****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT: This is a love story--the love of power, the love of intrigue, the love of being loved, and how a puissant Princess's pleasures almost bankrupted two tenacious lovers.THE STORY: Elizabeth I was once a young princess with great expectations who lived on a sword's edge, particularly during the reign of her half sister, Mary, accurately called "Bloody Mary" for her persecution of Protestants. Among young Elizabeth's few friends were a handsome horseman, Robert Dudley, son of Lord Northumberland, and an ambitious, canny Welshman, William Cecil. Robert was her age, her schoolmate, her confidante, her companion, certainly an aspirant to her hand in marriage, and perhaps her lover. Cecil, married and a decade older, she entrusted to manage her lands while she was imprisoned in the Tower of London.Elizabeth eventually came to the throne as a still young woman, already adroit at keeping everybody hoping for her grace, favor, and her marriage. Dudley, whom she richly rewarded and enobled, was hoping to become her husband & the King. Cecil, whom she richly rewarded and enobled as her Treasurer, was hoping for Elizabeth's marriage to a strategically valuable King of his choice, preferrably a powerful European alliance...most definitely not Dudley.Like two scorpions in a bottle, these rivals for Elizabeth's choice with regard to a spouse, knew they had to win through wooing, not the rapier in the ribs. They were both too valuable to Elizabeth to be responsible for any (traceable) harm to the other.So woo they did. With might, main, and deep pockets. Jewels were bought for her, horses were brought to her, and as they attended to her every whim, inventively they sought to delight her. Among other ploys, gardens were built on their estates just for Elizabeth's pleasure as they competed for who she'd visit most often and where she'd stay the longest, entourage and all, at the host's expense.As Rhea Martyn most marvelously tells readers, the gardens had engineering marvels in fountains, horticultural marvels in rare and exotic plants,and architectural marvels in follies, fantasies and bowers, private paths and public plazas. O what a gardener can do with unlimited minions and money! How they strove to astonish her with feats such as ripe cherries in the orchards in September, musicians in the shrubberies, and paths so long & wide the tables for one al fresco feast stretched for 64 yards."Queen Elizabeth in the Garden" describes these green palaces with details of their construction, letters of guidance from Dudley and Cecil when a visit is anticipated, and mouth-watering descriptions of the entertainments provided. No aspect was too small or too lavish: fences were painted with alternating pales of black and white (Elizabeth's colors), fruit was gilded, entire garden areas re-designed when she wanted a different room, so she always would see the most glorious sights.Trea Martyn, whose expertise includes landscape history, writes splendidly and vividly. Readers who are intrigued as I am with Elizabeth and readers who are hungry for every blossom of gardening stories may be hugely woo'd and thoroughly entertained. This is a grand read.ANY READER ALERTS? No Elizabethan gardens have survived intact, so color photos are not possible. More could have been done, however, with pictures of reproduced elements in England and elsewhere, such as the Italianate water fountains gloriously revived at Longwood Gardens or Buchart Gardens, and with the reconstructed knot gardens. The pictures offered here, as other reviewers have noted, are only a few reproductions of woodcuts. This is not a lavishly produced book, which would have been considerably more costlythan this paperback I am reviewing. Readers can expect text, nix on pics.Also, some biographies give the big picture, a panorama of the person and the period. This book charmingly takes a narrow window (gardens) and through this window reveals some, but hardly all, of Elizabeth or her reign.Still, this is much richnesse. We learn for instance that the day after fireworks in her honor burned the house of an old couple, she brought them to her and from her own pocket made good (actually made better) their losses. To me, this apparently small incident suggests---among much else in this book---that Elizabeth had her favorites and her loves but as she herself often said, her one true love was England and England's people, and for them, she was the wooer.Highly recomended
