Description
In this exquisitely lush volume, lifestyle legend Carolyne Roehm celebrates her gardens as outdoor living rooms, revealing how she chooses the plants, flowers, and layouts; how she entertains guests with gorgeous table settings and breathtaking arrangements; and how she savors the hours among the blooms.
As Carolyne Roehm says, “It’s as simple as this: a garden is like love...a place you venture into with hope, energy, excitement, enchantment, and the greatest of expectations.”
For Roehm, the garden has always been more than a canvas for beauty. A place where her devoted efforts bear glorious results, the garden is not only a reflection of what has inspired Roehm, but also a font of inspiration from which she draws--for her astonishingly lovely arrangements, her gracious dinner parties, and her new passion for interpreting her flowers in vibrant watercolor paintings.
Each of the gardens at her historic Connecticut home, Weatherstone, has been lovingly crafted to serve as an outdoor living room, where the hours may be passed at work, alone, or enjoyed with company. In the Parterre Gardens bordering the south side of the home, Roehm created a fantasy of snow in spring with white tulips and Sargentina crabapple trees. All of the varietals in her Rose Garden were selected for their pulchritude and divine scent, as well as for their ability to bloom twice to satisfy her insatiable thirst for roses. And when the stream through her property offered only an unsatisfying trickle, Roehm replaced it with a river of hostas, primula, bleeding hearts, and rodgersia that sweeps through her Shade Garden.
As Roehm accompanies us on the first-ever tour of these marvels, she shares witty and candid stories of the unexpected triumphs and the sometimes-crushing defeats. And always, there is her desire to return to the garden—to tend, to mend, or to plant anew.
A garden is like love, Roehm claims, and indeed, this lavishly illustrated volume is a testament to an enduring, complex, unquestionably personal, and deeply passionate amour.
About the Author
Style icon and lifestyle maven Carolyne Roehm has been part of American design culture for over four decades, with a career spanning the fashion, gardening, entertaining, publishing and decorative arts worlds. Finding a mentor in Oscar de la Renta, Carolyne worked alongside the couture great for 10 years before launching her own fashion house in 1985. A discerning eye and passion for beauty lead her into the world of flowers, where her books are often referred to as the best in their field. Subsequent entertaining and interiors titles cemented her position as one of America's lifestyle experts.
A former President of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, with appearances in both the Who's Who of Women in America and the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame, honored by Manolo Blahnik with a shoe in her name, in a fitting tribute design legend Bill Blass labeled Carolyne, "The ultimate tastemaker." Now the author of twelve books, Roehm's mission is to teach others how to capture and create beauty in their lives, in both the everyday and out of the ordinary.
She divides her time among her homes in Manhattan, Connecticut, and Charleston.
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