{"product_id":"green-thoughts-isbn-9780375759451","title":"Green Thoughts","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Unlike any other gardening book I know, with its Old World charm, its down-to-earth practicality, its whimsy and sophistication.”—Brooke Astor, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA classic in the literature of the garden, \u003ci\u003eGreen Thoughts\u003c\/i\u003e is a beautifully written  and highly original collection of seventy-two essays, alphabetically arranged, on  topics ranging from “Annuals” and “Artichokes” to “Weeds” and “Wildflowers.” An amateur  gardener for over thirty years, Eleanor Perényi draws upon her wide-ranging knowledge  of gardening lore to create a delightful, witty blend of how-to advice, informed  opinion, historical insight, and philosophical musing. There are entries in praise  of earthworms and in protest of rock gardens, a treatise on the sexual politics of  tending plants, and a paean to the salubrious effect of gardening (see “Longevity” ). Twenty years after its initial publication, \u003ci\u003eGreen Thoughts\u003c\/i\u003e remains as much a joy  to read as ever. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This Modern Library edition is published with a new Introduction  by Allen Lacy, former gardening columnist for \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe New  York Times\u003c\/i\u003e and the author of numerous gardening books.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“You do not have to be a good gardener to fall in love with \u003ci\u003eGreen Thoughts. \u003c\/i\u003eIt reads with the intrepid assurance of a classic.”—Mary McCarthy, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“One of those dangerous reference works that you reach for at a moment of horticultural crisis or indecision only to find yourself an hour later browsing far beyond the page where you began.”—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e “One of those dangerous reference works that you reach for at a moment of horticultural crisis or indecision only to find yourself an hour later browsing far beyond the page where you began.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You do not have to be a good gardener to fall in love with \u003ci\u003eGreen Thoughts. \u003c\/i\u003eIt reads with the intrepid assurance of a classic.”\u003cb\u003e—Mary McCarthy, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Unlike any other gardening book I know, with its Old World charm, its down-to-earth practicality, its whimsy and sophistication.”\u003cb\u003e—Brooke Astor, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eEleanor Perényi\u003c\/b\u003e was for many years the managing editor of \u003ci\u003eMademoiselle\u003c\/i\u003e, an editor at \u003ci\u003eHarper’s Bazaar\u003c\/i\u003e, and a contributor to \u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic Monthly\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eHarper’s\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eEsquire\u003c\/i\u003e magazines. She is the author of a biography of Franz Liszt, which was nominated for a National Book Award, and \u003ci\u003eMore Was Lost\u003c\/i\u003e, a memoir of her marriage to a Hungarian baron. She lives on the Connecticut coast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMichael Pollan\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestseller \u003ci\u003eThe Botany of Desire\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eSecond Nature\u003c\/i\u003e, named one of the best gardening books of the twentieth century by the American Horticultural Society. He is a contributing editor to \u003ci\u003eHarper’s\u003c\/i\u003e magazine and a contributing writer at \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e. Pollan chose the books for the Modern Library Gardening series because, as he writes, “these writers are some of the great talkers in the rich, provocative, and frequently uproarious conversation that, metaphorically at least, has been taking place over the back fence of our gardens at least since the time of Pliny.”Introduction, by Allen Lacy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI first read Eleanor Perényi’s \u003cb\u003eGreen Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden\u003c\/b\u003e shortly before its publication in 1981, when I was given an advance copy to review for \u003ci\u003eThe Philadelphia Inquirer\u003c\/i\u003e. Its appearance was a great and wonderful surprise. I had some slight knowledge of Ms. Perényi as a former managing editor of \u003ci\u003eMademoiselle\u003c\/i\u003e and the author of a highly acclaimed book on Franz Liszt; nothing in her professional history, however, suggested that a book on gardening should be expected from her. But in her foreword, Perényi set her readers straight: she is a writer, she gardens, and “a writer who gardens is sooner or later going to write a book about the subject-I take that as inevitable.” (Perhaps so. After all, among Germaine Greer’s books there’s a very humorous one called \u003cb\u003eThe Revolting Garden\u003c\/b\u003e, written under the pseudonym Rose Blight.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe sequel to \u003cb\u003eGreen Thoughts\u003c\/b\u003e that many people hoped for has never come. But we can be grateful for what we’ve got. Eleanor Perényi takes her place among a number of other writers who wrote one terrific book on gardening that may be read over and over with unfailing pleasure. \u003cb\u003eGreen Thoughts\u003c\/b\u003e thus takes its place alongside such works as Charles Dudley Warner’s \u003cb\u003eMy Summer in a Garden\u003c\/b\u003e (1870), Celia Thaxter’s\u003cb\u003e An Island Garden\u003c\/b\u003e (1894), and Karel Capek’s \u003cb\u003eThe Gardener’s Year\u003c\/b\u003e (1929).