Christina Stachurski editor, photography by Sally Mason: My Garden my Paradise

Reviewed by MARGIE THOMSON

MY GARDEN MY PARADISE: The Garden in New Zealand Literature

In the nick of time for Christmas comes this lovely little book, perfect for anyone with a dual love of gardens and words. Stunning photographs are complemented by snippets - witty, whimsical, philosophical, sentimental, heartbreaking - from 60 poets, novelists and short-story writers.

Many of our best-known writers are here, from Charles Brasch to Elizabeth Knox, as well as lesser known names such as Waiata Dawn Davies whose The Gardener opens the collection, and is one of my favourites. The collection of so many together represents a real labour of love on the part of the Stachurski and Mason, and the result is a smart feast of visual and verbal colour.

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What a Garden's for, by Bernard Brown

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Go to the end of the garden

where grass is long gold spikes

and a smell of railway tingles

after the trains have gone.

Then, later, when they tell you

you are mad, diseased, criminal,

and not responding to the treatment

at all well, remember the garden

sense the point of every blade

of grass, that special smell.

When they get you and you die

(despite your metronome continuance

and bill of cure), although the view is lost,

you may have kept it long enough

for others to suspect you have

and go on to surprise. In any view

that is the only end. It's what a garden's for.

Publisher: Hazard Press

Price: $29.95