This is a record of one year of a nine-year project to create a garden on a scrubby rural plot within commuting distance of New York City. Two of Duck Hill's three acres belong to the horses, dogs, chickens, geese and other animals who appear in this journal, but the heart of the land - and of the book - is the garden; the white garden, the herb garden, the main garden, the hedges, the shrub roses, the nasturtium border and all the other plants and plans in Page Dickey's project.
A memorable book about making a renowned garden work In Embroidered Ground: Revisiting the Garden, the acclaimed author and garden designer Page Dickey writes of the pitfalls, challenges, successes, and myriad pleasures of the twenty-nineyear-long process of creating her own remarkable garden, Duck Hill, in upstate New York. This winning book details the evolution of one especially loved and cared-for space: its failed schemes and realized dreams, and the wisdom gained in contending with an ever evolving work of art. The author shares her very personal views on what contributes to a garden's success—structure, fragrance, the play of light and shadow, patterns and textures, multiseasonal plants. She writes of gardening with a husband, with wildlife, with dogs and chickens. And she grapples with how to adapt her garden—as we can adapt ours—to change in the years ahead.
Not since Martha Schinz's masterful Visions of Paradise, published in 1984, has there been such an important survey of garden design and style as Breaking Ground. Whereas Visions of Paradise featured classic European garden design, Breaking Ground takes an in-depth look at the work of ten contemporary garden designers living and working in America and Europe today. The two hundred glorious full-color photographs by Erica Lennard and the lucid text by garden writer and designer Page Dickey capture the spirit and genius of the ten designers. A chapter is devoted to each designer--his or her sources of inspiration, style, philosophy, and method of creation. From the bold Southern California designs of Nancy Power to the urban geometries of Madison Cox to the updated French formal style of Louis Benech to the romantic country gardens of Nancy McCabe, Breaking Ground profiles the artists who are redefining garden design categories. Inspirational, informative, contemporary, and beautiful, Breaking Ground is a spectacularly crafted object in itself--sure to be one of the major garden gift books of the season.
"An intimate, lesson-filled story of what happens when one of America’s best-known garden writers transplants herself, rooting in to a deeper partnership with nature than ever before." —Margaret Roach, author of A Way to Garden When Page Dickey moved away from her celebrated garden at Duck Hill, she left a landscape she had spent thirty-four years making, nurturing, and loving. She found her next chapter in northwestern Connecticut, on 17 acres of rolling fields and woodland around a former Methodist church. In Uprooted, Dickey reflects on this transition and on what it means for a gardener to start again. In these pages, follow her journey: searching for a new home, discovering the ins and outs of the landscape surrounding her new garden, establishing the garden, and learning how to be a different kind of gardener. The surprise at the heart of the book? Although Dickey was sad to leave her beloved garden, she found herself thrilled to begin a new garden in a wilder, larger landscape. Written with humor and elegance, Uprooted is an endearing story about transitions—and the satisfaction and joy that new horizons can bring.
