Wrestling with Angels and Singing with Dragons: The Making of a Garden Across 45 Years

Wrestling with Angels and Singing with Dragons tells the dramatic tale of this intensely personal achievement, still an absorbing work-in-progress for Bill and his wife, Nancy. Part fam?ily saga, part love story, part botanical adventure, Bill Frederick's engaging narrative reveals every struggle and triumph that has strengthened Ashland Hollow's robust structure and enriched its multilayered beauty. Along the paths that gently yet firmly unite the 17-acre garden, medi?tative solitude and bravura spectacle happily coexist, romantic sensuality flirts with learned wit, and sophistication revels in puckish fantasy. In fact, Ashland Hollow comprises many gar?dens. In fact, Ashland Hollow comprises many gar?dens, from open meadow to hidden stream bank, from elegant courtyard to hands-in-the-dirt vegetable patch, from dappled woodland to daz?zling rose bed. Ingenious plotting ensures that its ephemeral "events" offer abundant delights through all four seasons. Permanent residents include bronzes of the Frederick children when they were youngsters growing up here, the wooden effigy of a lusty ancient deity, and a giant concrete frog who serenades visitors.This book's wealth of photographs, inter?pretive plans, and practical diagrams extends boundless inspiration to readers with gardens--or imaginings--of any size. Whether selecting the palette for a container of annuals or choosing shrubs for winter interest, training a wisteria "tree" or constructing hillside steps, irrigating kitchen crops or transforming a swimming pool from eyesore to ornament, Bill Frederick supplies clear, authoritative guidance. Extensive lists of both herbaceous and woody plants, drawn from the more than 1,000 taxa grown at Ashland Hollow, provide brilliant solutions to a host of challenges--further proof that for an intrepid gardener, dragons and angels simply go with the territory.