Susanne, We share a love of Goethe. He was truly remarkable and his observations of nature - imaginative and inspiring. You must know his "Metamorphosis of Plants". He coined the word morphology ...he is a perfect example of one combining two loves (though he had many more -a theory on color,weather, bones... etc.) gardening/nature and writing - his poetry is filled with his direct experience and love of the plantworld. I wrote an essay about his ideas in Metamorphosis of Plants and it was published in a local magazine. I do not know the book you mentioned. Could you give all the important info so that I could find it.

As for what I would take - "The Fragrant Path" by Louise Beebe Wilder - but I hope it never comes to that choice.

Carol,
the collection of Goethes "garden-works" (original title is "Mit Goethe durch den Garten") has been put up by Claudia Schmölders and was published by Insel Verlag as a pocket book (ISBN 3-458-33512-9). The first edition came out in 1989 on the occasion of the German Federal Garden Show in Frankfurt / Main. I'm afraid, it is only available in German language. But the content is all true Goethe, taken from his complete works, nothing else added. And of course, it also shows the Metamorphosis of Plants.
What I love most about Goethe is the way, he indulged himself in life and his ability to transport this joy through words: "A pleasant day is like a grey one, if we meet it without sympathy."
It's raining wet snow outside, I'm afraid it will take at least three pullovers and some thick woolen socks of sympathy to make it a pleasant one...

Ken - why the old version of Principles of Gardening rather than the revised? (I believe it was revised in 1996). Not sure the older one is available any more. Do you recommend the new at all?

Thanks,

Toni

Susanne,You have made me want to learn German to read With Goethe Through the Garden.Not being a writer myself I am naive about how books are translated from one language to another.With your writing ability,you strike me as someone who could do a beautiful job translating this gem into English.I would be your first customer. In the meantime ,I'm going to get to know Goethe as a gardener.Thanks,Pam

Susanne,

I second what Pam wrote.To be able to read Goethe in German!I would be your second customer. Pam, you could hopefully find "Goethe's Botanical Writings" translated by Bertha Mueller - University of Hawaii Press- I have a 1952 edition but I am sure there must be a new one. A great way to start the New Year. Happy Happy to All.
Carol

Carol, Pam,
thank you so much for your nice words, I've grown at least an inch by it! In fact I used to work as a translator for a Japanese company (must be hundred years ago), but that was all about economy and industry and nothing about flowers or poetry. I never really learned how to translate the way it should be done when making an attempt at Goethe - maybe it's better to leave this job to professionals! Poor Goethe, he wouldn't have a chance to stop me...
Thank you again and best wishes, Susanne

Perhaps we should stop this here. Surely there is only one gardening book we would take. The one we are all working on at the moment! Complete with notes, research, computer files, database, ideas, and those memories of warmer days.

On the other hand maybe somone said it better. If so please continue.

I'd never make it from the wreck to the desert island John with all that tied around my neck. Also the chances of finding a publisher here are slim enough let alone on a desert island! My choice would be Russell Page's 'The Education of a Gardener' much lighter, AND yes,he said it better.

Gosh--Would it be Hudak's "Gardening with Perennials Month by Month"? Or maybe Peter Beales' "Roses" for all the purty pitchers? No, it would have to be Donald Culross Peattie's "A Natural History of Trees" (Houghton Mifflin).

Clearly I am more boringly practical than most...the single most comprehensive gardening book I have on a given topic is Sylvia Thompson's "A Kitchen Garden." I wish someone would write equally well researched books on perennials, evergreens, ornamental grasses, landscape design, etc. She is specific down to types of manure (poultry, rabbit, horse, etc.) best for a given crop, and doesn't exclude often used edible herbs or less known greens (often deemed weeds)from her volume. Besides, wherever we are going, we usually want to eat!

pessimism is not in my nature. I live day by day and enjoy every moment - that includes getting my hands on as many gardening books as I can afford (at the expense of more practical things, like new clothing). So many subjects, so many things to learn and to enjoy. What a wonderful, marvelous live it is, so don't ever limit yourselves!
Ellinor

Hi Pam!

I am not a writer either and in fact in finding this forum I am in awe of the names I see posted here... I figure I should probably be banished myself. But then when I saw your post, I just couldn't contain myself. I needed to respond. If I only had one book to choose it would be We Made A Garden by Margery Fish, mostly because she is my gardening idol. I saw her gardens while in England. They were in the process of renovation, so they weren't quite as lush as some of the other gardens I visited while there. But they were beautiful, nonetheless. Just walking the same paths as once did Margery Fish - I was in heaven.... Well, I guess it's how Elvis fans feel the first time they go to Graceland ....ha - ha!

