Emily Dickinsons Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Iconic Poet by Marta McDowell

Emily Dickinsons Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Iconic Poet Reviews

• 
  Cheri

  !! NOW AVAILABLE !!
  
  3.5 Stars
  
  This begins by going through the seasons, opening with Early Spring, and ending with Winter, but separated into more than the four seasons, alone. The author takes you on a literary walk through Amherst and invites you to stand in front of the Homestead, using your imagination to see it as it once was in the mid-1800’s. From here you could see Amherst College and imagine how this landscape appeared those many years ago. Before streetlights, or paved roads, before cars. If you can picture this during a snowy day, you could almost hear the sleigh bells and the sound of the hooves.
  
  I love Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and I have loved gardening when I lived in a place where I had space and workable land to garden. I love the artwork, some of which came from books that Emily Dickinson personally owned on gardening, as well as the poetry of Dickinson included in this book. This seemed like it would be a perfect combination. I loved the passion and enthusiasm that McDowell has for both Dickinson’s writing and Dickinson’s passion for poetry and gardening.
  
  The writing, especially in the beginning, is passionate, effusive, alternating between the history of Amherst, descriptions of the land, and back to gardens, often including a snippet of Dickinson’s poetry – including her first published poem, a valentine.
  
  ”Put down the apple Adam
  And come away with me
  So shal’t thou have a pippin
  From off my Father’s tree!”
  
  Included are prints of old portraits, some snippets of Dickinson’s writing, thoughts on gardening, and some advice on gardening. Along with those are descriptions of the changing of the seasons, including the late winter delicacy of fresh maple syrup.
  
  What didn’t work as well for me was the writing after the first half, which was more often lovely as this began, but began to stray from inserting a relevant snippet of poetry or words from a letter written that carried the reader along to the feeling that the point was being pressed a bit too much.
  
  Still, for those who love Dickinson, and particularly those who love her poetry and love gardening as well, this is worth exploring. As a reference tool for gardening, the illustrations from gardening and seed catalogues of Dickinson’s era add a special charm, and would make a nice gift with the holiday season approaching.
  
  
  
  Pub Date: 01 Oct 2019
  
  
  Many thanks for the ARC provided by Timber Press
• 
  Literary Redhead

  DELIGHT
  This gorgeous book is a literary and gardening delight!
  
  UNIQUE LIFE REFLECTION
  It uniquely reflects Dickinson’s life through her love of gardening, with lush photos and illustrations, as well as excerpts from her poetry and letters.
  
  POET’S GARDEN
  Even includes ideas for growing a poet’s garden, along with a list of the plants Dickinson actually used in hers. 5/5
  
  Pub Date 01 Oct 2019.
   
  Thanks to the author, Timber Press and NetGalley for the review copy. Opinions are mine.
  
  #EmilyDickinsonsGardeningLife #NetGalley
• 
  Emma

  A very interesting book that I'm glad I read! 😊 And I'm very glad to my best friend for reading it with me! 🤗
• 
  Marta

  I swear to God, Emily Dickinson is my soulmate.
• 
  Mark Fallon

  McDowell gives the reader a tour of the garden, and Dickinson's life through a year of seasons, flowered with verse. A trip to Amherst is a must for next spring.
• 
  Ria Van Herck

  Prachtig beschreven biografie over een van de bekendste dichteressen van de wereld. Ik kende van het de biografie van Dickinson enkel de tragische aspecten. Maar blijkbaar was ze ook een fervent tuinierster. Het is een prachtig boek dat een veelzijdiger portret van de dichteres en haar gedichten beschrijft. Ik had wel regelmatig een engelstalig woordenboek nodig maar de illustraties van de planten hielpen me al voorbij heel wat frustraties. De gedichten vond ik meestal wel in vertaling terug (als het Engels me in het donker liet blijven voor de juiste betekenis). Een aanrader
• 
  Kelli Roberts

  This is a really lovely book! Anyone who is interested in Emily Dickinson, gardening, or New England/Massachusetts history will enjoy it. Combining photos and details about the plants in Emily Dickinson's garden and her care for them, snippets of her poetry, and a look into life at that time, it is beautifully illustrated and designed and gives a great deal of information. I have a great love of Emily, her poetry, and Western Massachusetts, and this is a perfect book to complement these interests.
  
