UPROOTED—A Gardener Reflects on Beginning Again
By Page Dickey
Most of us have considered it. Some of us have done it. How do we walk away from a garden we have nurtured for years or even decades and begin again. Page Dickey’s Uprooted explores exactly this—how she and her husband walked away from Duck Hill, their well-known high maintenance garden of rooms, clipped evergreens, borders and manicured woods, to start
anew further north on 17 acres in western Connecticut.
Dickey’s highly personal account in her wonderful style explores how they left much as they had found it and yet actually increased the garden size six-fold while decreasing the work to maintain it. New plants, especially natives, and new thoughts on design are all embraced. Yet rather than a radical departure for her, this style’s own roots can be seen in her earlier book Gardens in the Spirit of Placewhere she extolled gardens that were in keeping with the environment and “celebrate their regionality.” And she highlights her own mistakes such as planting a double trillium in the new woods only to discover it looked “like an overdressed stranger at a dinner party.” From her horticultural and design knowledge to her dealing with invasives and the emotions of beginning again, Uprootedis a wonderful read for a winter’s weekend.
To watch Page Dickey's Zoom presentation of her book, Uprooted: A Gardener Reflects on Beginning Again click here.