Uploaded March 2019 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
In at least 100 of the 103 years she was with us, the recently deceased doyenne of American gardening, Rachel "Bunny" Mellon, had her heart in the garden and her fingers in the soil. Quite untrained, and fiercely amateur, this extraordinarily tasteful lady, who was the widow of one of the richest men on the continent, designed and developed some of the most sophisticated contemporary landscapes (to say nothing of houses) in private hands today, within an assortment of handsome homes in New York, Cape Cod, Nantucket, Antigua and Virginia.
A lady of decorative parts, her botanical antennae were so acute that she also designed for her friends, including JFK, who wisely dragooned her into overhauling two White House favourites, the Rose Garden and the East Garden. In conjunction with her principal couturier, Hubert de Givenchy, to whom she was devoted (he even designed her gardening smocks), she also supervised the restoration of Louis XIV's Potager du Roi at Versailles.
In this distinguished tome - the first such to focus on both her public and private designs - her personal drawings, plans and watercolours, together with archival records, are coupled with a stunning array of snapshots specifically taken for the book. The result is horticultural lust: aspiration vs. reality personified, but sheer inspiration throughout.
Other gardening book reviews at
bookreviewsandvideos.com/category/gardening-book-reviews
In at least 100 of the 103 years she was with us, the recently deceased doyenne of American gardening, Rachel "Bunny" Mellon, had her heart in the garden and her fingers in the soil. Quite untrained, and fiercely amateur, this extraordinarily tasteful lady, who was the widow of one of the richest men on the continent, designed and developed some of the most sophisticated contemporary landscapes (to say nothing of houses) in private hands today, within an assortment of handsome homes in New York, Cape Cod, Nantucket, Antigua and Virginia.
A lady of decorative parts, her botanical antennae were so acute that she also designed for her friends, including JFK, who wisely dragooned her into overhauling two White House favourites, the Rose Garden and the East Garden. In conjunction with her principal couturier, Hubert de Givenchy, to whom she was devoted (he even designed her gardening smocks), she also supervised the restoration of Louis XIV's Potager du Roi at Versailles.
In this distinguished tome - the first such to focus on both her public and private designs - her personal drawings, plans and watercolours, together with archival records, are coupled with a stunning array of snapshots specifically taken for the book. The result is horticultural lust: aspiration vs. reality personified, but sheer inspiration throughout.
Other gardening book reviews at
bookreviewsandvideos.com/category/gardening-book-reviews
![The Twelve Days of Christmas [correspondence] by John Julius Norwich, illustrated by Quentin Blake](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_6zUu8b_-rc/mqdefault.jpg "The Twelve Days of Christmas [correspondence] by John Julius Norwich, illustrated by Quentin Blake
This delightful stocking-stuffer, of immense humour and charm, was originally published in 1998, and remains a Christmasy classic. Being thank you notes on the part of a well-bred lady to her invisible admirer, which increase in portent with each passing day (and delivery), these lead inevitably to a colourful showdown, involving an assortment of geese, maids-a-milking and questionable old men cavorting on the lawn.
Accompanied by Quentin Blakes peerless illustrations, a prime example of British humour at its seasonal best. Delectable!
https://www.thisoldHoarehouse.com")