  Thank you to Timber Press and NetGalley for the temporary advance review copy!
• 
  Nostalgia Reader

  Emily came awfully close to literally living like an inhabitant of Mossflower and there's no better goal than that.
  
  This provided a wonderful look at the Dickinson's gardening, a general biography of the family, and helped to provide some much appreciated floral perspective and inspirations on many of Emily's poems. (e.g. "beryl eggs" are white pine pinecones) There is also an extensive list of plants that Emily and her family not only grew, but that she mentioned in her poems or letters or included in her herbarium.
• 
  Sophy H

  This was a lovely book by Marta McDowell. She looks at Emily Dickinson's life from the perspective of the enjoyment Emily got from the family garden and her green-fingered exploits.
  
  The writing is engaging and thorough without being overwhelming. There are some lovely colour and sepia photographs of everything from Dickinson herself to the dwellings of Amherst, to the family garden. Alongside this are colour paintings and drawings of flowers by female artists of the day.
  
  I really enjoyed reading about the gardens of the day and the changing seasons of Massachusetts. Though not strictly a fan of Dickinson's poetry, there are some great gems of poetry to match the mood and feeling of the writing.
  
  Recommended for any gardening fan.
• 
  Nancy

  I purchased Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life by Marta McDowell as part of my reading about Emily Dickinson as I developed a quilt.
  This is a gorgeous book, from the cover and the end papers to the illustrations that fill the pages.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  McDowell incorporates Dickinson's poems flawlessly.
  
  Readers are taken on a year-long journey into the garden, from early spring to winter, each season telling a part of Emily's life journey.
  
  It was a joy to read, an escape from lock-down in the early spring, an inspiration as I tended our own garden, and this autumn found me dreaming of visiting The Homestead some day when this pandemic is over.
  
  Chapters include an annotated list of Emily's plants and a visit to her home and garden.
  
  This would be a wonderful Christmas gift for the reader of Dickinson or gardener in your life.
  
  I have McDowell's book All the President's Gardens on Kindle. But after holding this book in my hands, with its lovely artwork and illustrations, the heft of it, I may need to buy a hardcover copy...along with Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life!
• 
  Mandy

  This book is an absolute delight. I received it as an e-book from NetGalley (many thanks) but it’s really one to own and treasure as an actual book, one to refer to again and again. I don’t read a lot of Emily Dickinson, although I do enjoy her work, nor am I a gardener, although I enjoy looking at flowers and plants as much as anyone, but this book is something special and I defy anyone not to take pleasure from it. Acclaimed primarily as a great poet, Emily Dickinson was also a keen gardener, loved plants and was knowledgeable about them. In this wonderfully illustrated book, the author takes us through a complete year in Dickinson’s garden, with excerpts from her poems and letters. If you’re a lover of her poems, then you need this book. And if you’re a lover of gardens and gardening then you need this book. And if you’re a lover of both – well, it’s simply essential reading.
• 
  Clare

  Perfect mix of poetry, history, and horticulture
• 
  Jacqueline

  I LOVED this concept for a book (nature and literature, my two favourite things). I read a few of Dickinson's poems back in university and they just didn't click with me, but after reading this book, I want to read them again with this new perspective. I knew nature was her muse, but I didn't know much about her personal life and after reading a bit of it from this book, I feel more connected to the author so I'm now more curious about her writing and what it will reveal. I thought this book would have more story behind Dickinson's life, but it focuses more about the plants themselves (which was still interesting!). The illustrations were beautiful and I loved how there were so many images accompanying the text. I also liked the combination of Dickinson's poems with the rest of the text, it provided a bit more context to the poems, however this made the reading experience a bit disjointed. Overall, I liked this book, but I can't imagine it being very memorable for me and I didn't experience any revelations or aha moments. But it was enough to convince me to revisit Dickinson's poems, which is a good thing!
• 
  Darcy

