A Man's Garden

by Warren Schultz

A brightly illustrated guide to gardening from the male perspective accents the physical, goal-oriented aspects of the home garden patch. 10,000 first printing.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction

160 pages, Hardcover

First published February 22, 2001

Reviews

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

This title certainly caught my eye. What on earth could make a garden a man's garden? Big screen TVs? Bowling balls? Beer kegs? Turns out, the author decided to create his book to counteract comments that "gardening is women's work." (Since my husband is the gardener in our family, I've NEVER considered it a "feminine" pastime.) Schultz's book turns out to be a real treat for the eyes, with lush photos of gorgeous gardens. There is indeed plenty of "manliness" to behold, with giant pumpkins, found-art sculptures, and a garden railroad or two, but mostly it's just page after page of beautiful growing things.

This is just a lovely book filled with inspiration for gardeners of both sexes.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

This well-written book is full of fascinating life stories and enjoyable photographs of some prolific men in the garden today.

Through identifiable archetypes, Warren Schultz offers insights for understanding the roles that men play in their home gardens today. He reveals the meticulous hard work, ingenuity, and creative genius at work behind the scenes in each featured garden, while highlighting how each one has intersected with the owner's life as a vital form of self-expression.

Though it gives an overall positive portrait of male influence on the gardening world, the book undermines the role that females play at times, relegating it in one instance to "planting little flower gardens beside the back door." Reading this, I find myself comparing my experiences of men and women in the garden and wondering if, in fact, the garden isn't a special place where we tend to shed our differences and stand to face nature on equal footing?

[Kbg503 · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much fun reading what is in other men's gardens and how it got started. Love learning about the lives of each person. Kind of hard to come up with a summary, since I mainly view gardening as a place to play and wonder. From the introduction, "...Each is a perfectly realized example of what that man thinks a garden should be.".

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Man’s Garden by Warren Schultz (Houghton Mifflin 2001)(635). Author Warren Shultz operates under the premise that gardening should be considered “man's work” and profiles fifteen men who garden who have very different styles of plants and gardens. My rating: 7/10, finished 2007.

[Franz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well done! I am a pofessional gardener and the book tells very well how a garden takes on the personality and values of the gardener. The best gardens rarely fit into neat catagories,and are the better for it.