I lost interest in the whole thing about half way through and I'm sorry to say that it was a struggle to get anywhere near the end.

So minus a star for those sections and for the parts when the gardening trivialities and minutiae made my eyes glaze over.We have the 'babies' the April, baby, the May baby, the June baby and the 'Man of Wrath', who seems just to be a pompous reactionary bore. As a novel it really doesn't have a whole lot of structure, but its charm comes precisely from the juxtaposition of the freedom and beauty of the natural world with that of a wealthy aristocrat who cannot escape all of her duties. I found it less charming than I expected and Elizabeth less agreeable than I had expected her to be. Le ore volano quando me ne sto rinchiusa con quei cataloghi e con il Dovere che ringhia astioso dall’altra parte della porta.

Besides, they had a knack of finding out my favourite seats and lounging in them just when I longed to lounge myself; and they took books out of the library with them, and left them face downwards on the seats all night to get well drenched with dew, though they might have known that what is meat for roses is poison for books. And her quick explanation of the dejected gardener who walked around with a spade in one hand and a revolver in the other. What a happy woman I am living in a garden, with books, babies, birds and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them! As an avid gardener myself, I thoroughly enjoyed Elizabeth’s long lyrical descriptions of trees and shrubs and wildflowers in bloom--they go on for pages and pages. Minora (one of her visitors) was angry at this, and at last pulled off her glove, but quickly put it on again.In the ITV series Downton Abbey, in the second episode of the second season, Joseph Molesley, Matthew Crawley's valet, lends a copy of Elizabeth and her German Garden to the head housemaid Anna Smith, as a tentative romantic gesture. Von Arnim wrote another 20 books, which were all published "By the author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden". Although the book is absolutely focused on creating a garden on a neglected estate, the reader gets a clear picture of the social constraints on women at that time, and of Elizabeth's marriage. The sudden view of the sea from the messy, pine-covered height directly above it where we picnic; the wonderful stretch of lonely shore with the forest to the water's edge; the coloured sails in the blue distance; the freshness, the brightness, the vastness—all is lost upon the picnickers, and made worse than indifferent to them, by the perpetual necessity they are under of fighting these horrid creatures. Without letting the situation she found herself in depresses her, she finds a way to make the best out of it.

When the narrator is not telling us about the kinds of roses in her flower-beds (Marie van Houette, Viscountess Folkestone, Laurette Messimy, Souvenir de la Malmaison, Adam and Devoniensis, Persian Yellow, Bicolor, Duke of Teck, Cheshunt Scarlet, Prefet de Limburg…it goes on for pages), she is offering up such pearls of wisdom as ‘why cook when you can get some one to cook for you? Humility, and the most patient perseverance, seem almost as necessary in gardening as rain and sunshine, and every failure must be used as a stepping stone to something better. Actually, I preferred the beginning where the reader is kept wondering, postulating and considering what is meant. Then indeed I have felt ashamed of the fewness of my wants; but only for a moment, and only under the withering influence of the eyeglass; for, after all, the owner's spirit is the same spirit as that which dwells in my servants--girls whose one idea of happiness is to live in a town where there are others of their sort with whom to drink beer and dance on Sunday afternoons. I don't love things that will only bear the garden for three or four months in the year and require coaxing and petting for the rest of it.

But overall this is an enjoyable short novel about an unusual, intelligent, literate woman and her dislikes and passions, and a charming glimpse into a time long ago and far away. Apparently, during this era, reading was an occupation for men; for women it was a reprehensible waste of time. Elizabeth consoles herself in her garden, celebrating her happy days (as opposed to her "reluctant nights" with her husband, the Man of Wrath). Through Elizabeth and her German Garden, she tells us her story with a bit of fiction here and there thrown in.

Arriving in Pomerania she had three little girls, three, four and five years of age, who in the book she amusingly refers to as her June, May and April babies, respectively The diary covers a little more than one year, starting in March and ending the following April. This memoir of sorts, written in a rather loose diary format over the period of just over a year, was published in 1898. The girls seem to share Elizabeth’s delight in the spring—or at least they don’t detract from it too much since, thankfully, there is plenty of money for nursemaids and other staff. Undoubtedly, Elizabeth’s love for gardening and her German garden is the strongest attraction of this memoir.

Its instant success was followed by many more novels, including Vera (1921) and The Enchanted April (1922), and another almost-autobiography, All the Dogs of My Life (1936). In fact, from reading the novel I would have thought her an aristocratic German raised, as many were, by English and French governesses. However, amidst all opposition, she works on what is close to her heart, what gives her peace and comfort, and most importantly, what helps her to balance and incompatible marriage; she works on her garden and her writing. This one gave me the joy of the garden, the April, May and June babies, and 'the man of wrath' - and I have been telling people about this author for 50 years .