Price : $1.12

Product Description

Frightened orphan Mary discovers the joyful wonders of life on the Yorkshire Moors with the help of two local boys and a mysterious, abandoned garden…where all things seem possible.

Customer Reviews

Review date : 2008-09-27
This is one of my favorite books of all time. Each time I read it I am once more swept away into the haunting and slightly Gothic world of the English moores and the mystery that haunts that old house.

There is something absolutely enchanting this book that I have yet to put my finger upon. I don’t know if it’s the setting, the classic story, the incredibly developed characters, or the mystery. But it’s fantastic.

It begins with Mary, a thoroughly bratty, spoilt child who had grown up in India, every single one of her whims answered. When her parents die horribly, she is shipped off to her uncle’s, across the world in dreary England. However, he doesn’t pay much attention to her, either, and Mary finds herself, most unwillingly, becoming attached to the staff of the spooky old house and the story of an abandoned garden loved by her dead aunt.

One of the strongest points of this book is its characters. We have the obvious example of Mary, the girl who goes from being a complete bitch to someone tolerable. The rest of the cast is just as wonderful, as quirky and different as one could ask for, all with their own stories and personalities.

Then we have the vibrant setting. Hodgson is a genius at painting a gorgeous but unflowery world of enchanting England and India, from lush sun to rain-soaked fields, an earthy garden, a dusky old house.

Basically, it’s everything you could ask for from a book.

Review date : 2008-08-27
Mary is a sour nine-year old girl whose neglectful parents die in India and she is taken to an even more neglectful uncle in a gothic castle in a remote part of England. Interest in something outside herself is sparked when Martha, the servant assigned to look after her, is shocked that Mary never learned how to dress herself. There had been no need. Martha has other duties so Mary is left alone. Her explorations lead her out in the late winter air and to an obsession with finding "the secret garden." She discovers an even bigger secret of another child in the house.

Through magic and exercise, both children are transformed. This highly entertaining book is a wonderful read for all ages.

Review date : 2008-08-01
This is a wonderful classic. Our garden gives me an emotional resurrection every spring which this story describes beautifully.

Review date : 2008-05-02
I am an urban, public school teacher with a fifth grade reading group. The girls, as well as the boys, found this book to be spellbinding. I had students trying to smuggle copies of the book out of the room at the end of our period - just so they could read the next few chapters!!!

Review date : 2003-11-02
The Secret Garden - my mum gave me this book when I was about eight and in the front it says: "for Kate, who will stay up reading until the wee hours of the morning." and it is true. I’ve read this book many times since then and I discover something new each time.

The characters are wonderful, especially Mary, Colin, Ben Weatherstaff and the "Yorkshire angel" Dickon. The changes that happen to both Mary and Colin throughout the book are a delight to observe.

I feel protected and happy once I’ve finished this book, things turn out happily, for the best and the image I have in my head of the Secret Garden surpasses anything I have ever seen in real life - and that is fine, for this is literature.

Read it.
 

Price : $18.78

Product Description

Inspirational, practical, and easy to use, this book was created with the aim of conveying the awesome diversity and beauty of California’s native plants and demonstrating how they can be brought into ecologically sound, attractive, workable, and artful gardens. Structured around major California plant communities–bluffs, redwoods, the Channel Islands, coastal scrub, grasslands, deserts, oak woodlands, mixed evergreen woodlands, riparian, chaparral, mountain meadows, and wetlands–the book’s twelve chapters each include sample plans for a native garden design accompanied by original drawings, color photographs, a plant list, tips on successful gardening with individual species, and more. Both residential and professional gardeners will learn the benefits of going native with gardens that require less water and fewer fertilizers, attract wildlife, engage the senses, create a sense of place, and, at the same time, preserve our rich natural heritage.
Designing Native California Gardens includes:
* More than 600 selected native species recommended for the garden
* More than 300 photographs of native plants, natural plant communities, and residential native gardens
* Recommended places to visit for viewing each plant community

Customer Reviews

Review date : 2008-06-08
I was looking for a book that would give me a comprehensive guide to xeriscaping with native plants. This book contains one section that approaches my needs but is more of an overview over the native plants of the many diverse vegetation zones of the states. For what it is, it is a nice book. Just not a match for me.

Review date : 2007-11-18
This book is a must have for the California native gardener. I’d say the book’s biggest strength is in its’ inspiration- contains nice photographs of natural landscapes and gardens modeled after them. It groups plants by communities which is nice, though maybe hard to do. I know I live in an area which doesn’t fit exactly into of any of the communities they list, but I can still get the idea they are trying to convey, and look around at what is in my community. California is so diverse you almost want a bunch of more specific and in-depth books for different areas inside California, but I guess maybe those areas of interest are too small to sell enough books to make it worth the while.

It does a good job listing different kinds of plants, my only complaint with this book is that I would have liked more pictures accompanying each plant for which information is given- because you really can’t tell from the brief physical description what the plant looks like. As someone else has mentioned, this book is best paired with California Native Plants For The Garden. However, this complaint should be taken with a grain of salt, for designing a California native garden I think this book is the best on the market. Together, these two books provide the backbone to build your California native plant book collection around.

Review date : 2007-11-14
Love this book, gets you to think in terms of plant groupings & not just on a singular level.

Review date : 2007-10-10
-We need more books like this to make Native Gardening more amenable. What "Landscapers’ Challenge" did for Landscaping, this book will hopefully start to do to open up the still rather arcane world of Native Plants. It is practical and full of detailed, appropriate, high quality photographs of sample materials. Visually on par with "Landscape Plants for Western Regions" by Perry.

Review date : 2007-09-26
This book is excellent, with many good photographic examples of complete native landscape. It also set for an excellent philosophy for landscape design for the both the use of native and non-native plants. However it really shouldn’t be thought of as a complete source for native gardening. I would also suggest that you pick up ‘California Native Plants for the Garden’ by Carol Bornstein, David Fross, and Bart O’Brien. Even between these two books all of the possibilities for beautiful California native plants and landscapes created using them have not yet been fully explored, but these books are an excellent start.

Price : $21.94

Product Description

Once maligned as a swampy outpost, the fledgling city of Chicago brazenly adopted the motto Urbs in Horto or City in a Garden, in 1837. Chicago Gardens shows how this upstart town earned its sobriquet over the next century, from the first vegetable plots at Fort Dearborn to innovative garden designs at the 1933 Worlds Fair.
Cathy Jean Maloney has spent decades researching the citys horticultural heritage, and here she reveals the unusual history of Chicagos first gardens. Challenged by the regions clay soil, harsh winters, and fierce winds, Chicagos pioneering horticulturalists, Maloney demonstrates, found imaginative uses for hardy prairie plants. This same creative spirit thrived in the citys local fruit and vegetable markets, encouraging the growth of what would become the nations produce hub. The vast plains that surrounded Chicago, meanwhile, inspired early landscape architects, such as Frederick Law Olmsted, Jens Jensen, and O.C. Simonds, to new heights of grandeur.
Maloney does not forget the backyard gardeners: immigrants whocultivated treasuredseedsand pioneers who planted native wildflowers. Maloneys vibrant depictions of Chicagoans like Bouquet Mary, a flower peddler who built a greenhouse empire, add charming anecdotal evidence to her argumentthat Chicagos garden history rivals that of New York or London and ensures its status as a world-class capital of horticultural innovation.
With exquisite archival photographs, prints, and postcards, as well as field guide descriptions of living legacy gardens for todays visitors, Chicago Gardens will delight green-thumbs from all parts of the world. (30081123)