But seriously, Margery Fish is how I first became hooked on reading books by "garden writers", not just "help" books. I love her style of writing. Reading a book of hers always makes me feel that I am with her wandering through her gardens and chatting over a cup of tea... :-)

Eileen

Hugh Johnson, absolutely. In either edition.
How can we get the Goethe published in English?
How can we get the Russell Page book re-issued?

Abby,
amazon.com has about 164 listings of Goethe in English, "Goethe's Botanical Writings" were published last in 1989, both paperback and hardcover, by Ox Bow Press. Maybe you'll find it at your local library, too.
Regards, Susanne

No bount adout it. Henry Mitchell gets my vote. I have all of his books and have reread them many times.

For me, an easy answer---Mirabel Osler's "A Gentle Plea for Chaos"
This was put back in print by Little Brown in '98
-Pure inspiration!

If I could only take one book it would have to be the 1989 classic by Frederick McGourty, The Perennial Gardener. No, wait. I think it's The Gardener's Monthly, Vol. 2-3, 1860--"tips on preserving pears and quinces together."

Nah, it's Alice Morse Earle's Old-Time Gardens, 1903. Then there are all those back issues of the Illinois Prairie Farmer. Say it ain't so...

Cheers.

Mike Dirr's MANUAL OF WOODY LANDSCAPE PLANTS. I can craft all the clever metaphors and astounding alliterations I need in my own mind and dredge enough poetry from my own heart to satisfy any reasonable need for creative writing, but that one book of practical, opinionated advice ought to be every gardener's and garden writer's companion.

I would surely bring my old, alomst wrecked, like the ship that dumped me on the island, Flore Laurentienne by Frère Marie Victorin.

It's about the flora of Quebec province, but Marie-Victorin also talks about the folklore around the plants.

I hope my desert island is in Quebes province, so it could be handy.

My favorite garden writer is James Underwood Crockett. He writes on a level that is understandable by everyone, and most of the gardening processes are illustrated and arranged monthly. Each month is broken down as to what should/needs to be done during that month, and he lists the topics on the side of the cover page so that you can see at a glance the information covered in the text.

James U. Crockett was the host of the TV garden show called the "Victory Garden," which is aired from Boston. Unfortunately, James U. Crockett met an untimely death due to cancer, and the "Victory Garden" show is now made up of various garden hosts, one that comes to mind is Richard Swain.

Could I take my entire magazine collection of Gardens Illustrated ? I love each and every issue, Reread them over and over again from the earliest to the latest issue. To me its simply the best garden magazine on the market (Sorry Lee Anne White of Fine Gardening , I like your mag. too but its no match for Gardens Illustated. )

"Botanica"..The illustrated A-Z of over 10,000 plants and how to cultivate them...got mine at Sam's...
Larkie

Sorry, came to this question only today - and found myself wondering is Osler's title inspired by Freud's comment "a plea for a measure of abnormality"?? Which makes me think about his most gardener oriented essay: On Transience. A real gem, and quite possibly the one I would choose. If, in the past you found you just couldn't bear reading Freud, this may be the essay that changes your mind - and besides, only 3 pages long.

Good gardening.

I'm with you, Chris: Dirr's Woody Plants Manual. Don't know how I ever managed without it!

I'm not a garden writer either, unless the volumes written over the years to my clients about organic gardening counts.
The A-Z encyclopedia is my pick for info, and Ruth STout's gardening without work , for fun .

How about a blank journal, well bound to withstand weather. You could record everything you observe on this exotic island and posterity would find it and translate it and you would be part of history.

The garden book I'd take with me is the one that I use every year in my garden. It's not in print but it contains my month by month to do lists, my plants listed with notes, landscape ideas, the wish list of plants that I want to try in the garden and the lists of plants that I think need to be removed from the planet -- like mint and Creeping Charley. It also contains my recipes for mixing potting soil and and and ... Not a book that's in print, but my personal Bible that I've created for my garden. Can't get through a season without it.-- Helen

"Tropical Garden Design" by Made Wijaya. That book is so beautifully photographed and colorfully written it is scary.
"The Natural Shade Garden" by Mr. Druse comes a close second.

Have to be two. Victory Garden month by month (Crockett's version) and the most recent updated, new method version of whatever is out there that is written by REAL gardeners and not by someone out to make a fast dollar and fills the book with "fluff". Helen

I just found this sight and the questions is from some time ago but I'll answer anyway. I would go with The Healthy Garden Handbook by the Mother Earth News group or all back issues of Organic Gardening magazine (especially when McGrath was editor).

let me apologise ahead of time........mrs. greenthumbs, drop dead gorgous gardens

Only one book? Boccaccio's Decameron, of course, where much of the action is of the garden variety.

By the way, the only way to read Goethe, is in German, of course:

"Wir wissen, dass wir nichts wissen können."

(A quote not from his garden writings but from a whilom notorious play with many scenes set in gardens.)

