From a Victorian Garden: Creating the Romance of a Bygone Age Right in Your Own Backyard

By Cristina Roig and Michael Weishan

From Michael Weishan, host of the long-running PBS series The Victory Garden, comes the first gardening book of its kind. From a Victorian Garden offers a unique landmark approach to traditional gardening by bringing back to life the lush splendor of an actual Victorian garden via period photographs, letters, and journals, and using these records as a guide for today's landscapes. In From a Victorian Garden, Weishan provides the reader with a distinctive two-pronged approach to the process of creating a historically accurate period garden. He first tells the story of the O'Reilly family and Point Ellice House, the Victorian home and garden they built more than a century ago in British Columbia. Point Ellice, long considered to be one of western Canada's finest collections of Victoriana still in its original setting, remained in the O'Reilly family from 1868 through 1975. The remarkable historical records left by this family then became a point of departure from which Weishan shows the reader how to replicate the magnificence of a well-planned and executed turn-of-the-last-century landscape. Using the gardens of Point Ellice as a guide, Michael Weishan shows readers how to re-create the romance of the Victorian garden right in their own backyards, from simple projects such as growing period annuals to more advanced gardening skills, such as designing a welcoming driveway or laying out a shrubbery border for year-round bloom. A must-have, highly accessible addition to every gardener's library, From a Victorian Garden is at once a journey back in time to the gilded age of gardening as well as an up-to-data reference for creating period landscapes today. Michael Weishan is a twenty-year veteran in the field of historical gardening. In addition to being principal of his own landscape design firm, Michael Weishan and Associates, Weishan is also the host of PBS's The Victory Garden as well as the gardening editor for Country Living Magazine and contributing editor to Country Living Gardener. He lives outside of Boston in a restored 1852 farmhouse surrounded by three acres of gardens Book jacket.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670894265
• ISBN13: 9780670894260
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Studio Books
• Length: 143 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 9.4" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Great book for historic garden theory

I am currently planning a garden area for my back yard. I have bought a few books specifically on victorian gardening and design and although many were good, I felt that this book really touched on the feeling and the things that make a victorian garden special and unique. The author goes into detail on most aspects of gardening and how the victorians were able to get such lush, peaceful, and interesting gardens and out door spaces.

Gold mine of information for designing a Victorian garden

This book is much more than a "how-to" book on Victorian gardening. It provides insight into Victorian daily family life. Anyone interested in Victorian life or gardening will find it fascinating. Anyone interested in restoring or creating a garden for a Victorian home should consider it essential reading. It has been extremely useful in planning a garden for our late 19th century house. As a lagniappe, the book's appendices provide a wealth of additional information on Victorian gardening and life. This is a great addition to gardening literature, especially since there is so little information available on designing a Victorian garden.

Wow! Fabulous book

This is an awesome book. I have started reading it, and can tell it will be a good summer read.

Incredible Book for Old House Gardeners

If you own a Victorian home, or are simply interested in Victorian gardens, this book is an amazing resource. From period advice on everything from walkways, to drives, to historical shrubs, this is truly the first book EVER (at least that I have found) to advise the American homeowner on practical gardening matters for old houses. Easy to read, with great pictures, From a Victorian Garden is a must for anyone interested in period gardening! I loved it!

from victorian to me

I read this book and was amazed at what I learned. It not onlytold me about the way it used to be in the garden , but it also gave me so many ideas that I could use right now, in my own garden. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone if you are interested in gardening or not.