  Before reading McDowell's book, I had only a passing interest in Dickinson's poetry. Some of her poems I liked, but mostly I felt adrift when reading them, knowing they held lovely secrets, but not being able to unlock them. This book opened my eyes to the botanical elements in Dickinson's poems and helped me understand the language she was writing in - the language of flowers, bees, birds, trees, and seasons. I also feel inspired to get out into my own garden and spend more time with it. My gardening methods are a bit more like Lavinia Dickinson, of whom Emily said, "all her flowers did as they liked: tyrannized over her, hopped out of their own beds into each other's beds, were never reproved or removed as long as they bloom; for a live flower ... to Lavinia was more than any dead horticultural principle" (104). Thank you, Marta McDowell, for writing such a well researched and inspiring book! I am eagerly looking forward to your book on The Secret Garden!
• 
  Jennifer Tuleja

  I absolutely love this book. For the first time, I was able to understand Emily Dickinson as a human beyond her poetry which I don't necessarily connect with broadly. I live in Amherst and McDowell's ability to extract both her personal story from a young age to her love of nature and her garden and the natural world around her is strking. For the first time, I could feel her spirit around me as I navigate the same woods and flora and fauna that she did over 150 years ago. During my weekly work-outs, I often run by the Dickinson homestead - this time I paused and admired the tree Austen Dickinson planted in the notheast corner of the house and recently drove by The Dells and the post Austen Dickinson placed at the corner of the Dickinson Meadow. Fabulously now I live in a community with the neighborhood name Diconson Meadow. All comes full circle. I highly recommend this book.
• 
  Janelle

  Reading this book is like taking a tranquil stroll through a botanical garden on a perfectly pleasant day. I love how the book is divided into seasons which are used to talk about Emily's life and her gardens. I could very easily picture the sights around her home in Amherst as the author describes. This is a peaceful, tranquil read that makes me want to find out more on Emily Dickinson as well as revisit some of her poetry.
• 
  Alex Rye

  finally finished the “winter” section of this book. i’ve been reading this book throughout the year, reading the corresponding season as they went by. what a reading experience! this book was so immersive; i felt like i was walking by emily’s side, not only through her garden but through her life as well. the passage of time was also very fluid throughout the book from emily’s childhood at the homestead to the museum today (as a former historic house docent i really enjoyed the details on the conservation efforts). i also love the annotated list of emily dickinson’s plants at the end of the book. i’m excited to use it as a reference for my own garden!
• 
  Gerri Bauer

  Enjoyed reading a book that focused on Dickinson's deep involvement with botany and year-round gardening. She kept several blooming plants alive each winter in an attached conservatory and spent a good deal of time gardening outdoors in other seasons. Hardly the picture of a pale waif secluded in an upstairs bedroom. Reclusive, yes. Eccentric? No doubt. But between her writing, baking, gardening and tending of her invalid mother, Dickinson was a busy lady.
• 
  Susan

  Confession: I have been a huge Emily Dickinson fan forever. In high school, I dressed up like her on her December 10th birthday. Before I met a former boss, I learned she was an Emily Dickinson fan too, and low key stalked her until she hired me (We’re still friends; I wasn’t that creepy). And I planned to name a daughter Emily before the name became popular.
  
  Sooo...I had to read this newly re-released book about Emily Dickinson’s gardening life. I knew I would be hypercritical, but! There was nothing to criticize. It is so beautiful. The poems, the photographs, the archival images, the prose. Oh, and the descriptions of the plants she grew, many of them old friends to me. Not that I could grow them. I live in Georgia, not Massachusetts, and lack a green thumb. It’s amazing to me that her gardens could be so closely reconceived after so many years.
  
  The author chose not to correct spelling or perceived grammar, publishing the poems as they were written, showing that even when random capitalization, dashes, and spelling are seemingly preserved, a lot of changes have been made. I loved this book, and am planning my own poet’s garden. #netgalley #emilydickinsonsgardeninglife #emilydickinson
• 
  June

  Gardening and poetry--who could ask for anything more? The visuals in this book help to truly put an image to some of Emily's more intriguing figures of speech. It also gives a glimpse into what life was like in 19th-century New England. The author has clearly done her homework.
  
  Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for the digital ARC!
• 
  Frances Piper

  Un libro in un'edizione accurata, densa di fotografie dell'epoca e di illustrazioni botaniche. Per raccontare aneddoti e dettagli poco, o per niente, noti su Emily Dickinson e sul suo mondo appassionato, che comprendeva - oltre all'amore per la poesia - quello per la natura e il giardinaggio. Tutto quel che nutriva la sua sensibilità e che abitava il suo scrivere. Bellissimo!
• 
  Lilia Anderson

  An absolutely beautiful book. If you are an Emily fan, or a gardening fan, you will thoroughly enjoy this. It is chalk full of art, photos, testimonies and, best of all, contextualization for many of Emily's incredible poems.
• 
  Chanel Earl

  Beautiful book with lovely poetry and great visuals. I didn't always think the poetry was paired well with the text because the pairing implied a connection, and the dates were often decades apart.
  
  This made me want to garden more and write more poetry.
• 
  Sepehr

  "So intimate and passionate was her love of Nature, she seemed herself a part of the high March sky, the summer day and bird call."
  -- Sue's Obituary for Emily
  
  Recently, there has been a flood of films and TV shows depicting Emily Dickinson's life, but all of them are based on poor scholarship and disingenuously twist her to become a politicized symbol of feminism and petty rebellion.
  
  However, Marta McDowell has recently published a beautiful, scholarly book called Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life. It mainly focuses on "the plants and places" that inspired Emily, but it also delves into her rich inner world and complex relationship with family and friends. It is well-written and sprinkled with the poems of Emily with their characteristic dashes. It meticulously details Emily's day-to-day living with Vinnie (sisiter), Austin (brother), Susan (sister-in-law), Edward (father), Emily Norcross (carlo), and Carlo (noble big dog) on their bucolic homestead in Amherst. Many photos and sketches are likewise given, which truly conveys a sense of the layout of Amherst at that time (note, due to a hurricane in the mid 20th century, it looks very different now). Interestingly, the Dickinson family was very well-connected, given her father later became a representative, and both Frances Hodgsonn Burnett and Emerson visited Austin's garden, called the "The Evergreens". Austin and Susan settled just west near the Homestead, but Emily had never personally met their visitors due to being at a stage of her life when she had withdrawn, her cloister of contemplation being her own solitary garden and conservatory. Moreover, I was surprised to learn how impressive of a landscape designer Austin was. It seems her entire family was kept busy doing enriching tasks.
  
  It is as if Emily Dickinson's poetry is of Infinity, its words of the finest satin, enveloping and turning all that it touches lambent and bursting full of a multiplicity of meanings. At times while reading this book, including all of her poetry, I felt I was there, inside Emily's room with its rose patterned wallpaper, as both she and her room fractally breathed words that are alive. To quote Farr from The Passion of Emily Dickinson, Early Victorians believed "the looks of flowers, birds, or skies could be translated into a 'Vision of Language' that was both shrewdly real and apocalyptic." I can understand why Vinnie later changed the engraving of Emily's tombstone to read "Called Back".
  
  Whether it's death, struggle in the cold winter, or the spring of vitality, Emily approached all with that poetic mind and passion that is of Infinity. As Emily said, "Infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that sort of delightful horror, which is the most genuine effect and truest test of the sublime." She elsewhere remarks "sudden intimacies with Immortality, are expanse - not Peace - as Lightning at our feet, instills a foreign Landscape."
  
  I have also gotten back into reading Judith Farr's The Passion of Emily Dickinson. That particular book is very dense, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to dive further into the rich symbolic tapestry of Emily's hidden world. Both Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life by McDowell and The Passion of Emily Dickinson complement each other well.
  
  I have also found utilizing websites such as the "Dickinson lexicon" and "The Prowling Bee" to be indispensable in further understanding the hidden nuances in Emily's poems. I feel one can spend a lifetime studying about Emily's poetry, but one can never truly understand unless they become of it -- like the bee, clover, and revery: the prairie of the mind, heart, and soul.
• 
  Maurynne Maxwell

  This reader finds hope and solace in troubling times through both nature and literature, so what better book to try than this combination of both. I’d checked the book out of the library before deciding whether to add it to my personal collection, so extended checkout has enabled me to decide. Exploring Emily’s gardens in Amherst is also a bit of fantasy reading for desert rats, since many of the mentioned plants do not thrive here, and snow blankets boggle the mind. Hollyhocks are August blooms for Emily, but April blooms for us, and plants that sleep for winter there thrive beautifully here and want to drowse through summer’s heat instead. There’s still lots of gardening inspiration and rumination to be had.
  
