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Paradise Under Glass: The Education of an Indoor Gardener Kindle Edition
Paradise Under Glass is a witty and absorbing memoir about one woman’s unlikely desire to build, stock, and tend a small conservatory in her suburban Maryland home. Ruth Kassinger’s wonderful story of the unique way she chose to cope with the profound changes in her life—a book that will delight readers of Eat, Pray, Love and I Feel Bad About My Neck—is interwoven with the fascinating history of conservatories from the Renaissance orangeries to the glass palaces of Kew.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarperCollins e-books
- Publication dateApril 2, 2010
- File size6962 KB
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Review
From the Back Cover
Like many baby boomers in middle age, Ruth Kassinger was at an emotional crossroads. Confronted with the death of a beloved sister, her children's departure for college, and her own recent battle with breast cancer, she was searching for a way forward. One cold, gray evening, flooded with thoughts of change and loss, she wandered into the U.S. Botanic Garden's conservatory—and a dream was born. Dazzled by the vast and dense tangle of greenery, she began a quest to create a verdant sanctuary of her own at her home in suburban Washington, D.C.
Yet all she knew of indoor gardening was a lone, neglected houseplant at the top of her basement stairs. Paradise Under Glass chronicles her journey from brown thumb to green—a project that takes her across the country. Along the way she meets commercial growers with acres under glass in Florida, a clivia hybridizer whose Delaware home is filled with thousands of specimens, a beneficial bug grower in California, entrepreneurs in Ohio who have a veritable Noah's Ark of rare tropicals, and many others who share their enthusiasms and knowledge.
Kassinger takes us step-by-step from the construction of her conservatory through her efforts to identify the easiest to grow, most beautiful houseplants. She combats pests, raises Monarch butterflies, and harvests kumquats and coffee beans. Her Garden of Eden is complete with a pint-sized pool and a "living wall" she invents.
Kassinger's journey to create her own tropical refuge is also a lively narrative tour of the glasshouses of the past, including Renaissance orangeries, the whimsical follies of Georgian England, the legendary Crystal Palace, and secluded Victorian ferneries.
Throughout, she shares the knowledge and insights that creating and sustaining her garden has bestowed, lessons of loss and letting go, nurturing and rebirth, challenge and change, love and serenity. Paradise Under Glass is the remarkable story of the fruition of a dream that is sure to inspire the gardener in us all.
About the Author
Ruth Kassingers science and health writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, National Geographic Explorer, Health magazine, Science Weekly, and other publications. The author of numerous award-winning science and history books for young adults, she lives with her husband, Ted, in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Product details
- ASIN : B003F1WMFW
- Publisher : HarperCollins e-books; Reprint edition (April 2, 2010)
- Publication date : April 2, 2010
- Language : English
- File size : 6962 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 372 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,152,664 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #280 in Botany (Kindle Store)
- #343 in Greenhouses (Books)
- #936 in House Plant Gardening
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland and, after graduating from Yale and Johns Hopkins, moved to the Washington, DC area. I've written three books for an adult audience (Slime, A Garden of Marvels, and Paradise Under Glass) and seven books for young adults, including hands-on science books titled Reinvent the Wheel and Build a Better Mousetrap. My articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Boston Globe, among others. You can hear me in interviews at Science Friday on NPR, WICN, and other radio shows and podcasts.
I currently live in Bethesda, Maryland with my husband.
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I feel like I learned a few things and found fuel to help me follow through on my own garden.
Adventurous personal memoir and a pleasant dose of historical knowledge on indoor gardening.
Useful information on nurseries in the USA.
Last but not least most eloquently written book which is hard to let it stand for days before picked up again. A book that one does not want it to finish. I enjoyed reading it so much that I am giving it to gardening enthusiast friends as a present.