Penelope Hobhouse The art and practice of gardening: The Country Garden & the Useful Garden [VHS]

Watching Penelope Hobhouse s-l-o-w-l-y stroll through the garden, you can't help but think she's trying to give you time to watch the flowers grow. Yet her intellectual approach always makes you think about plants and dirt on a higher plane. In The Country Garden, she explains how "an avenue of views" leads the eye through her house in Southwest England, linking countryside and garden. She strolls through Butterstream, an Irish garden that's an architectural masterpiece, then garden writer John Brookes weighs in with a refreshingly messier spin. In The Useful Garden, Hobhouse admits that a seven-mile drive to the nearest market convinced her to grow vegetables in raised beds, and she's determined to show they can be pretty too. She tours the centuries-old walled kitchen garden at Forde Abbey with garden writer Anna Pavord, and their "oohing" over the orderly plantings is almost comical. Another expert, Rosemary Verey, also shows how vegetables can be used to ornamental effect. For the unconvinced, Hobhouse offers an easy out: grow herbs on the windowsill. --Valerie J. Nelson