A Garden, A Book

I started a garden blog in early 2010 and have been at it, writing a couple different blogs ever since. But before I started writing my own posts I had been reading early garden blogs for several years. One of the earliest I found, about 2006 I think, was a New Jersey gardener named James Golden.

I found his blog when I was at the beginning of my very steep learning curve creating gardens in Connecticut. His blog posts were real essays, beautifully written. He wrote about mood and melancholy in a garden, and that spoke to me. I immediately connected with his thoughts on prospect and refuge -- I've written about that too, and find the push and pull of emotional feeling in a landscape to be the core of gardening, more than the plants or the tasks or the composition of a space. His plant knowledge was sophisticated and informative, so much more than the "this is pretty" stuff on other blogs.

He had just moved to a house in a wooded setting, and started his blog called The View From Federal Twist. The place was an overgrown weedy mess in a damp depression below the house, which he cleared and began planting. He stuck some arborvitaes in the mud, made some paths, and I clearly remember thinking as I read his early posts, What have you done?? This is awful. 

But I kept following him and watching his place turn into something marvelous. Jim and I drove to New Jersey and visited twice when he had Garden Conservancy open tours in summer and again in autumn of 2013. He was a gracious host, spent time with me one on one, and although he had many visitors, he walked me personally through his paths as we talked about what he was developing. I'll always remember that.

So I have always felt a personal connection to him, and have seen every bit of his garden develop since the earliest muddy beginnings. 

Like me he came to gardening only late in life as retirement approached, and developed a whole second act to his life based on plants and garden building. 

Unlike me, however, over the years he has become well known in both Europe and the U.S., and his unique garden in New Jersey has become renowned. Monty Don featured him in a documentary on U.S. gardens. He has been written about in the New York Times. He lectures and gives talks on gardening. He has become an acclaimed figure in garden design.

And now he has written a book about the creation of his incredible garden at Federal Twist (the odd name of his street, its origin lost to history).

on Amazon

The book is fabulous, well illustrated with photographs and beautifully written as all his blog posts were. Because I have read much of this before and know his garden so well, and because I have been to his place and spent at least a little time with him personally, I am totally invested in this book. 

It isn't just pretty pictures with an interesting write up --- it's reinforcement of all the experiences I have had following James Golden's visions and thoughts faithfully for 15 years, learning from him and immersing myself in his special view of what a landscape means.

This book feels like going home.