BOOK REVIEWS

My Garden, My Paradise
The Garden in New Zealand Literature

Edited by Christina Stachurski
Photos by Sally Mason
Hazard Press
$NZ29.95

PREPARE to be enthralled by this well-compiled and sensitively illustrated anthology - we were. Christchurch dramatist Christina Stachurski (whose previous work includes Hot Stuff, a dramatic farce about sex, drugs, violence, revenge and true love) has turned her eye to the garden to put together a magnetic collection of more than 50 gems from Kiwi writers and poets.

Some of the writers are well known; others are lesser lights. No matter - the extracts and Sally Mason's keen eye behind the lens are bound to appeal.

It's hard to single out favourites, but ours include: a succinct, haiku-like piece from Cyril Childs: "Children gone - we nurture the camellias" highlighted by a sequence of bud-to-bloom photographs; the feline photograph with Ursula Bethell's poem Garden Lion; On your ninetieth birthday by Helen Jacobs, a piece that captures the spirit of gardening.

Weekend Gardener, Issue 137, 2003, Page 28

Reproduced with permission from the former Weekend Gardener magazine. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the RNZIH