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Rhapsody in Green: A Writer, an Obsession, a Laughably Small Excuse for a Vegetable Garden

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( 289 ratings, 55 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Novelist Charlotte Mendelson shares her passionate and witty journey of transforming a tiny urban plot into a thriving vegetable garden. Despite having just six square metres of soil and a few pots, she cultivates a bountiful edible jungle filled with quinces, salad leaves, herbs, and ancient British apples. The book explores her humorous attempts at extreme gardening, from buying lion dung to creative composting, blending fantasy with the realities of nurturing a garden. Mendelson's love for gardening shines through as a life-saving and deeply obsessive pursuit.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book is ideal for avid gardeners and those fascinated by urban growing, especially readers who appreciate humour and storytelling alongside gardening advice. It's perfect for lovers of food cultivation, vegetable gardening, and those seeking inspiration to transform even the smallest outdoor spaces into productive gardens.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

A unique celebration of gardening written by an award-winning novelist.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Excellent book. Nigella Lawson

Charming, inspiring, uplifting... pure lovely. Marian Keyes

Read Rhapsody in Green. A novelist's beautiful, useful essays about her tiny garden. India Knight

Glorious...for anyone who loves fruit, vegetables, herbs and language. It makes you see them with new eyes. Diana Henry

A witty account of 'extreme allotmenteering' for all obsessive gardeners Mail on Sunday

An extremely entertaining and inspiring story of one woman's passionate transformation of a small, irregular shaped urban garden into a bountiful source of food. Woman & Home

A gardening book like no other, this is the author's 'love letter' to her garden. She relays warm and witty stories about the trials and tribulations throughout her gardening year. Garden News

This inspirational, funny book, written by someone who hankers after a homesteader's lifestyle, will make you look at even your window box in a new, more productive light. The Simple Things

Gardening is not a hobby but a passion: a mess of excitement and compulsion and urgency and desire. Those who practise it are botanists, evangelists, freedom fighters, midwives and saboteurs; we kill; we bleed. No, I can't drop everything to come in for dinner; it's a matter of life and death out here.

Novelist Charlotte Mendelson has a secret life. Despite owning only six square metres of urban soil and a few pots, she is an extreme gardener; the creator of a tiny but bountiful edible jungle. And like all enthusiasts, she will not rest until you share her obsession.

This is the story of an amateur gardener's journey to addiction: her attempts to buy lion dung from London Zoo and to build her own cold frame; her disinhibited composting and creative approach to design; her prejudices (roses, purple flowers, people with orchards); and her passions: quinces, salad-leaves, herbs, Japanese greens and ancient British apples. It is a story of where fantasy meets reality, of the slow onset of a consuming love and, most of all, of how gardening, however peculiar, can save your life.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Praised for its charm and inspiration, the book is described as 'excellent' by Nigella Lawson and 'charming, inspiring, uplifting... pure lovely' by Marian Keyes. India Knight calls it 'a novelist's beautiful, useful essays about her tiny garden,' while Diana Henry appreciates how it reveals fruit, vegetables, and herbs in a new light. The Mail on Sunday highlights it as a 'witty account of extreme allotmenteering,' and Woman & Home finds it 'extremely entertaining and inspiring.' Garden News notes it as 'a gardening book like no other,' full of warm, witty anecdotes, and The Simple Things suggests it inspires even window box gardeners to be more productive.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780857839473

Publisher: Octopus Publishing Group

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 25 March 2021

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Kyle Books

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 22.0mm

Width: 126.0mm

Height: 196.0mm

Weight: 215g

Pages: 240

About the Author

Charlotte Mendelson's first novel, Love in Idleness, was published in 2001. Her second, Daughters of Jerusalem (2003) won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award. Her third, When We Were Bad (2007), was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Almost English (2013), her fourth, was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize.

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  • Daughters of Jerusalem
    Beautifully written and bitingly funny, Charlotte Mendelson's prize-winning Daughters of Jerusalem is a gripping novel of hidden love and hate, of the desire to belong, and the need for escape. Amidst the crumbling yellow stone of Oxford and its prestigious university, secrets are stirring within the Lux family home... Jean, the constrained and guilt-ridden wife of an academic, is waiting...
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  • The Exhibitionist
    A Times, Guardian, and Good Housekeeping Book of the Year for 2022 Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 'It takes the most ferocious intelligence, skill, and a deep reservoir of sadness to write a novel as funny as this. I adored it' - Meg Mason, bestselling author of Sorrow & Bliss Meet the Hanrahan family. Ray, the father. Acclaimed...
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  • When We Were Bad
    When We Were Bad is a spellbinding, witty and poignant portrayal of a family in crisis, in love, and in denial. 'As intelligent as it is funny. A beautifully observed literary comedy as well as a painfully accurate description of one big old family mess. A joy' - Observer In North London, Claudia Rubin is in her heyday. Wife, mother,...
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  • Wife
    'One of the funniest writers in Britain' - The Guardian Set in the world of London academia, both past and present, Wife by Charlotte Mendelson is heart-breaking and funny, profound and gripping, as it takes the reader from the end of a relationship to its beginning, and back again. When Zoe moves in with Penny, their relationship looks perfect; after...
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    'Crackles with female fire and fury' - The Guardian 'A bravura portrait of a marriage in meltdown' - The Observer 'Fast and furious' - The Sunday Times Discover the bitingly witty new novel from the prize-winning author of The Exhibitionist, Charlotte Mendelson. Dr Penny Cartwright is everything that Zoe Stamper is not: glamorous, sophisticated and openly gay. When they begin...
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