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| Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden | 
| Author: Diane Ackerman
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy Used: $1.03
You Save: $12.92 (93%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 422434
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 6.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0060505362
Dewey Decimal Number: 508
EAN: 9780060505363
ASIN: 0060505362
Publication Date: October 1, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Lots of shelf wear, may contain some notes or highlighting, corners/edges worn and bent, may not include companion materials like cdroms or access codes.
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Amazon.com Review
Diane Ackerman relishes the world of her garden. As a poet, she finds within it an endless field of metaphors. As a naturalist, she notices each small, miraculous detail: the hummingbirds and their routines, the showy tulips, the crazy yellow forsythia. Of visiting deer she writes, "I love watching the deer, which always arrive like magic or a miracle or the answer to an unasked question." In her popular book A Natural History of the Senses, Ackerman celebrates the human body; in A Natural History of My Garden, she turns her attention to the world outside the body, outside the human sphere. Structured by seasons, this is a book of subtle shifts, but the reader never feels lost. Her prose is so welcoming, at times it feels like she's talking directly to you, although her lush, poetic language is the opposite of speech. Distracted urban readers craving a book that will transport them would do well to spend time immersed in these pages, as will gardeners who've lost appreciation for their plot. Ackerman is a generous writer--a teacher who will share treasured, obscure passages from Beckett or Hawthorne. She's emotional and highly charged, and her descriptions are so clear they're small marvels. She's remarkable for her ability to find mystery everywhere. --Emily White
Product Description
In the mode of her bestseller A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman celebrates the sensory pleasures of her garden through the seasons. Whether she is deadheading flowers or glorying in the profusion of roses, offering sugar water to a hummingbird or studying the slug, she welcomes the unexpected drama and extravagance as well as the sanctuary her garden offers. Written in sensuous, lyrical prose, Cultivating Delight is a hymn to nature and to the pleasure we take in it.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 A Year of Gardening Delights March 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"By retreating farther and farther from nature, we lose our sense of belonging. " ~ pg. 7
Diane Ackerman has created her own oasis of pleasure. She writes about dips in the pool and the pleasure of cutting roses to take them indoors. She loves her apple tree, which also provides fruit for hungry deer. I loved the stories of how she feeds the deer peach slices and corn. There are also humorous tales about rabbits and squirrels.
This book truly celebrates the seasons. Diane Ackerman writes with an intoxicating sensuality that is also intellectual. While you are learning about her garden she weaves in stories from mythology. Her inquisitive mind often leads her down various paths of knowledge to teach you something a little different or to make you laugh. I was interested in learning about passionflower leaves and how they contain cyanide. Definitely not something you want to put in a salad. She talks about topiaries in the shape of mermaids and at times gets lost in a discussion of a favorite book. I also liked her tips on garden etiquette.
Each season is described with a poet's heart and Diane Ackerman's passion for roses does border on obsession. We soon learn she has 120 rose bushes and there is no need for pictures because she paints descriptions that vividly bring the imagination to life. When she is not consumed by all her garden requires, she is found at farmer's markets or riding her bike. During one trip out in her car she suddenly contemplates life and death and seems deep in thought. She also only briefly discusses the darker sides of nature, like the day she found a bird's nest (in a bird house) had fallen in her yard.
"Cultivating Delight" reminded me of my grandmother's garden with an apple tree and a beautiful row of rose bushes. While sweeping leaves off my deck I could not help but think about what I should plant this spring. As a bonus, Diane gives a full inventory of her garden so you can literally recreate her experience.
~The Rebecca Review
A Seasonal View of Gardening October 21, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Diane Ackerman wrote this book during her convalescence from a knee injury. Being a very active person, she was frustrated by her inability to do her usual routines. So she turned to writing this wonderful "diary" about her daily life, focusing on her garden.
As a gardener myself, I could identify with her ongoing war- battling weeds and insects. She also comments on the cycle of nature, from the triumph of lush blooms during the spring and summer, and the approach of fall and the dormancy of the winter months. She describes the bird life in her backyard, from the mating rituals to the hatching of new born baby birds, and the sadness of seeing predators attacking the nests as the battle of survival between species.
My one wish was to see actual photographs of her garden, as I strove to picture in my mind what her rose garden looked like with all the varieties and quantities of the roses she planted. I also could relate to her description of people who would surreptitiously sneak a cutting of a plant or bloom, thieves who go around with scissors or gardening shears to plunder someone's garden. I once observed a lady who lived down the street stop and cut blooms from my own garden as I watched dumbfounded!
I love the way Ms. Ackerman writes. It's not to everyone's liking, but when I read her books I feel like she's talking to me. It is her personal style, and though many complain of her jumping around from topic to topic without finishing a complete thought, I find her mind works like mine. One thought you might have involves into another, and her stream of consciousness follows very closely like the way my own thoughts run.
Ms. Ackerman writes about her experiences and I find myself captivated by her extraordinary ability to weave a common thread through her work.
Cultivating Delights October 14, 2007
What a remarkable account of one's love for gardening. This is quite an inspiring book for anyone interested especially in gardening. Also, it is an introduction to those who are not familiar with the gardens and nature and would like to be.
I can relate to all Ms. Ackerman, the author, is involved with. It was a friend who introduced this wonderful and uplifting book. It just makes my day and night as a few paragraphs are read prior to the end of my day. What creation as to offer is breathtaking and so rewarding.
I hope you will enjoy as much as I did and continuing.
In sharing my purchases with others, I find it a special gift like not other. I know they will feel the same way I do.
Thank you, Ms. Ackerman.
 not what I was looking for January 12, 2006
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
In an earlier book, Ms. Ackerman congratulates herself on being open to experience more than most people. In light of this, I found that in this book she is too self-absorbed in herself (ironic for someone who does at times describe the natural world so beautifully) and too enamored of her ability to write prose.
She's good at throwing in fascinating factoids on everything from space to psychology to animal behavior, but alas, seems to flit from topic to topic like a bee gathering pollen. That is to say the flow of her writing is haphazard (though a bee may indeed be more purposeful than I give it credit for here).
If most people don't seem to have as much time to smell the roses as Ackerman, perhaps that is because they work away from home full time and have children and a spouse whose needs must occasionally come before theirs. It can be hard to be open to the natural world when you're worrying about being fired or demoted or if your child has come down with the flu. I never get the sense from her books that Ackerman lives in "the real world" what with her tales of meditating, biking, rose gathering, etc.
That's lovely for her, but don't pass judgments on people with different lifestyles.
I wanted to learn more about plants and the best conditions for growing various ones. Instead, I got a book of poetic, and sometimes purple, meditations, which was all right, but not what I had expected.
brilliant, meditative, poetic and charming May 26, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
i checked this book out from the library during the drab winter months of oregon, and i was so enraptured with it that i kept it for 3 weeks, reading it as slowly as possible, savoring every page. it's on my list of books to buy for myself, as well. i thought her writing was fluid and descriptive. i thoroughly enjoyed meandering along with her through her garden and through her life. i imagine her garden must be incredible. i'm no book reviewer, but i can say this: i haven't read any of ackerman's other books (yet), but this one is spectacular.
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