Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities!: Notes from a Gloucester Garden

This is a book that should appeal equally to serious gardeners interested in the specifics of varieties and cultivars that thrive in coastal zones and garden designers who want to learn more about what lives best where. For Smith is wise in not writing merely about the plants, shrubs, and trees and their cultivation; this is a book as much about mood - about how to design and visualize a small garden - as it is about what varieties and cultivars to buy. Eclectic in its approach, incorporating quotations and citations from Eastern as well as Western sources, she challenges with the eye of an artist, but also with the down-and-dirty exerience of someone wrestling with a small space, limited sunshine, the usual encroachments of blight, bugs, beasts, and the particular New England challenges of a relatively brief growing season and mediocre soil.