Welcome to the May 2008 virtual meeting for the Garden Blogger’s Book Club.
For April and May the book selection was Beautiful at All Seasons: Southern Gardening and Beyond with Elizabeth Lawrence, edited by Ann L. Armstrong and Lindie Wilson. The alternate selection was any book written by Lawrence.
Is there any passtionate gardener or garden blogger who hasn’t heard of Elizabeth Lawrence? On the website dedicated to her, you can read a brief biography, see a layout of her gardens in Charlotte, NC and go on a virtual tour, which I encourage you to do so you can learn more about Elizabeth before reading the reviews and thoughts on her books.
And here are the reviews and thoughts:
Melissa at Garden Portraits
Gail at Clay and Limestone
Entangled at Tangled Branches: Cultivated
Pat at CommonWeeder
Kathy at Cold Climate Gardening
Dee at Red Dirt Ramblings
Don’t miss Dee’s post about actually visiting Elizabeth Lawrence’s gardens in Charlotte, NC!
Annie at The Transplantable Rose
Old Roses at A Gardening Year
And various posts here at May Dreams Gardens which were inspired by Elizabeth Lawrence’s writings. The topics included ground covers, your garden taking care of itself, and running out of room in your garden.
Plus, be sure to check out the Duke University Press blog post about the book club, too.
I could also link to all the Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day posts as inspired by Elizabeth Lawrence. A quote from one of her books that I read on a snowy February day, and her interest in knowing when various flowers bloomed in different areas, was the inspiration for creating the bloom day on the 15th of every month.
“We can have flowers nearly every month of the year.”
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I’ll end this virtual meeting post with a couple of questions for your consideration and comment.
Elizabeth Lawrence gardened in North Carolina and included information on the plants she grew. Is it worthwhile for gardeners from other regions of the country or other parts of the country to read her books if they can’t grow the same plants she had in her garden?
Many of Lawrence’s books and compilations of the columns she wrote for the Charlotte Observer can still be purchased new today. What do you think makes her so popular today, twenty plus years after her death?
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Thank you to those who joined in the book club this month. I’m still expecting a few more reviews and related posts in the next few days. When I find out about them, I’ll add them to this post.
And early next week, I’ll post about the book selection for June/July 2008!
Hi Carol,
I’ve just put up my post. I’ll go visit the others. Thanks for this one.~~Dee
Hello Carol – my post on Beautiful At All Seasons and Elizabeth Lawrence is now up.
Happy June to you!
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Garden Bloggers Book Club – what a great idea! Is this an exclusive club or may I join? It sounds like fun, combining two of my favorite activities, reading and gardening.
Oops! I should have mentioned that I do, in fact, have a garden blog: “Gardening with Nature” at
http://www.chron.com/commons/persona.html?newspaperUserId=plantwoman&plckPersonaPage=PersonaBlog&plckUserId=plantwoman
Dee and Annie, Thank you again for participating, thanks to everyone who participated!
Birdwoman, We would love to have you join us, the ‘club’ is open to everyone. You just read the book selection and write a post! I’ll be announcing the June-July post in the next few days.
Carol, May Dreams Gardens
Hey Carol, did you see this? The Duke University Press blog reports that the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club generally liked Beautiful at All Seasons (published by, uh, Duke University Press).
Entangled, I didn’t see that, so thank you for the link. It’s a nice post about the book club.
I’ve added a link to it in the actual virtual book club meeting post.
Carol, May Dreams Gardens
Thanks for the linkage love to my other post about visiting her garden. This was fun, wasn’t it?