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The Garden At Night - Private Vies of Public Gardens
by Linda Rutenberg, Chronicle Books,
hardcover, full color, 176 pages, $46.95, ISBN 978-0-811-86133-5

The photographer, assisted by her husband, Roger Leeon, traveled to 20 public gardens in the United States and Canada. Having had the good fortune of having visited three of the four Canadians gardens, I feel perhaps more closely drawn to what Rutenberg has created than someone who has never visited any of the 20 gardens. Yet, even if I had never seen any them, I believe that being an avid gardener, this book would have drawn my attention anyway. It offers such visual delights that surely anyone can appreciate these outstanding photographs. Of course, it helps to have a love of nature, of plants, and a sprinkling of a romantic soul to get truly into the spirit of the book. But even without all of these attributes, anyone with a sense for color and artistic achievement will enjoy the excellent photographs.

I say this not to limit the audience of The Garden at Night, but to ensure that if the book is given as a gift, it is given to someone who loves both verbal and visual poetry. That, after all, is what The Garden at Night offers.

The Garden at Night does not only have superb visual images, but there are some wonderful pieces of poetry sprinkled throughout it that tell us what poets through the ages thought of gardens, in particular gardens at night.

The introduction to each of the 20 gardens is highly informative, revealing how they were created, who designed them, and how they came to be in the public domain—many having started out as private gardens. Some were make work projects during the Depression both in Canada and the USA, others date back to the mid-19th century.

Although the complex of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington is within my personal stamping grounds, I did not realize until reading this book just how vast this treasure at my doorstep really is. Of the gardens featured here it is the largest at 2,700 acres, of which just 297 acres are cultivated. The remainder is divided into managed natural sanctuaries. These are refuges not only for the many native plants of the Niagara Escarpment, thus doubly preserving a vital breathing zone within this important UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve, but it is also a sanctuary for native wildlife.

The other three Canadian gardens included in this book are Victoria's Butchart Gardens, perhaps the most colorful of the Canadian endeavors, located as it is in the balmy Pacific climate of Vancouver Island. The Montreal Botanical Garden can be found almost in the heart of the city, its entrance lying on Sherbrooke Street East.

The fourth public Canadian garden lies somewhat off the beaten track at Grand Métis, Quebec. As mentioned earlier, The Reford Gardens were the inspiration for The Garden at Night. Rutenberg had been sent there on assignment by Landscape Architecture magazine in 2005 to take photographs of the International Garden Festival held there. This yearly festival brings together 20 landscape architects from around the world to create contemporary gardens. This event is shepherded by director Alexander Reford, whose forebears created this treasure in 1926. It was once a fishing camp located on the confluence of the Métis and St. Lawrence rivers. The oldest building on the grounds of this unique garden dates from 1887.

Percy Bysshe Shelley's The Sensitive Plant is an apt opening to the book and an equally apt closing to this review:

A sensitive plant in a garden grew,
and the young winds fed it with silver dew,
and it opened its fan-like leaves to the light.
And closed them beneath the kisses of the night.