Early American Gardens: "For Meate or Medicine"

by Ann Leighton

Overview

Early American Gardens, published in 1970, was the first of three authoritative volumes of garden history by Ann Leighton. The 464-page masterwork of garden history was reissued in this paperback edition by University of Massachusetts Press in 1986. Concentrating on the gardens of the early settlers of New England, this volume deals with gardeners as well as the plants they depended upon for household aids, flavorings, drinks, and medicines. The well-illustrated, thorough, and scholarly volume is a book for history buffs as well as avid and inquisitive gardeners.

Companion volumes by Ann Leighton

American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century "For Use or for Delight"
American Gardens of the Nineteenth Century "For Comfort and Affluence"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780870235306
Publisher:	University of Massachusetts Press
Publication date:	08/29/1986
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	(w) x (h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ann Leighton was the professional name of Isadore Smith (1902-1985), the renowned garden historian, scholar, author, designer and landscape architect who, with Catherine C. "Kitty" Weeks, designed the colonial-themed gardens at the Weeks Brick House in Greenland, New Hampshire in 1977. Among many commissions, Smith designed the garden at the 1677 Whipple House in Ipswich, Massachusetts, which is owned by the Ipswich Historical Society. Smith neatly summed up the staying power of her subject matter in a brief book-jacket teaser: "While buildings may decay and crumble, the plants of every age are still with us and need only to be collected and replanted to speak for the time and its people."

What People are Saying About This

Walter Muir Whitehill

What a perfectly enchanting book! Why has no one ever had the wit and imagination to combine a taste for gardening and seventeenth-century New England history until now? Because, I suspect, few people read as widely, garden as enthusiastically, or write as engagingly.

Editorial Reviews

"The gardens of the 17th century and the stalwart settlers who planted them are vividly recreated as one delves into the carefully researched pages of this scholarly volume. . . . To be savored in small servings, pondered and reread, this is a book for history buffs as well as inquisitive gardeners, and is one reference work not likely to gather dust on the shelf."—Boston Globe

"The sense of continuity is a haunting quality of Ann Leighton's delightful book of the early gardens in seventeenth-century New England. Before our eyes, she not only makes the gardens grow again 'for meate or medicine' but brings to vivid life the gardeners as well. . . . In 10 chapters with some 70 prints for illustration, Miss Leighton has told a story at once fascinating and informative, the result of years of research and years of practical gardening to re-create for herself these wonderful gardens."—New York Times Book Review

"What a perfectly enchanting book! Why has no one ever had the wit and imagination to combine a taste for gardening and seventeenth-century New England history until now? Because, I suspect, few people read as widely, garden as enthusiastically, or write as engagingly."—Walter Muir Whitehill

From the Publisher

The sense of continuity is a haunting quality of Ann Leighton's delightful book of the early gardens in seventeenth-century New England. Before our eyes, she not only makes the gardens grow again 'for meate or medicine' but brings to vivid life the gardeners as well.... In 10 chapters with some 70 prints for illustration, Miss Leighton has told a story at once fascinating and informative, the result of years of research and years of practical gardening to re-create for herself these wonderful gardens.

New York Times Book Review

The gardens of the 17th century and the stalwart settlers who planted them are vividly recreated as one delves into the carefully researched pages of this scholarly volume.... To be savored in small servings, pondered and reread, this is a book for history buffs as well as inquisitive gardeners, and is one reference work not likely to gather dust on the shelf.

Boston Globe