. "The Rose Garden", is one of two books that collect short stories Ms. Brennan created, and they are without exception excellent.

Of the twenty stories there are a few that are stand-alone tales. The book opens and then closes with a series of stories that share place and characters but also could stand by themselves as well. The first grouping is a brilliant and savage attack on a small community north of Manhattan, which is based upon a community the writer, lived in. She has a rapier wit and she uses it to dismember the people and their pretensions that occupy this community. She does it with such style that some of the targets would probably lack the insight to see just how badly she savaged them and their affected lifestyle. There are two stories that on their own are worth owning the book, one is, "The Servant's Dance", and the other begins with, "The Holy Terror". Writing such as this is a rare event.

The cover of the book is a picture of the writer from 1949. If those Irish Eyes of hers ever focused on a person and identified them as a target, it would be akin to being told Mike Wallace of 60 minutes was waiting to speak with you.

A wonderful writer and a woman that must have been a daunting presence to be in the midst of. Fantastic reading!

And a beautiful garden it is.......2000-02-03

I'd never heard of Maeve Brennan before I picked up this book, and I'm sorry that it's taken me so long to find her. This was a wonderful surprise, filled with astute observations, sly humor, and delightful prose. The stories in this collection bring to mind Raymond Carver and J.D. Salinger in their recording of the subtle moments in life, when nothing seems to outwardly happen but profound shifts in power and status occur behind the visages of the complacent and bemused characters she so brilliantly sketches. If you're looking for a steady stream of action, you'd do better elsewhere, but if you prefer incisive characterizations and a more gentle touch, please give this a try. Make no mistake, though, in believing her to be some imitator. Stories like "A Snowy Night on West Forty-ninth Street" and "The Door on West Tenth Street" showcase a writer with her own distinct and wonderful voice, someone who probably deserves more attention than she's received thus far. Once I finished these stories I immediately bought her other collections, eager to read more.

Average customer rating:

Book is a Winner
Very enjoyable

Gardens of Britain and Ireland
Patrick Taylor
Manufacturer: Dorling Kindersley Publishers Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This definitive illustrated survey presents 2,000 of the most beautiful and inspiring gardens of Britain and Ireland with evocative prose and photographs. Organized by region, it presents the full range of this region's horticultural heritage, covering everything from the "Lost" Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall to the extraordinary ecological diversity and futuristic ambitions of the Eden Project.

Customer Reviews:

Book is a Winner.......2007-05-22

I first viewed this book at my local library and after going over it, decided to purchase it for my own personal library. The book covers a wide expanse of gardens in Britain, Ireland and not mentioned in the title, Scotland. Book does not give in depth information about layouts of gardens and such, but does contain one or two pics of mentioned gardens and locations in write ups. The photographs are simply beautiful.
The gardens in England are broken down into sectors, such as south-east England or North England for those who may be going to visit. Often, they contain pictures of the manor houses, cottages, castles or architectural elements in the gardens.The book also includes antedotal information about past occupants of houses, gardens or historical events surrounding the houses and gardens. For me, that added immensely to the overall enjoyment of the book. It's a winner.

Very enjoyable.......2006-05-05

This large and attractive book is a reference book on over 1,700 of the most beautiful gardens in the British Isles. The largest part of the book is the Guide, in which public-available gardens are discussed, complete with colorful pictures. Grouped by region, each of the gardens is given a quick introduction, a more in-depth description, and important information, including location, size and when open. After the Guide comes the Gazetteer, in which the author looks at many different gardens, including some still privately held and those belonging to cemeteries and hospitals.

Overall, I found this to be a very enjoyable book. I really liked reading the descriptions of the gardens, and the interesting historical notes. The one thing that would have made this book better would have been more pictures. But, it is already a pretty hefty book, and I do realize that adding more pictures would have made it huge.

But, that said this is a very interesting book, especially for anyone who plans on being able to visit these wonderful gardens themselves.

