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Embroidered Ground: Revisiting the Garden Kindle Edition

4.9 out of 5 stars 12 ratings

A memorable book about making a renowned garden work

In
Embroidered Ground: Revisiting the Garden, the acclaimed author and garden designer Page Dickey writes of the pitfalls, challenges, successes, and myriad pleasures of the twenty-nineyear-long process of creating her own remarkable garden, Duck Hill, in upstate New York. This winning book details the evolution of one especially loved and cared-for space: its failed schemes and realized dreams, and the wisdom gained in contending with an ever evolving work of art. The author shares her very personal views on what contributes to a garden's success—structure, fragrance, the play of light and shadow, patterns and textures, multiseasonal plants. She writes of gardening with a husband, with wildlife, with dogs and chickens. And she grapples with how to adapt her garden—as we can adapt ours—to change in the years ahead.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Breaking Ground:

“The work here is playful, undaunted by the classical tradition and far more concerned with sensory experience than academic correctness . . . The excellent text and pictures . . . manage to extract from these gardens valuable lessons.” —MICHAEL POLLAN,
The New York Times Book Review Praise for Embroidered Ground:

Embroidered Ground is a real delight, conveying Page Dickey’s passion for gardening as well as the hard graft and blossoming progress of the garden at Duck Hill. A true inspiration, and a beautifully written book.” —Jenny Uglow, author of A Little History of British Gardening

“Page Dickey is part of the very best tradition of garden writing: her voice is literary and informed, but also personal and unpretentious. It’s a delight to read this book about Duck Hill revisited, and about how gardens, and gardening, change over the years. Reading Embroidered Ground is like strolling through a favorite garden with a favorite friend.” —Roxana Robinson, author of Cost

“[Dickey] cast[s] a spell . . . Embroidered Ground is a sweet, tender love story about how gardens and gardeners age and adapt, each to the other.” —Dominique Browning, The New York Times

“[Embroidered Ground] is divided into a series of short essays on a wide range of subjects, each building on the others until a full picture of the garden, and the gardener’s life, emerges. Dickey writes about learning to share the garden with a new plant-loving husband and their ideas for simplifying the garden as they grow older. In her view, a garden, at its best, is like the embroidery of the book’s title: ‘the results of a passion, our joyous individual efforts of expression in color, pattern, and texture, woven with leaves and flowers, in partnership with nature.’” —Country Gardens

“Page Dickey [is a] legendary writer and gardener . . . In Embroidered Ground she offers tips . . . and wisdom: how to share your garden with a new partner who might have a different style, the beauty of the unmown, the long view (planting for decades) . . . It’s a book to read, dreaming of spring.” —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

“Dickey employs a range of voices, often ethereal . . . But she is razory-wicked when facing enemies: bindweed, barberry, Norway maple, Ailanthus, bittersweet . . . There is much sage advice, on sightlines, garden bones, and hedges to frame and enclose . . . And she loves her garden as if it were a child—with joy, distress, responsibility, guilt—which is the most beautiful thing of all.” —Peter Lewis, The Barnes and Noble Review

About the Author

Page Dickey is a garden writer, lecturer, and designer. She is the author of Duck Hill Journal: A Year in a Country Garden and Breaking Ground. She has written on garden design for House & Garden, House Beautiful, and Elle Decor.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004477WL0
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Illustrated edition (February 15, 2011)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 15, 2011
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3.3 MB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 257 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.9 out of 5 stars 12 ratings

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Page Dickey
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Customer reviews

4.9 out of 5 stars
12 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2012
    This a great book for any gardener, from a novice like myself to an expert. The book is written in a way where you can skip from section to section in no particular order. Making it a great bedtime read. Page shares her own thoughts about gardening, reflecting on successes, mistakes, and the lifetime process of creating a garden. Whenever I read a few pages I find myself eyeing my frozen Connecicut flower beds...longingly looking for signs of spring.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2011
    Page Dickey, when she visits a garden, writes that "she thrills to evidence of passion, a clarity of purpose, imagination, and humor". That is what I found in this book, which is informative, engaging, and a pleasure to read. She alerted my senses and heighted my appreciation of each flower, shrub, and even the weeds in my garden.

    Diana Harding
    6 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2017
    I love Page Dickey's books - she is a gardener so much like me - pragmatic and creative. I buy all her books.
  • Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2011
    "Embroiderd Ground is perfect spring reading. Page Dickey is passionate about her garden centered life, even to indoor bouquets...summer phlox, white clethra and sprays of green cherry tomatoes. She writes to share, inspire and energizze a person like me!
    11 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2014
    This was a good read, more detail about specific plants than I was interested in. It would've helped to either to have pictures or references in the back so as to aid in visualizing what she was describing.
    It helped me loosen up, face issues of aging, getting tired of certain features of my garden, recognize the urge to plant too much--in other words, I related to her personal journey more than the descriptions of the plants.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2017
    Wonderful book on aging with a garden.
    One person found this helpful
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