IN YOUR GARDEN

This month-by-month selection of Vita Sackville-West's gardening columns for the LONDON OBSERVER evokes Andrew Marvell's restful phrase, "a green thought in a green shade." Her setting is the English cottage garden; her values stated in 1940s shillings and pence; her relations with plants intimate, anthropomorphic, and correct in all British and Latin nomenclature. Today's backyard gardener may find it easier to listen to than to follow her advice on the common quince and the copper beech. ("Oh, why," I cried to myself, "don't we all plant even a short length of copper beech hedge!") But McTeer's elegant rendering of the wonderful diction and flair of the mistress of Sissinghurst Castle is the perfect accompaniment to an afternoon of summer gardening, or, better yet, to the contemplation of a summer garden from the cool shade of a hammock. D.R.W. © AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 99]