Garden writing is not just a place to find advice about roses and rutabagas. It also contains hidden histories of desire, hope and frustration and tells a story about how Americans have invested grand fantasies in the common soil of everyday life.
Published in August by the University of Georgia Press, Gardenland: Nature, Fantasy, and Everyday Practice chronicles the development of this genre across key moments in American literature and history, from 19th-century industrialization and urbanization to the 20th-century rise of factory farming and environmental advocacy to contemporary debates about public space and justice—even to the consideration of the future of humanity’s place on Earth.
In exploring the hidden landscape of desire in American gardens, Gardenland examines literary fiction, horticultural publications and environmental writing. It includes works by Charles Dudley Warner, Henry David Thoreau, Willa Cather, Jamaica Kincaid, John McPhee and Leslie Marmon Silko.
