With its emphasis on gardening as a practical and political activity this is a timely collection of essays. Anglophone and post-twentieth century in focus, and ranging in approach from the literary historical to the autoethnographical, this incisive collection offers the fields of garden and plant studies a valuable new contribution.

Shelley Saguaro, University of Gloucestershire

From fascinating accounts of the nefarious lives of petrochemically-propelled plants like the nettle (aka the ‘plant thug’) to critical dissections of the environmental impact of the push to intensive farming associated with Britain’s wartime Dig for Victory campaign, The Poetics and Politics of Gardening in Hard Times is a must read for anyone interested in the cultural politics and history of austerity. Milthorpe should be congratulated on a beautifully curated collection of essays that offers widesweeping insights—from a range of disciplinary perspectives—into the crucial role and place of gardening and plants themselves at the intersection of environmentalism and austerity.

Tania Lewis, RMIT University

'What does it mean to garden in hard times and why might humans turn to the garden (as shelter, refuge, or productive space) under straitened conditions?' The essays in The Poetics and Politics of Gardening in Hard Times respond to this question by taking up different perspectives, both human and nonhuman, from within gardens of the twentieth and twenty-first century Anglophone world. Although the collection was published in 2019, its capacious thinking about austerity seemed to urge me to draw connections between the essays’ gardens and my own, and the hard time we are living through now as the world reels from the effects of COVID-19 and extended quarantining measures.

Edge Effects

These essays offer frameworks to interrogating Wharton’s life and writings in several ways, including how she designed her garden at The Mount and the impact of gardening on her own writing process; they open up to exploring her garden writings in tandem with the ecological impacts of using European designs and nonnative plants in the American landscape and raise intrigu­ing questions for Wharton studies: What were other outcomes of her profes­sional relationship with her niece Beatrix Farrand (neé Jones), one of the first well-known American women landscape designers? What else may be gleaned about Wharton by investigating the social history and economics of the people involved with sourcing plants, and building and maintaining her gardens? The multidisciplinary approaches in this text suggest new ways to understand why humans garden, how they are changed by it, and how they write about their experiences to share with their communities.

Edith Wharton Review