Green Grows the City

Description

Anyone who has ever created a garden knows that it is a process replete with drama: there's the feverish excitement of drawing up plans and making lists of plants; the bleak depression of realizing that the plans will have to be altered; the "Eureka!" moment when a brilliant solution presents itself; the grim frustration of dealing with meddlesome neighbors and recalcitrant plants. For Beverley Nichols (1898-1983), making a new garden in a London suburb in the years just before World War II was positively operatic in its emotional trajectory. Fans of Beverley Nichols will find in "Green Grows the City", the same elements that have delighted them in his other books: the wit, the style, the cats, and of course Gaskin, gentleman's gentleman extraordinaire. Those new to Nichols are in for a rare treat.

Beverley Nichols (1898-1983) was a prolific writer on subjects ranging from religion to politics and travel, in addition to authoring six novels, five detective mysteries, four children's stories, six autobiographies, and six plays. He is perhaps best remembered today for his gardening books. The first of them, Down the Garden Path, centered on his home and garden at Glatton and has been in print almost continuously since 1932. Merry Hall (1951) and its sequels Laughter on the Stairs (1953) and Sunlight on the Lawn (1956) document Nichols's travails in renovating a Georgian mansion and its gardens soon after the war. His final garden was at Sudbrook Cottage, which serves as the setting for Garden Open Today (1963) and Garden Open Tomorrow (1968). The progress of all three gardens was followed avidly by readers of his books and weekly magazine columns.

[Nichols's] fervent devotion - albeit with touches of acerbic humor - to plants and the domestic landscape is inspiring and heartening. -- Elizabeth Licata Buffalo Spree Magazine 20070401