I was simply an amateur gardener come to look and learn... (an excerpt from page 6)

{HISTORY}

Published in 1958, Enjoying America's Gardens takes readers on an engaging and insightful tour of wildlife preserves, botanical gardens, and arboretums around the US as first experienced by British-American writer Joan Parry Dutton (1908-1998) in the 1950s.

What started out as a six-month work project aiding American rose expert Robert Pyle in organizing an autumn horticultural meeting in 1949 turned into a three-year adventure for Joan as she crisscrossed the country, studying various gardens across a range of climates and regions. “Almost invariably one garden visit led to another," she shared in chapter one.

After previously studying gardens in Europe and South America, Joan was amazed by the diversity she found in the vast landscape of the United States. And in contrasting and comparing, in researching the histories of each garden she visited, and in learning about the horticultural makeup of each region, all told with a newcomer’s fresh perspective, Joan paints a really interesting portrait of some of our country's most interesting sites. 

From the moment Joan steps through her first set of conservatory doors at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania... "a curtain raiser on a fabulous flower fantasy," readers will be charmed by Joan's engaging storytelling and the way in which she weaves history with real-life experiences encountered while visiting each garden. 

A list of notable gardens to visit is included in the back of the book, but Joan also warns that that list is just a sampling because there are far too many public and private gardens to visit. Her best advice for anyone wanting to start on their own garden explorations is to begin in your home state and branch out from there. We mention this tidbit of practical info because Joan's writing is so infectious, she'll have you thinking about the botanical marvels and majesties in your own neighborhood and how to see them by book's end. 

Joan so fell in love with the U.S. landscape that she married an American actor and moved to northern California for the latter half of her life, where she lived, worked, wrote, and gardened in the shadow of Mount St. Helena. In total, she published seven books during her career all centered around gardening, food and/or the natural world.

In addition to Joan's beautiful writing, Enjoying America's Gardens is illustrated throughout with sketches by Grambs Miller (1916-2010), an American artist, born and raised in China who began her career working with the WPA in the 1930s creating lithographs and etchings of laborers and coal miners. Active throughout the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st, Grambs created a prolific amount of illustrations for book publishers and fashion magazines across eight decades. Her work is held in collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Fashion Institute of New York, the New York Public Library, the Pennsylvania Museum of Art, and others. She's also illustrated several cookbooks that have come through the shop as well. 

Now a very hard to find edition, this book offers a glimpse into what some our country's best gardens looked like seventy years ago. So fun for anyone who likes to go exploring, it would be so interesing to tote this book along to some of the places that Joan visited and see how the view has changed or evolved since the late 1940s/early 1950s. For the arjmchair traveler, this is also a lovely mediation on nature writing and a springboard for further study and research. 

Photo of Joan Parry Dutton courtesy of the dust jacket. Photo of Grambs Miller at her art table courtesy of the Archives of American Art. 

{SPECIAL FEATURES}

• Hardcover, unstated first edition published in 1958 by Reynal & Company, New York 
• 311 pages
• Includes original dust jacket
• Contains a six-page list of recommended gardens to visit at the back of the book
• Hard-to-find edition

{CONDITION}

In beautiful vintage condition, this book is clean and bright throughout with no spots, stains, or notations. The dust jacket is entirely intact with just the slightest of wear on the top edge. The spine is tight, and all pages are intact.

{SIZE}

Measures 8.5" inches (length0 x 6" inches (width)x 1.25" inches (thickness) and weighs 1.4 lbs.