A Rage for Rock GardeningA Rage for Rock Gardening
the Story of Reginald Farrer, Gardener, Writer & Plant Collector
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Book, 2003
Current format, Book, 2003, , No Longer Available.Book, 2003
Current format, Book, 2003, , No Longer Available. Offered in 0 more formats<p>A hundred years ago there was a pronounced change in the direction of British gardening. The garden was transformed from a plaything for the rich to a democratic exercise, a hobby for the millions. Few figures were more central to and prominent in this transition than Reginald Farrer, whose passion for alpines would put a rockery in the backyards of countless enthusiasts and whose adventures in Tibet and China collecting elusive and exotic specimens, including the wild tree peony, a new buddleaia, and even an entire new genus called Farreria, were the stuff of legends. But Farrer was a strange man, a tortured soul. Tormented by physical disabilities (he had a hare lip, a "pygmy body," and a cleft palate) he developed a personality that was defensive, restless, yet productive and endlessly energetic. Within his realm of horticultural exploration and exploitation, he was a giant, becoming one of the great plant hunters of his age, repeatedly traveling to Japan and Tibet to collect new species and, through the influence of his extraordinary series of books, changing forever the art and practice of Western gardening.</p>
Dwarfish and intense, Reginald Farrer (1880-1920) spent an isolated, privileged childhood climbing the limestone cliffs of his native Yorkshire, collecting the delicate alpine plants that grew there in profusion. By age eight he knew their names and anatomy, and by thirteen had published his first discoveries in the Journal of Botany.
He went up to Oxford with a world-beating attitude and a vain, abiding dream of becoming a great novelist. Instead he became the foremost garden writer of his generation, a wit, taste-maker, and flamboyant iconoclast who, through his best-selling books, almost single-handedly "democratized" gardening, transforming it from an indulgence of the rich to a passion of millions. He was also an intrepid plant collector, mounting expeditions to China, Tibet, and Upper Burma and introducing many important new species to the gardens of the West. It is no exaggeration to call him the father of modern flower gardening, the man who put garden books in every Englishman's library and a rockery in every backyard.
Dwarfish and intense, Reginald Farrer (1880-1920) spent an isolated, privileged childhood climbing the limestone cliffs of his native Yorkshire, collecting the delicate alpine plants that grew there in profusion. By age eight he knew their names and anatomy, and by thirteen had published his first discoveries in the Journal of Botany.
He went up to Oxford with a world-beating attitude and a vain, abiding dream of becoming a great novelist. Instead he became the foremost garden writer of his generation, a wit, taste-maker, and flamboyant iconoclast who, through his best-selling books, almost single-handedly "democratized" gardening, transforming it from an indulgence of the rich to a passion of millions. He was also an intrepid plant collector, mounting expeditions to China, Tibet, and Upper Burma and introducing many important new species to the gardens of the West. It is no exaggeration to call him the father of modern flower gardening, the man who put garden books in every Englishman's library and a rockery in every backyard.
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- Boston : David R. Godine, 2003.
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