Writing the Garden
A LITERARY CONVERSATION
ACROSS TWO CENTURIES
“One Approach to the Garden from the Sun Room.” Frontispiece, My Wild Flower Garden: The Story of a New Departure in Floriculture by Herbert Durand, 1927.
This book published in 2011 by
DAVID R. GODINE · PUBLISHER
Post Office Box 450 · Jaffrey, New Hampshire 03452
This book accompanies the exhibition
Writing the Garden: Books from the Collections of
The New York Society Library & Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
organized in 2011 by The New York Society Library.
The exhibition and book are generously supported in part
by Deborah S. Pease.
The publication of Writing the Garden: A Literary Conversation Across
Two Centuries was made possible with funding from the Foundation for Landscape Studies and The New York Society Library.
Text © 2011 Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
Other portions of publication © 2011 The New York Society Library
Published in eBook format by David R. Godine, Publisher
Converted by www.eBookIt.com
All rights reserved.
Unless credited otherwise, images are the author’s own.
No text or images of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.
For information contact Permissions, David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc.
Fifteen Court Square, Suite 320, Boston, Massachusetts, 02108.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Rogers, Elizabeth Barlow, 1936-
Writing the garden : a literary conversation across two centuries / Elizabeth Barlow Rogers. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
This book accompanies the exhibition "Writing the Garden" organized in 2011 by The New York Society Library.
ISBN 978-1-56792-440-4
1. Horticultural literature. 2. Gardening in literature. I. Foundation for Landscape Studies. II. New York Society Library. III. Title.
SB318.3.R64 2011
808.8'0364—dc22
2011008238
HARDCOVER ISBN: 978-1-56792-440-4 E-BOOK ISBN: 978-1-56792-461-9
This book is dedicated to
Three Great Gardeners
FRANK CABOT
JACK LENOR LARSEN
HENRIETTE GRANVILLE SUHR
Preface
It gives us great pleasure to present Writing the Garden: Books from the Collections of The New York Society Library & Elizabeth Barlow Rogers to our members and the public at large. The exhibition, which opened on May 12, 2011, in the Peluso Family Exhibition Gallery, was co-curated by Harriet Shapiro, the New York Society Library’s Head of Exhibitions, and Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, the author of the book you now hold in your hands.
A few words about the history of the New York Society Library are in order here. Founded in 1754 by six prominent New Yorkers—William Smith Jr., William Livingston, John Morin Scott, Philip Livingston, Robert R. Livingston, Sr., and William Alexander—it is the city’s oldest library. Its first home was in the “Library Room” at City Hall; then as the residential city moved uptown from the tip of Manhattan, it relocated in 1856 to 67 University Place and, finally, in 1937 to its current building designed by Trowbridge and Livingston at 53 East 79th Street. Over time the library’s collection has grown from approximately 2,000 books to more than 300,000. Among these are numerous volumes on subjects related to gardens and gardening, a number of which are recognized as literary gems.
Elizabeth Barlow Rogers’s career as a park preservationist, author, and collector of rare books on landscape history, garden design, and horticulture should also be outlined in brief. As many New Yorkers know, Rogers is a principal founder of the Central Park Conservancy, the public-private partnership responsible for transforming Central Park from a state of severe disrepair to its present status as New York City’s crown jewel. She subsequently founded the Foundation for Landscape Studies and currently serves as its president. Her books include The Forests and Wetlands of New York City (1971), Frederick Law Olmsted’s New York (1972), Rebuilding Central Park: A Management and Restoration Plan (1987), Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History (2001), and Romantic Gardens: Nature, Art, and Landscape Design (2010). In addition, she is the editor of the journal Site/Lines, a publication of the Foundation for Landscape Studies.
I am grateful to Elizabeth Barlow Rogers for her essential role in this project. In addition, I appreciate the support of the boards of the New York Society Library and the Foundation for Landscape Studies, the sponsors of the publication of this book in association with David R. Godine, Publisher. Finally, the library thanks Deborah S. Pease for her support of the exhibition and book.
Mark Bartlett
HEAD LIBRARIAN
THE NEW YORK SOCIETY LIBRARY
Foreword
From putting together the experiences of gardeners in different places, a conception of plants begins to form. Gardening, reading about gardening, and writing about gardening are all one; no one can garden alone.
—Elizabeth Lawrence, The Little Bulbs, 1957
THE GENESIS of this book was an invitation from Mark Bartlett, Head Librarian of the New York Society Library, to co-curate with Harriet Shapiro, Head of Exhibitions, a display featuring the library’s trove of rare books by garden writers along with similar works from my own collection. An afternoon of delightful browsing with Harriet brought us to the same conclusion—that we should focus on a particular genre of garden writing within the larger realm of books on landscape subjects: books by and for actual gardeners. Moreover, these should be books whose literary quality ensured even a nongardener’s reading pleasure.
It was difficult to leave on the shelf one of the library’s great treasures, the 1728 English edition of Dézallier d’Argenville’s