  The author is a prodigious gardener herself, wrote Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life before this, and was the Gardener-in-Residence at the Dickinson Museum in 2018. She does a lovely job combining Dickinson’s life, poetry, and gardening, weaving the story through the seasons—and the half-seasons we gardeners know so well, those transitions when gentle warmth lets tender blooms meet, mingle, and say farewell—not forgetting the sudden harsh times when everything disappears in storm.
  
  Illustrated with botanical prints, images of pressed flowers, and Emily’s words from letters and poems, the book is a feast for the eyes as well as the mind. Mostly focusing on ornamentals, as Emily did herself, we still get a glimpse of the family’s vegetable plot, and lessons on over-wintering outside the conservatory. From 1865:
  
  
  
  With us, ‘tis Harvest all the Year
  
  For when the Frosts begin
  
  We just reverse the Zodiac
  
  And fetch the Acres in-
  
  (1036)
  
  
  
  I had forgotten that all of Emily’s poems are not equally great; the author chose them for their illustrative, not literary qualities. Most work quite well, though some are difficult to parse; our common language has changed so much--and the landscapes of the country. Where Dickinson can be obscure, McDowell can wander to overly florid descriptions that miss the mark; for the most part, however, the language sings with apt observation and the gardener’s vision shines through.
  
  All in all, this is a lovely addition to any gardening or poetry library; the gardening is forefront, with tips and admonitions from the author. Recommended.
  
  
• 
  Lorraine Tosiello

  This is a gorgeous book, in both content and presentation.
  
  McDowell covers in depth the gardening world of Dickinson: from childhood wildflower excursions to forcing bulbs in her conservatory, from the well trod paths of the Dickinson's garden to Austin Dickinson's rather frenetic attempt to relocate native trees to the boulevards of Amherst.
  
  Using the gardening calendar as it's structure, the author interweaves biographical facts, gardening information, Emily's poems and a description of the natural landscape of western Massachusetts, It's thrilling to know that Dickinson would send a sample of a white pine, for example, along with a cryptic poem, the foliage being a hint to the reader of the meaning of the poem. Or, to know that when she wrote that her sister Lavinia was "in Bliss" planning her garden, she was literally in the Bliss seed catalogue!
  
  There's the perfect mix of scientific and literary. In describing the winter garden dominated by trees, McDowell writes" "Winter in Dickinson's garden is a time of trees...The branching of
  oaks is alternate, maples opposite" and later: "There is nostalgia in a winter garden but also hope."
  
  Because of how lovely the book is, it is something that I know I will return to again and again. The cover art is delightful, both the dust jacket and the gold embossed hard cover. The revised edition of 2019 has magnificent illustrations: beautiful detailed photographs of the Dickinson home, inside and out, and the views that Emily would have seen from the windows, botanical drawings of the plants she grew and wrote about, images of Emily's own herbarium, and an amazing chart at the end listing every plant that Emily grew, discussed in a letter or included in a poem, all cross referenced.
  
  I don't think the topic of how the plants of Massachusetts inspired Dickinson could be covered in any better way. And just think: what if Miss Dickinson had not spent her entire life admiring the trees, flowers and grasses of Amherst?
• 
  P.G.

  I didn't know what to expect going in to this book. I'm familiar with Emily Dickinson's work, but not much about her biography (except for a vague idea of her being an unappreciated recluse). This book totally exceeded my expectations.
  
  McDowell not only delves into Emily Dickinson's garden, but how her interactions with plants and her study of botany, a "woman's subject," heavily influenced her writing. Organized by season, each section takes us through the kinds of plants and flowers Dickinson and her family grew in Massachusetts, accompanied by historical information, stories from her life, excerpts from letters, botanical illustrations, and poems inspired by the plants discussed. I particularly loved seeing photos from Dickinson's herbarium, a collection of over 400 plant specimens, dried and pressed into a book. A later section is entitled "Planting a Poet's Garden" and lists hundreds of plants that Dickinson knew and grew--and cites poems, herbarium pages, and letters where they're mentioned! So, this book is not only a well-researched biography of Emily Dickinson and her family, but also a catalogue of how botany and literature intersect. It's fascinating, beautifully-arranged, and incredibly informative.
  
  [Shout out to NetGalley and Timber Press for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.]