Description:
Good intentions tend to bloom and fade like a perennial: next year, you'll dig up the border by the front walk and install those delphiniums you've always wanted; next year, you'll put up those abundant tomatoes so you can savor them during the depths of winter. To realize those good intentions, try organizing them with fashion designer and author Carolyne Roehm's Summer Notebook. Or, if your creative fields lie fallow once in a while (and whose don't?), borrow the seed of an idea from Roehm, who broadcasts her favorites for everyone's benefit. This is a notebook (complete with grid paper for planning, lined pages for notes, and pouches for clippings), garden-design and flower color-combination guide, garden journal, recipe book--in essence, it's an idea book, a place to record your ideas and learn from Roehm's. The grounds of her Connecticut home, Weatherstone, serve as the canvas for her botanical muse. In the course of showing off her gardening victories, as well as admitting to her failures, we get chapters on Roehm's potager, inspired by Louis XIV's geometrically laid-out kitchen garden at Versailles; her quest for the perfect perennial border; the extreme state of her hydrangea envy and rose obsession; details of a Fourth of July celebration and a summer wedding held at Weatherstone; odes to peaches, corn, and tomatoes; and an "end paper" on the dread Japanese beetle. All this, along with abundant color photos, recipes, floral-arrangement tips, and helpful hints like how to make your own floral preservative, make this inaugural installment in the Notebook series (Fall is next, of course) a unique addition to any avid gardener's library. --Stefanie Durbin
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