Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #223467 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Review
"But for real inspiration, close your eyes and let McTeer's aristocratic cadences tempt you into dreams of creating your own garden of delight." -- Talking Books

"Essential because of the perceptive, poetic, ingenious and down-to-earth ability of [Sackville-West] to inspire in reader and listener the urgent need to garden." -- Country Living

"Listening to Janet McTeer reading these informal and discursive notes, written in Sackville-West's plain and elegant English, is pure pleasure. They are full of good information too and inspiring advice." -- Gramophone

"Soothingly read...packed full of useful hints, timely reminders, and infectious enthusiasm." -- The Independent

"These Cover to Cover tapes offer up a delectable feast for fans of the spoken word. We're talking class act here--from the elegant covers to the accomplished readers." -- Deirdre Donahue, USA TODAY, December 3, 1998

"These little essays are models of their kind. Sackville-West's ability to paint a word-picture of a plant, or an idea in the garden, in 500 words, has never been bettered." -- Sunday Telegraph

About the Author
Janet McTeer, highly recognized on both British and American stages, won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Nora in Ibsen's The Doll's House on Broadway. She recently played the part of Sackville-West in the BBC adaptation of Portrait of a Marriage.

From AudioFile
This month-by-month selection of Vita Sackville-West's gardening columns for the LONDON OBSERVER evokes Andrew Marvell's restful phrase, "a green thought in a green shade." Her setting is the English cottage garden; her values stated in 1940s shillings and pence; her relations with plants intimate, anthropomorphic, and correct in all British and Latin nomenclature. Today's backyard gardener may find it easier to listen to than to follow her advice on the common quince and the copper beech. ("Oh, why," I cried to myself, "don't we all plant even a short length of copper beech hedge!") But McTeer's elegant rendering of the wonderful diction and flair of the mistress of Sissinghurst Castle is the perfect accompaniment to an afternoon of summer gardening, or, better yet, to the contemplation of a summer garden from the cool shade of a hammock. D.A.W. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Timeless Treasure
This audio book is pure pleasure to listen to if you're at all interested in gardening. Vita wrote a month by month column in a London paper about gardening, and this contains excerpts from these. It goes through the year, season by season, in her famous garden at Sissinghurst Castle in England, during the years immediately following WWII. She shares planting tips, planting mistakes, and offers her views on the style of gardening she made famous. For example, she recommends planting masses of one plant and one color in a defined area of a garden.

In addition to her dry and witty remarks about gardening in general, she discusses the origins of some of the Latin names of plants, and she indirectly gives us a peek into some of the English culture of the "country house" at that time. The reader is superb! One can actually imagine that, had Vita read it for us herself, she would've used the same tone and inflection. I love this tape. I've given this as a gift to fellow-gardeners, and have listened to it myself over and over. It a real gem!