An island garden by Celia Thaxter
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"An island garden" by Celia Thaxter is a horticultural memoir and practical gardening guide written in the late 19th century. Centered on a small flower garden on Appledore Island, it blends lyrical nature writing with precise, experience-tested instructions for cultivating, protecting, and delighting in plants by the sea. Expect intimate reflections on the bond between gardener and flowers alongside clear advice on soils, seeds, pests, and the old-fashioned blooms that fill a
seaside season. The opening of the book places the garden among the Isles of Shoals and traces the author’s lifelong devotion to flowers from a childhood marigold patch, then offers a hymn to the mystery of “dust” (earth) and the miracle of seeds. She declares love as the gardener’s true “secret,” and launches into frank, practical warfare against pests—especially slugs—while enlisting toads, tackling cutworms, and outwitting seed-thieving song sparrows. She outlines autumn soil preparation with well-rotted manure and compost, winter seed starting in boxes and egg-shells, and the April return by tugboat with seedlings to the sheltered, vine-draped beds. Early spring brings snowdrops, crocuses, martins and swallows, and she treats sowing as a near-sacred act, protecting furrows from birds and rigorously weeding and thinning. A cautionary tale about the parasitic dodder underscores vigilance, while early color (notably Drummond’s Phlox) and perfume (wallflowers, honeysuckle) lead to her favored Sweet Peas and a concise roster of classic cottage flowers. The section closes with May diary notes that capture daily rhythms—transplanting, staking, watering, scouring for slugs at dawn and midnight, riding out storms, sharing plants with neighbors, fetching pea-sticks, reveling in wildflowers, and savoring the birds and sea that frame the garden’s work. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Thaxter, Celia, 1835-1894 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Hassam, Childe, 1859-1935 |
| LoC No. | 12017107 |
| Title | An island garden |
| Original Publication | Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1894. |
| Credits | MFR, Steve Mattern and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | SB: Agriculture: Plant culture |
| Subject | Autobiographies |
| Subject | Thaxter, Celia, 1835-1894 |
| Subject | Gardens -- Maine -- Appledore Island |
| Subject | Celia Thaxter's Garden (Appledore Island, Me.) |
| Subject | Appledore Island (Me.) -- Description and travel |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 78885 |
| Release Date | Jun 17, 2026 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 1402 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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