Old Herbaceous: A Novel of the Garden
Back in print after fifty years, Old Herbaceous is a classic British novel of the garden, with a title character as outsized and unforgettable as P. G. Wodehouse’s immortal butler, Jeeves. Born at the dusk of the Victorian era, Bert Pinnegar, an awkward orphan child with one leg a tad longer...
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Back in print after fifty years, Old Herbaceous is a classic British novel of the garden, with a title character as outsized and unforgettable as P. G. Wodehouse’s immortal butler, Jeeves.
Born at the dusk of the Victorian era, Bert Pinnegar, an awkward orphan child with one leg a tad longer than the other, rises from inauspicious schoolboy days spent picking wildflowers and dodging angry farmers to become the legendary head gardener “Old Herbaceous,” the most esteemed flower-show judge in the county and a famed horticultural wizard capable of producing dazzling April strawberries from the greenhouse and the exact morning glories his Lady spies on the French Riviera, “so blue, so blue it positively hurts.”
Sprinkled with nuggets of gardening wisdom, Old Herbaceous is a witty comic portrait of the most archetypal—and crotchety—head gardener ever to plant a row of bulbs at a British country house.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780812967388 (0812967380)
ASIN: 812967380
Publish date: 2003-04-15
Publisher: Modern Library
Pages no: 176
Edition language: English
Well this one is just a cozy read that hit me in just the right way. Spanning from the late 1800's through the end of WWII, this is the story of a manor house's head gardener, from his inauspicious beginnings as a foundling through to his last days. I'm left confused about the narrator: for much...