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9780820331560

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A thorough and thoughtful look at the evolution of Philadelphia gardens . . . The chronology of the growth and later descent of gardens in the city will charm all, especially residents. Overall, White's book is an insightful study in to the area's environmental history and the fascinating life of one of the city's most celebrated families. -- South Philly Review

Vanished Gardens , like the gardens of Philadelphia it plots so brilliantly in its pages, presents itself as both highly formal and completely natural in its composition and its fruition. It is a book that saturates space, horizontal and vertical, as well as exhausts time. As with all excellent gardens, everywhere one looks one is delighted, surprised, awed, and restored. And as with all excellent writing about landscape, Vanished Gardens transforms the world before our eyes so that the reader, held in its thrall, begins to see to see. --Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone I know of no book about gardens that comes close to the beauty of Sharon White's Vanished Gardens . Her lyrical prose moves effortlessly through the centuries, through the stories and histories of people and flowers, of rivers and plants. Stunning work. --Lisa Couturier, author of The Hopes of Snakes & Other Tales from the Urban Landscape Sharon White mixes memory and desire in this multi-layered exploration of the archeology of the gardens of old Philadelphia. Evocative, historical, and sensual all at once, her book reveals the former diversity and richness that lies beneath the contemporary city; you can almost smell the storied vegetation of some of America's most important, now lost gardens. --John Hanson Mitchell, author of The Paradise of All These Parts: A Natural History of Boston Vanished Gardens is an evocative walk through the Piedmont's intertwined human and natural history. --Ted Kerasote, author of Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog About the city as garden, as 'wilderness just under the surface' . . . White lends her poet's eye to the landscape. -- Philadelphia Inquirer [White] does a beautiful job with fostering a clipped, elliptical, oblique texture. Evocative, but never goopy. --Lord Whimsy, Live Journal [A] lush, quiet, deeply observed and carefully researched book . . . [White] gets it, this new city of hers, and there is joy, a kind of raw sensual pleasure in her discovery. --Nathaniel Popkin, phillyskyline.com A thorough and thoughtful look at the evolution of Philadelphia gardens . . . The chronology of the growth and later descent of gardens in the city will charm all, especially residents. Overall, White's book is an insightful study in to the area's environmental history and the fascinating life of one of the city's most celebrated families. -- South Philly Review

Author Information

Sharon White is the author of Field Notes: A Geography of Mourning and Bone House and is a lecturer in English at Temple University. She lives and gardens in Philadelphia and Brownsville, Vermont.

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