Henry Mitchell, The Essential Earthman

"The Writer in the Garden" (a collection of essays).
Sandra

i hope no one minds that i revived this thread. my current favorite is marty don's "the complete gardener", but i've had other favorites.

If I could take only one book that would mean that there was not much room for me to garden. So, I would take the book that enthralled me so as a youngster and that I have given to every young person in our family--"The Secret Garden." Can't you just imagine it all as it is written-- and a little bit more?

I can't believe no one has said it--I'd take a book about gardening for sustenance on a desert island!

But seriously. Many of my favorites have already been mentioned. Here are some additions:

Anything by Eleanour Sinclair Rohde

The History of Garden Art by Marie-Luise Gothein

Old Time Gardens by Alice Morse Earle

Wow! Where did you find this stefoodie?
For me it would be a diary or a journal of the events that brought Susanne from Germany here finding time to challenge lazy writers whilst at the same time caring for her mother. It would be about Ken Druse loosing and finding his muse again and then disappearing without a trace. There would be whole chapter about Elizabeth who tried humorously to imply that her wisdom was that of the whore with the big heart rather than that of a queen. Eddie knows this stuff, stalwart eddie. My choice would be a nostalgia fest a book that reminds me that however slow the juice flows on this forum when distilled it tastes ...

There's just no way, I'd have to cheat and splice at least a dozen together. So, I'd rather think about which garden writer I'd bring. OK?

This makes the choice much easier, because I can immediately rule out all the dead ones.

I didn't trust my eyes when I saw that this thread is still on the first page...

It's almost four years ago since I mentioned Goethe here. Today I'm not sure whether I'd take the same choice again.
So many old and new books have passed my hands in the meantime, and many of them have taken possession of my heart.

Two of them I wouldn't want to miss:
"Das Jahr des Gärtners" (The Gardener's Year) by Karel Capek, Berlin 1950
and
"Meine Frau die Gärtnerin" (My Wife The Gardener) by Max and Gerda Mezger, Berlin 1937.
The books are long out of print, I owe them to my grandmother.

Though both books talk about nothing but gardening, about plants, gardeners, seasons etc., they are not made for information but for amusement.
Which puts up the question, what a garden writer needs most when his situation forces him to leave his library behind:
Information or amusement?

I'm wondering... after so many years, would you decide differently today?

Susanne. We are still on the first page in more ways than one. Please stay a while I, for one one, would like to catch up.
Not information "or" but both. Your "taken possession of my heart" is such a beautiful sentiment I think I shall steal it.
It has made my day to read you again.

; )

I understand that reading a good book will always be a pleasant experience.

But isn't the far bigger share of the books mentioned above written for instruction and information rather than for amusement? Even schoolbooks nowadays are decorated with humour, still they haven't been written with the major intention to amuse.

What about your own choice... is it still Russell Page's 'The Education of a Gardener'?

So, you saw through my disguise hey?
If we could only take one book it would be one we would want to read again or refer to before we ate a strange mushroom wouldn't it? Or maybe it would be one we didn't understand the first time around (Goethe) but feel we should. Amusement is transitory and a joke becomes less funny the more you hear it. Whatever the book is, and my choice has changed, it would be something that contained a mystery that I would amuse myself with whilst trying to solve it.

You made it easy... compare your "my page"-infos. (act/ leans back with broad grin)

So, do I understand, that for the only one gardening book to take you'd give the aspect of challenge priority? Would your ranking order look like
1. challenge, mystery to solve
2. amusement
3. information
or different?

My would look like this:
1. amusement
2. amusement
3. amusement
Having to move to a place where only one gardening book is allowed is enough mystery for me.

What a great question. Can't answer with just one. Toss up between: Green Thoughts by Eleanor Perenyi, Beth Chatto's Woodland Garden, anything by Page Dickey, Gertrude Jekyll or Penelope Hobhouse. And then would have to sneak in a Henry Mitchell. Plus there's this great little book called the Gardener's Bedside Book. And what about Edith Wharton?
signed, the highly decisive gardener

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.

Defoe gives good advice on how to establish a garden when you're shipwrecked on an uninhabited island. (More food for thought than practical advice, but bound to stimulate a gardener's imagination.)

John, what a great idea. What a great book. Perfect for the proverbial deserted island.

Tasha Tudor's Garden by Tovah Martin. Not much technical advice but visually beautiful. It has certainly given me lots of ideas for turning my garden into a fairytale environment.

I'm kind of partial to Coleman's "The New Organic Grower" myself. Or "The One Straw Revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka. Zen and all zat.

Then, the gardening book duly chosen, I'd load up all the Chaucer and Dante I could carry.

Melinda.

Hortus 3rd.

not only is it gonna be highly useful but its thick and thin pages and it seems im gonna have some time on my hands.

froggy