Garden Secrets of Bunny Mellon
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- 21,99 €
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- 21,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
A treasure trove of Bunny Mellon’s garden design philosophy and advice from her personal archive.
Garden Secrets of Bunny Mellon is for anyone who has enjoyed time spent in a garden, from aspiring garden makers to those who manage large estates. This collection is comprised of extracts from Bunny’s own writings and garden notes, as well as photographs and drawings from her archive.
Chapters are organized by Atmosphere (sky, horizon, shadows), Climate, Light, Space, Shape, Maintenance, and more―readers will feel as if Bunny Mellon has come alongside as a gardening guide and friend.
Bunny Mellon was of the affluent class and mingled along with her husband, Paul Mellon, in the circles of the East Coast gentry of the Kennedy and Reagan eras. But Mrs. Mellon, as she was respectfully called by those professional gardeners who worked with her most, wasn’t snooty about social position or afraid to get her hands dirty in the rich soil of her family’s Virginia farm. Beyond this, Bunny Mellon was known nationally and internationally as a style icon of her time, enjoying friendships with Givenchy, the Kennedys, and the like. Her personal passion was for design, and that was exhibited in her fashion and her garden.
A late acquaintance, Linda Holden learned that Bunny wanted to write a gardening book but never found the time. Searching the family’s archive after Mrs. Mellon’s death, the editors―whom all shared personal relationships with Bunny―discovered a trove of photographs, illustrations, and writings and have now turned it into the how-to gardening book Bunny had hoped to write.
Linda Jane Holden was a trusted friend of Bunny Mellon. She authored The Gardens of Bunny Mellon (October 2018). She lives in Chantilly, VA.
Thomas Lloyd, grandson of Bunny Mellon, is president of the Gerard B. Lambert Foundation, established by Bunny Mellon to honor her father. Lloyd lives in Washington, DC.
Bryan Huffman, an interior designer based in Monroe, NC, was a close friend of Mrs. Mellon for ten years.
P. Allen Smith is the TV host of P. Allen Smiths Garden Home and P. Allen Smith’s Garden to Table. He is a garden designer, conservationist, and lifestyle expert.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Previously unpublished photographs and journal musings from the archive of gardening designer Rachel "Bunny" Lambert Mellon (1910 2014) are beautifully paired in this collaboration between writer Holden (The Gardens of Bunny Mellon), designer Huffman, and Mellon's grandson Lloyd. Seeking to honor Mellon's unfulfilled wish, found posthumously in her journals, to write a gardening book, the authors touch on Mellon's childhood introduction to gardening, initial sources of inspiration (primarily books and illustrations), and the development of her "trial-and-error method of cultivation." Her garden designs (including her signature "Little Herb Tree" topiaries of myrtle, rosemary, and thyme) expressed her understanding of the need to, in her words, join "the things of nature that correspond to the person." Mellon's journals stress the importance of note-taking (believing that happenstance observations can be one's "greatest teachers"), long-term planning, and working with the "bones" of a garden, such as existing trees. A quote from one of her famous clients testifies to her pragmatic methodology former first lady Lady Bird Johnson, admiring Mellon's design of the White House's Kennedy Rose Gardens, described her as having a "working-at-it kind of knowledge" of her craft. Celebrating Mellon's life and legacy, this intimate rendering evokes nostalgia and adds nuance and depth to the public portrait of a late, great gardener.
