Rosemary Verey's English Country Gardens by Rosemary Verey

Rosemary Verey's English Country Gardens Reviews

• 
  Nicole

  This is a lovely, coffee-table book. I took notes on flowers I may want to plant in my gardens in the future. I read a lot of the the text, but not ALL of it, as it was a library copy and there is a lot of material here. What I didn't enjoy about the book so much is that in that there are actually fewer pictures than I would like. In the text she talks about wandering through a particular garden and seeing thus and such and coming around then corner and then you see "this picture." Before she arrived at "this picture," though, she'd talk about seeing things that weren't actually pictured which is fine, I suppose, if you are a master gardener and can picture what she is talking about in your mind, but I am not and I couldn't. The other drawback the book had for me was my own misconception of what would be in this book (I ordered it sight-unseen as an inter-library loan)and what it actually contains. Because of the title, I'd imagined it would be about English cottage gardens, which it most certainly is not - and it doesn't really say that in the title anyway. But, be advised, that the gardens featured are large, estate gardens (Elton John's is one that is featured)that are tended by professional gardening staff. There is little for me, personally, to aspire to in these pages other than, as I mentioned, noting a few flowers I might like to add to my own garden and a few I might like to learn more about. But I'd imagined smaller, home gardens with ideas that I might be able to incorporate and these gardens, with their acres of landscaping - more like our own, Minnesota Arboretum than a common home-garden - are places I may visit one day but nothing I could replicate. If you like to visit formal gardens on your travels, this might very well whet your appetite for some of England's finest.
• 
  Carmen

  This book is divided into the four seasons. Each season features predominately the same homes, thereby giving the reader a chance to see the same garden with different things in bloom. This is the beauty of this book. Rosemary Verey's inside stories of the places and compRision to other gardens is also a bonus. The color photos are excellent.