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Gardening for a Lifetime: How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older |  | Author: Sydney Eddison
Publisher: Timber Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $13.57
as of 9/6/2010 06:58 PDT details
You Save: $6.38 (32%)
New (29) Used (5) from $11.68
Seller: Amazon.com
Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 7128
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 204
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.9
ISBN: 1604690658
Dewey Decimal Number: 635
EAN: 9781604690651
ASIN: 1604690658
Publication Date: April 21, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| • | ISBN13: 9781604690651 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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Product Description
Sooner or later, every older gardener faces a similar challenge. At some point, we all find ourselves asking “If I can’t get out there and dig, plant, and prune as I used to, what am I going to do?”
The garden has been an everyday part of Sydney Eddison’s life for over forty years. It has witnessed the changing of seasons, her greatest joys, and her deepest sorrows. The garden and the gardener have aged and changed together. Gardening for a Lifetime is a touching memoir about having to scale back after widowhood and painful joints made it impossible to keep up with a large country garden.
Intermixing personal experience with practical gardening tips, Eddison has written an encouraging roadmap for accepting and embracing a new and simpler way of gardening. Elegant black and white illustrations evoke Eddison’s everyday joy, sorrow, and contentment in the garden. Gentle, personable, and practical, Gardening for a Lifetime helps transform gardening from a list of daunting chores into the rewarding, joy-filled activity it was meant to be.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
 Great Ideas For Those Who Are Overwhelmed With Gardening Duties April 9, 2010
Bold Consumer (USA)
51 out of 51 found this review helpful
This is such an honest little handbook for the overwhelmed gardener. We don't always have the time, good health, or energy for gardening responsibilities, but we keep bringing in more of everything and with each comes more tasks. I've been wondering for quite some time if I've bitten off more than I can chew in my current garden. The author has gone through the same process and helps us make our gardens appropriate for our current (and future) needs.
When do we have enough trees, shrubs, and plants? How do we know if we have too much and what do we do about it? This book addresses in general and very specific ways to control what goes in, or stays in, our gardens, so we can continue to enjoy them without being overwhelmed.
After reading this book, a weight lifted off my shoulders, because she recommends that for certain tasks we get help, as much help as we can afford. Whew! I had felt so guilty not to be able to do it all. After all, it's my garden! The best part of it is, she talks about her various helpers over the years and their different approaches and what she has learned from each of them. I love this quote about one of her helpers, "she knew how to hit the high spots and keep us up to speed." The author is a garden perfectionist, which isn't always the best strategy for gardening.
One very simple example is how she has learned to use lists, a practical idea for me. "When you feel overwhelmed by all the things that cry out to be done in the garden, making a list can be useful." Actually, she has several lists, including a daily list, which she tells us to keep short because we have too many other obligations already, and a master list, which we can chomp off items on as we have time, rather than stand around in the garden wondering what we could get done in the 30 minutes we have available today. Great idea. Her solutions are practical, and that's what I need in my life.
The fact that the author is a perfectionist began to work against her over time. She kept expanding her garden, but expected to be able to keep it at the same standards she had when it was smaller. That didn't work for her, so she learned how to bring her garden dreams into line with the "realities" of her life. She eventually came to the conclusion that something had to go. That's the meat of this book, the process she goes through to decide what, when, and how to start simplifying. For example, she says, "The greater the variety of perennials you grow, the more work your border will entail...each one demands something---staking, deadheading, cutting back, or division, either to ensure good flower production or to restrain its spread." She also teaches us that if we have one genus or species monopolizing our time and dominating our garden, we need to think about reducing its number.
Then she gives the standards a perennial must meet in order for it to remain, or be added to, her garden as it fits her life right now. She gives specifics, which is very helpful!
One of my favorite and possibly the most helpful to me is, "...it was cheaper to buy shredded bark mulch by the yard, have it delivered, and hire an able-bodied young man to put it down than for the two of us to spend all summer hauling three-cubic-foot bags around the garden." I think I like that idea. I'll probably save enough money on tools and medical expenses to pay for that extra help.
I love the "Pick Your Battles" section as well as the "Accepting Imperfection" chapter.
She tells us just what plant categories she has found that practically take care of themselves and helps us explore new and different ways to garden.
I have enjoyed this book and will benefit from it as I try to cram way too much into my life. At least I can work intelligently to create a garden that is appropriate for my needs.
Just What An Old Gardener Needs April 15, 2010
J. Jernberg (Oregon)
20 out of 22 found this review helpful
I read this delightful book in one sitting. Ms. Ellison worries about how both her forty-year old garden and herself will survive old age. She doesn't want to give it up entirely, so she looks for friends, experts, and resources to decide the best ways to keep the garden and do less work. It is perfect approach for gardeners like me, approaching 70, to find a way to keep gardening "forever."
Another good read from an exceptional gardener-writer May 31, 2010
J. Lindquist (Gettysburg, PA, USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've read all of Sydney's books and recommend them highly to anyone who loves to garden and appreciates what a hands-on expert with a wonderfully engaging writing style is happy to share. Sydney's books are about gardening and life, and this book deals with some of the realities we aging gardeners face. I was lucky enough to visit her garden a decade ago and remember the perfection of her amazing perennial bed and the charm of her primrose path. When I blanched at the inadequacy of my gardening efforts in comparison to her paradise, she smiled, and remarked that "this is not a garden, this is my life's work." As Sydney has aged, her garden and her perspective have evolved. But what hasn't changed is her wonderfully warm and very practical account of her life in her garden.
Help for the weary gardener June 25, 2010
Joycie
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Sydney allows you into her garden and her life in a most charming, readable way. As she ages so must her tollerance for heavy garden work change. She suggests very commonsense ideas for reducing garden chores, but more than that she gives the reader the confidence and courage to do it. Gardeners tend to add more and more, cherishing every seedling and offshoot of their specimens, until the tasks beecome overwhelming. They find a new home for every little blooming thing adding more and more beds to their yards.
The book is not just for older folks, but for everyone who is gardening, yet busy with family and work. Actually it is valuable information for the tyro gardener. If I had been privy to her advice from the start, my gardens would be different and I would have, perhaps, enjoyed them more.
Not just for gardeners July 27, 2010
William P. LaBella
All of Mrs. Eddison's books are wonderfully written and inciteful. I have only an amateur interest in gardening, but have followed her works faithfully and feel as though I have "matured" along side her. Her latest work is a bitter-sweet reminder that we might not be able to keep up the pace of our youthful passions, but we can still gain a great deal of pleasure if we wisely modify our approach. I highly recommend this book for gardeners and non-gardeners; her books are wonderful reads and make excellent gifts.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
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