Paradise Under Glass
An Amateur Creates a Conservatory Garden
By Ruth Kassinger
(William Morrow, Hardcover, 9780061547744, 368pp.)
Publication Date: May 2010
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook
Categories: Greenhouses, Naturalists, Gardeners, Environmentalists, Personal Memoirs
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Like many baby boomers in middle age, Ruth Kassinger was at an emotional crossroads. Confronted with the death of a beloved sister, her children's departure for college, and her own recent battle with breast cancer, she was searching for a way forward. One cold, gray evening, flooded with thoughts of change and loss, she wandered into the U.S. Botanic Garden's conservatory—and a dream was born. Dazzled by the vast and dense tangle of greenery, she began a quest to create a verdant sanctuary of her own at her home in suburban Washington, D.C.
Yet all she knew of indoor gardening was a lone, neglected houseplant at the top of her basement stairs. Paradise Under Glass chronicles her journey from brown thumb to green—a project that takes her across the country. Along the way she meets commercial growers with acres under glass in Florida, a clivia hybridizer whose Delaware home is filled with thousands of specimens, a beneficial bug grower in California, entrepreneurs in Ohio who have a veritable Noah's Ark of rare tropicals, and many others who share their enthusiasms and knowledge.
Kassinger takes us step-by-step from the construction of her conservatory through her efforts to identify the easiest to grow, most beautiful houseplants. She combats pests, raises Monarch butterflies, and harvests kumquats and coffee beans. Her Garden of Eden is complete with a pint-sized pool and a "living wall" she invents.
Kassinger's journey to create her own tropical refuge is also a lively narrative tour of the glasshouses of the past, including Renaissance orangeries, the whimsical follies of Georgian England, the legendary Crystal Palace, and secluded Victorian ferneries.
Throughout, she shares the knowledge and insights that creating and sustaining her garden has bestowed, lessons of loss and letting go, nurturing and rebirth, challenge and change, love and serenity. Paradise Under Glass is the remarkable story of the fruition of a dream that is sure to inspire the gardener in us all.
Ruth Kassinger’s science and health writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, National Geographic Explorer, Health magazine, Science Weekly, and other publications. The author of numerous award-winning science and history books for young adults, she lives with her husband, Ted, in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
“The book [PARADISE UNDER GLASS] vividly chronicles her [Kassinger’s] initiation into the world of indoor gardening as well as the fascinating and unlikely histories of greenhouses and the flamboyant gardens they have housed…The characters Kassinger encounters, literarily and in the flesh, are as quirky as their plants.…Kassinger’s lush writing and exotic stories will delight the armchair gardener and historian. ”
-Publishers Weekly
“Ms. Kassinger’s writing is chatty and intimate, but she has clearly done her library research.”
-International Herald Tribune on Paradise Under Glass
“A sumptuously written history of greenhouse horticulture.”
-Entertainment Weekly
“Ms. Kassinger’s writing is chatty and intimate, but she has clearly done her library research.”
-New York Times Book Review
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