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I first read it, \u003cb\u003eGreen Thoughts\u003c\/b\u003e astonished me. Here, all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, came this wonderful collection of seventy-two essays of varying lengths, addressing almost every imaginable topic pertaining to gardening. Here were pieces dealing with the day-to-day, entirely practical, aspects of the horticultural enterprise, including essays on mulches and compost (Perényi favored them), and pesticides and poisons (they appalled her). Here were tributes to earthworms and expressions of horror that there should be such creatures as snakes, even “the smallest garter snake.” \u003cb\u003eGreen Thoughts\u003c\/b\u003e was also a treasury of praise for those flowering plants that even nongardeners find easy to love, for New England asters, for dahlias and peonies and lilies. When she had reservations-and she often did-Ms. Perényi expressed her doubts forthrightly. She had very little to say in favor of chrysanthemums, and was decidedly lukewarm about most modern daylilies. Considering that named varieties of daylilies totaled 15,000 (the number is now at least twice that), she asserted that “the breeders have surely gone too far.” She unburdened herself of additional criticism of trends in the world of hemerocallis. “Ninety-nine percent of the new varieties I wouldn’t have at any price. Daylilies colored orchid, cream, peach, make me slightly sick, and the names are awful too: I would blush to admit that I was growing Precious One, Disneyland, or Bitsy.” Modern rose breeders, who have given us overblown, disease-prone hybrid teas with names like Chrysler Imperial, also get knocked down a peg or two. Perényi leans toward older varieties, toward shrub roses rather than hybrid teas (although some of these have their faults as well, tending to be large and ungainly plants difficult to place within the confines of gardens of modest size). She also put in her word about herbs and the people who raise them: she respected “gardeners who raise herbs for their botanical interest, without quaintness or sentimentality,” but she dreaded anyone for whom herbs were the subjects of a cult-“the person who can’t look at a rue without murmuring that it is herb of grace o’Sundays, or a hyssop without dragging in the Biblical references.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAny reader who picks up \u003cb\u003eGreen Thoughts\u003c\/b\u003e and begins to browse at random, running across what it has to say about most modern daylilies and many modern roses, will perhaps entertain the thought that Eleanor Perényi is highly opinionated, even prejudiced. And of course she is. Gardening is a passionate enterprise, and passion is always opinionated and strongly so. As for prejudice, show me a person who is without prejudice of any kind on any subject and I’ll show you someone who may be admirably virtuous but is surely no gardener. Prejudice against people is reprehensible, but a healthy set of prejudices against plants is a gardener’s best friend, for gardening is richly complicated, and prejudice simplifies it greatly. Plants fall fairly neatly into three major categories. There are those that any reasonable person can only hate-crabgrass, poison ivy, and stinging nettle, for instance. There are those that only the perverse can dislike-say, columbines and bleeding heart and hardy cyclamens with flowers like tiny pink or white butterflies. In between these two categories there are plants about which reasonable and decent people may reasonably disagree. I may be mad for elephant ears and caladiums, and you may find them ostentatiously vulgar. Our differences do not matter, for I may grow what I like in my garden and you may do the same in yours. Furthermore, the same person may at some point in his or her life undergo a kind of conversion experience. A dislike of hydrangeas may suddenly vanish, to be replaced by a desire to grow as many as can be crammed into one’s little plot of earth. (Thus it happened with me not long ago.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe best garden writing is always highly opinionated. It simply goes with the territory. \u003cb\u003eMy Summer in a Garden, An Island Garden\u003c\/b\u003e, and \u003cb\u003eThe Gardener’s Year\u003c\/b\u003e are all firm in their expressions of likes and dislikes. The same may be said for the other two influential titles which I place alongside \u003cb\u003eGreen Thoughts\u003c\/b\u003e. Katharine S. White’s \u003cb\u003eOnward and Upward in the Garden\u003c\/b\u003e appeared posthumously in 1979, edited by her husband, E. B. White, but \u003cbr\u003eas a series of fourteen essays published in \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker \u003c\/i\u003eover a period of twelve years starting in 1958, it had already made its mark, vastly enlarging the sense of the great breadth and scope in writing about gardens (mostly about nursery catalogs as a distinct literary genre). Henry Mitchell’s \u003cb\u003eThe Essential Earthman\u003c\/b\u003e was published the same year as \u003cb\u003eGreen Thoughts\u003c\/b\u003e, at a time when much American garden writing was as dull as a committee report. Mitchell was often funny, and always passionate. He was especially enamored of bearded irises, roses, and dragonflies, and his advice was endlessly quotable, as when he warned readers that “marigolds should be used as sparingly as ultimatums.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eGreen Thoughts, Onward and Upward in the Garden\u003c\/b\u003e, and \u003cb\u003eThe Essential Earthman\u003c\/b\u003e have much in common. For all three, what we need to know about gardens is best said in words, not pictured in the glossy, impossible never-never land of colored photographs where there is never a weed in sight nor a damaged leaf. They are books, as I have said already, to be read over and over. In each, there is a deeply personal voice to be heard (and each voice is highly distinctive).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut only \u003cb\u003eGreen Thoughts\u003c\/b\u003e was conceived as a book in the first instance. \u003cb\u003eOnward and Upward\u003c\/b\u003e and \u003cb\u003eThe Essential Earthman\u003c\/b\u003e were collections of pieces, originally of magazine articles in the first instance, and newspaper columns in the second. Of the three books,\u003cb\u003e Green Thoughts\u003c\/b\u003e ranges most widely outside the world of horticulture, with discussions of or allusions to Pliny and Petrarch, Virgil and Chaucer, George Sand and Chekhov, Henry James and Lewis Carroll. It also explores some extraordinarily important territory in “Woman’s Place,” a perceptive inquiry into gender and the history of horticulture.Modern Library Gardening; Introduction by Allen Lacy; Michael Pollan, Series Editor","brand":"Modern Library","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304270090469,"sku":"NP9780375759451","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375759451.jpg?v=1767728492","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/green-thoughts-isbn-9780375759451","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}