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Pamela Crawford, container garden guru and the queen of easy gardening, has done it again in this groundbreaking book. She shows you how to grow vegetables in containers with such easy techniques that even the worst gardener can have bumper crops of tomatoes! And, for the first time in any book, she shows how to make your vegetables look great, worthy of the nicest patio! Pamela grew 1768 plants in the course of writing this book and shows her mistakes (bloopers) al… More >>
» Read more: Easy Container Combos: Vegetables & Flowers
Monasteries with dramatic gardens, adorned with garden statues and water fountains, flourished throughout Europe in the first half of the first millennium, and along with cross, monks carried the plough. Hard work, which had fallen into disfavor, was raised from the dust by the monks. “It was the special glory of St. Benedict [the founder of the order to which St. Augustine belonged] to teach the men of his day that work in the garden, sanctified by prayer, is the best thing a man can do, and this lesson has never been lost sight of since his time, as reflected in the beauty of the garden grounds.”
Within the walls of Benedictine monasteries, therefore, were large gardens with dramatic statuary, water features, and hanging wall fountain gardens cultivated by all the resident monks, often along with smaller ones assigned to the abbot and the chief almoner of the community. Formerly despised by the earliest Christians as symbols of paganism, flowers were now grown to decorate the church. The roses were often grown in large stone garden planters and was held in the highest esteem. At Subiaco is still preserved the roseto, a little rose garden set with a large stone statue of St. Benedict. The rose bushes it contains are said to be the same as those whose beauty delighted his senses, and with whose thorns he was accustomed to mortify his flesh.