292: Marta McDowell, All The Presidents Gardens

The Sodshow, Garden Podcast - Sod Show

On this weeks garden podcast Peter Donegan chats with Martha McDowell, author of All The Presidents Gardens, publshed by Timber Press.

A teacher of landscape history and horticulture at New York Botanical Gardens, Martha also writes and gardens at her home in Chatham, New Jersey.

The book, originally an idea of one of her garden history students Seamus Maclenan is as I have described it before, unputdownanble. Starting right at the very start from before the site for The White House was chosen on an area that was of agriculture and swamp.

From Washington Adams Jefferson to Queen Elizabeth II and from John Adams and James Hoban and how the design was based upon that of Leinster House in Dublin. And from the exclusion of vegetables to the growing of mint for ice tea and to the inclusion and the removal of all of the glasshouses to modern day and what a Trump garden maybe as versus that of a Clinton garden.

All that and so very much more of what is an amazing insight into one of the worlds most famous gardens, as only The Sodshow can do.

A note of very special thanks to Besse and the team at Timber Press. www.sodshow.com