From Amazon
Love history as much as you love plants? Interested in resurrecting some nearly forgotten and delicious garden vegetables?
Heirloom Country Gardens offers a wealth of suggestions in a lovely format that mixes gorgeous photos with fascinating text. Author Sarah Wolfgang Heffner begins with an introduction to many types of regionally preferred layouts--traditional Amish, New England, Southern, Victorian, and Southwest Mission are but a few. Whether you're interested in reinventing your entire garden in a particular style or simply incorporating a few elements, you'll find the detailed descriptions and bulleted lists to be helpful companions.
The alphabetical listing of vegetables, flowers, herbs, and fruits includes both general notes and specific types of special heirloom plants. Purple carrots? White cucumbers? Each category offers at least four choices--some, like the Moons and Stars melon, are famous in the move to restore older breeds. Plant history is included in this section--did you know it was once believed that basil could actually turn into a scorpion, if two leaves were left under a rock? Flowers are given the same loving attention, while fruits are treated a bit differently.
As local conditions can vary so drastically for optimal fruit growing, Heffner urges you to get recommendations from local nurseries, while including interesting historical facts and a few general suggestions. Organic methods of disease and pests control are emphasized, and the instructions for training plants and retaining seeds excel in their completeness and simplicity. --Jill Lightner
From Publishers Weekly
Heffner provides six different heirloom garden designs to reflect early regional gardens from New England to the Southwest. Initially, she discusses how both climate and the ethnic background of area settlers contributed to each design, then she offers such particulars as the type (and even the number) of plants to include, along with their cultivation habits and growth requirements. Of special interest is the history and evolution not only of each type of garden but of individual plants. Onions, bachelor's buttons, grapes and nasturtiums all receive equal billing. Since, according to Heffner, country gardens "reflect a wonderful combination of creativity, thriftiness, regional character and love of gardening," she also includes chapters on creating garden ornaments, utensils and crafts along with old-fashioned recipes contributed by living history museums. Valuable appendices include resources for heirloom seeds and sources of information about historical gardens. The book offers so many attractive ideas, it will be difficult for gardeners to limit themselves. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Sarah Wolfgang Heffner was the orchard manager for the Rodale Institute Orchard Project for 10 years. She lives and gardens on a historic farm in Berks County, PA.