Georgina Campbell's Ireland For Garden Lovers': Gentle Journeys Through Ireland's Most Beautuful Gardens With Delightful Places To Stay Along The Way (Georgina Campbell's Ireland)

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Georgina Campbell's Ireland For Garden Lovers': Gentle Journeys Through Ireland's Most Beautuful Gardens With Delightful Places To Stay Along The Way (Georgina Campbell's Ireland)
Georgina Campbell , and Marianne Heron
Manufacturer: Georgina Campbell Guides
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

Guidebooks | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books

General | Travel | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 1903164141

Book Description

This magical book is both a guide to the most delightful places for garden lovers to stay and eat, and a guide to the top gardens of Ireland, providing a wonderful framework for the garden lover's Irish vacation.

Simple and user friendly, the book includes around one hundred tip-top gardens, arranged by area, with up-to-the-minute practical information, photographs, and maps. Introducing each section is a guide to the kind of romantic accommodation and restaurants, pubs or cafÇs with really interesting food that will enhance the garden lovers experience, in most cases also set in lovely gardens. Each section also includes useful information for gardeners with suggestions for top nurseries, garden centers, or additional gardens to visit.

This new guide builds on the reputation of two experienced writers in the hospitality and garden fields. The Georgina Campbell Guides to The Best Places To Eat Drink and Stay in Ireland (the Georgina Campbell's Ireland series) are widely recognized as the essential companions to any tour around the country, and Marianne Heron's best selling Hidden Gardens of Ireland is still in print in the second edition 10 years on.

Product Description

Rome and the Literature of Gardens explores the garden as a powerful locus of transformation and transgression in the De Re Rustica of Columella, the Satires of Horace, the Annals of Tacitus, and the Confessions of Saint Augustine. In keeping with the approach of this series, a concluding chapter examines the reincarnation of these expressions in the contemporary plays Arcadia and The Invention of Love by Tom Stoppard. Many books on gardens in ancient Rome concentrate on either technical agricultural manuals, or pastoral poetry, or the physical remains of Roman gardens. Instead, this book considers images of gardens from a kaleidoscope of genres, especially those that the Romans made their own: satire, annalistic history, and autobiography. This atypical approach makes a unique contribution to the field of Latin literature and garden history, bridging the gap between material culture and cultural history.

Average customer rating:

In an Irish Garden

Manufacturer: Weidenfeld & Nicholson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

Book Description

'...sheer visual delight with magnificent colour reproductions of gardens great and small.'

Beds and Borders: 40 Professional Designs for Do-It-Yourselfers

Average customer rating:

This book is a waste of money
CAN YOU SAY RIPOFF?
beds and borders
Disappointing

Beds and Borders: 40 Professional Designs for Do-It-Yourselfers

Manufacturer: Home Planners
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Garden Design | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1881955451

Customer Reviews:

This book is a waste of money.......2007-09-09

I purchased this book a few years ago and got "sucked into" purchasing a blueprint. The "plans" are sketches of mature yards, and the "plan view" doesn't really help as far as knowing what plants to use. What ends up happening is you spend more money on the blueprints. THEN when you get the blueprints, the plants "recommended" for your region aren't easy to obtain!

Blueprints in hand, I visited a local nursery and struck out with many of the plants recommended.

Don't waste your money, hoping that for $11 you'll get a useful landscape plan.

CAN YOU SAY RIPOFF?.......2000-08-29

A quick glance through this book at the home and garden store promised many detailed designs. Upon close examination, however, it became clear that this book is nothing more than a glossy come-on, requiring you to sink another fifteen bucks PER DESIGN for a plant list specific to your locale. Don't waste your money on this one.

beds and borders.......2000-02-05

The detail on structuring the garden (balance, colors, form, etc.)is excellent, especially for someone who has already tried to create a professional-looking landscape but didn't have all the info!)

Disappointing.......1999-06-15

This book is nothing more than an attempt to get you to buy their landscape blueprints. It is actually put out by Home Planners. Not very up front about this fact on the cover though

Gardens and Ghettos: The Art of Jewish Life in Italy

Average customer rating:

Wonderful book, very comprehensive.

