Autobiography of a Garden follows Patterson Webster's twenty-five-year
journey as she transforms a beautiful but conventional country property
into a 750-acre landscape that challenges what a garden is, or can be.A
unique, personal memoir, this book details how a neophyte gardener moved
from copying the ideas of other people to learning from them, and
finally to striking out on her own. Combining traditions from French and
English eighteenth-century gardens with contemporary perspectives,
Webster communicates concepts and ideas that underpin the garden's
design, sharing a process that evolved over seasons and years. She
explores the meaning of creating a garden and the meaning that a garden
can create, linking ideas about aging and the passage of time to the
reality of growth and death in the landscape and thinking through how
art in a garden can reframe questions of memory and our relationship to
nature. Using the history of the property as a framework, Webster
considers the impact made by those who lived on the land before her: the
Abenaki, the early settlers, the cottagers, the farmers, the US
southerners who came to Quebec to avoid the summer heat, and the
northerners who defeated them in the Civil War. With engaging personal
anecdotes, she describes the thinking behind each part of the garden and
the examples that guided her, the mishaps and successes she encountered,
and her plans for the future. Beautifully photographed and full of
inspirational ways of thinking about gardens and gardening,
Autobiography of a Garden blends history, horticulture, and art,
encouraging readers to make their own surroundings more beautiful and
more meaningful.
