cover image The Cottage Garden and the Old-Fashioned Flowers: And the Old-Fashioned Flowers

The Cottage Garden and the Old-Fashioned Flowers: And the Old-Fashioned Flowers

Roy Genders. Pelham, $19.95 (368pp) ISBN 978-0-7207-1442-5

This historically resonant compendium romanticizes the vanishing cottage-garden flower. Citing Greek mythology, medieval gardening manuals, Shakespearean tragedy and a 15th century Ave Maria, Genders resurrects the long-neglected plants, tracing their odysseys and uses. A garland of Madonna lilies and red roses was the custom at weddings in Chaucer's age, the scarlet pimpernel was a weather forecaster, and time remembers when the Englishman drank primrose wine, smoked chamomile and kept a peony in his pocket to ward against evil. The book proffers many clever tricks of the gardening trade, such as growing night-scented plants on the western side of a house (so they emit a more concentrated perfume), and reveals the possibilities of thornless roses, miniature conifers sprouting in a sink and outdoor boxes of culinary herbs within arm's reach of the kitchen window. Veteran gardening writer Genders's disjointed writing style, however, encumbers the reader. Illustrations. (May)