Gardens and Ghettos: The Art of Jewish Life in Italy
Vivian B. Mann
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Book Description

Jews arrived in the Republic of Rome some time in the second or first century B.C.E. They soon formed their own community which absorbed Roman cultural forms but was able to maintain its identity and integrity. For more than twenty centuries, the Italian peninsula has been home to the heirs of this ancient minority community, whose culture is a blend of traditional Jewish content with Roman, then Italian cultural forms.
Gardens and Ghettos: The Art of Jewish Life in Italy is the title of an exhibition curated by Vivian B. Mann and Emily Braun for The Jewish Museum, New York (September 1989-January 1990), an exhibition that explores the extraordinarily rich artistic legacy of Italian Jewry. This book, like the exhibition itself, focuses on four time periods: the Empire, the Era of the City States (1300-1550), the Era of the Ghettos (1550-1750), and the period since the Risorgimento. Artifacts and architecture are generously represented along with fine arts. Essays by prominent scholars introduce us to the historical and cultural context of a splendid array of works, from ancient Roman architectural fragments and gold glass to illuminated manuscripts and printed books from the Renaissance, baroque ceremonial textiles and silver, and paintings, graphics, and sculpture of the modern era. The many illustrations illuminate the art and life of a minority community in dynamic tension with dominant society and show the vibrant, ongoing contribution by Jews to the arts of Italy.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful book, very comprehensive........1998-12-20

Beautiful art, interesting history. I have no professional interest in art or history, so I couldn't say how a professor or art history buff would like it. But, it brought to life many of the people who lived and created art throughout many centuries, binding my heart and sould to theirs. Wonderful book!

The Garden Lover's Guide to Ireland (Garden Lover's Guides to)

Average customer rating:

Excellent travel guide but not for garden planners
Ireland's Quiet Beauty

The Garden Lover's Guide to Ireland (Garden Lover's Guides to)
Terrence Reeves-Smyth
Manufacturer: Princeton Architectural Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Garden Design | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

General | Travel | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1568982704

Book Description

Even from the name The Emerald Isle, it's clear that gardens are part and parcel of the history and character of Ireland. Castles, parks, and simple country gardens are all presented in this essential tour guide that features over 100 Irish gardens with lush photographs and detailed descriptions. From the imposing formal terraces of Powerscourt near Dublin to the mixed plantings of Glenveagh Castle's woodland garden, set in the wild Donegal landscape, this guide reveals breathtaking sights awaiting travelers.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent travel guide but not for garden planners.......2002-05-20

This is an attractive but brief outline of many of the outstanding gardens in Ireland. Reeves-Smyth allots 2-5 paragraphs per garden and uses good graphics to help you find your way around the gardens.

If you are planning a trip to view gardens, this is a lovely guide. If you are looking for more indepth information and images, it is rather slim.

Ireland's Quiet Beauty.......2001-10-02

Terence Reeves Smyth brings to this, his most recent guide to the gardens of Ireland, the knowledge, commitment and passion characteristic of his earlier books on Irish demesnes,castles and gardens. A widely recognized authority in this field, he conveys clearly and engagingly to the reader and traveller, an invitation to roam throughout the island and discover the beauty of a wide range of gardens and parks. While gardens are the focus of this guide, he offers as well, descriptions of other sites, perhaps the best of which is the Crom Estate in
Fermanagh, where one can visit the finest ancient woodlands in Ireland and spend many a dreamy afternoon, gliding in a small boat on Lough Erne.
The guide is set out in a very practical fashion, its size permitting thoroughly inviting descriptions of the gardens and information indispensable to the visitor, to appear on the same page. Accompanying the descriptions are captivating photographs, all but for one or two exceptions, taken by the author. One can only imagine from his charming narrative portraits of the gardens the hours he enjoyed, with their owners, while he undertook the preparation of this
book.
On a recent trip to Ireland I found this guide both a companion and an inspiration.

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