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REVIEWS IN BRIEF Cynthia Haven |
Sunday, September 22, 2002
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A Garden in Laguna The Garden Essays of Hortense Miller By Hortense Miller; photographs by Steven A. Gunther CASA DANA (www.casadana.com); 136 PAGES; $35
"A Garden in Laguna" isn't a garden book, strictly speaking -- its appeal is too universal for that. And "essays" isn't quite the word for these brief pieces. They are really diarylike musings scribbled over two decades ("Everything Doesn't Fall in the Fall," "A Minor History of the Human Race," "Notes on Other People's Gardens in Other Lands" and "In Favor of Insects" are a typical bouquet of titles). For that matter, Hortense Miller's 2 1/2-acre canyon landscape, home to 1, 200 species, won't be everyone's idea of a garden. Miller has extolled the laissez-faire garden for a half-century, the "naturalized" setting taken to its logical extreme, embracing wildness, letting what thrives, thrive, and what fails, fail. Whether this liberality results in a great garden may be a matter of taste -- but 93-year-old Hortense Miller, touted the "legendary green woman of Laguna Beach," is clearly a great spirit. "But why do we require perfection in a lawn although we require nothing of the sort in ourselves?" wonders this Michel de Montaigne-of-the-garden, who's as likely to quote Sei Shonagon as Charles Henry Dana, Chaucer as Vita Sackville-West. Possums, rabbits, raccoons, roadrunners, foxes, deer, weasels and the occasional desert tortoise are all welcomed as part of her garden. Recovery after two major wildfires is meticulously documented: the eventual return of the resilient Easter lily vine, the hills covered with yellow monkey flower and purple phacelia in the springtime. Miller is fascinated by insects, and by anything tiny (she once counted 20,600 seeds on an aster plant). This is a first-time book for both Miller and Casa Dana, a new Southern California publisher. The lavishly illustrated book (though one might wish for captions) is an elegant, charming and endearing offering for the determined dirt-digger and the armchair gardener alike -- anyone, really. |
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