The Small ProducerGARDENS IN THE LIFE OF FORD MADOX FORD Part One: England

摘要

It's not particularly unusual for writers to be interested in plants and gardens and to make use of them in their writing. To generalise wildly: poets tend to use individual plants as symbols, novelists to use whole gardens as indicators of social status: but both tend to be concerned above all with plants which are, or aim to be, ornamental. So what is unusual — and first intriguing and then even endearing — is to discover a writer whose passion was for plants you can eat. But Ford Madox Ford made a whole career out of wrong-footing expectations — everyone's, including his own.