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All the Right Shoes - Caroline Seebohm, a legend
by Mary Jasch
“Great Houses and Gardens of New Jersey"¯ (Rutgers University Press, $39.95) is the latest of Caroline Seebohm's big color books. Within its glossy pages, Seebohm and photographer Peter C. Cook bring a wealth of beautiful landscapes to all who love gardens and spending time in them. From 18th century to modern, cottage to palatial, the homes represent nearly every style of architecture in the country. From the top of the state to Cape May, the pair presents the best of private sanctuaries.
The book is full to the covers of formal gardens, cottage and herb, kitchen, fern, rose, orchard and woodland gardens, tiny pleasures and lavish - all waiting to be imitated by the home gardener, if even on a smaller scale. Seebohm's writing and Cook's photography are not only pleasurable, they bring you ideas for your own corner of the world. This book is inspiration.
Writing about grandness is not new to Seebohm. Her history in luxury began in her native England. Hers is a story of being in the right place at the right time.
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“I'm not one of those people who had a vocation to be a writer. Even when I was a college student at Oxford, I didn't want to. I knocked around and worked at the BBC as a researcher. I fell into it because a lot of my friends were there. BBC TV was a really wonderful place for young writers then,"¯ Seebohm says.
At BBC TV, Seebohm submitted a play for “Plays for Toda," a series for first-time authors. “I had friends who worked in the playwriting department who helped me write it. The BBC bought it, produced it and put it on the air." She also wrote short stories for English publications. “It was hard to sell and make a living."
Seebohm came to America in the 1970s chasing romance, but the world of journalism repeatedly sought her out.
In New York at the time, young English working ladies had made a quite nice niche. “I met a theater critic, John Simon. I told him about the English young women in New York - how well they did there because of their English accent. He told me to try and write a piece about it for New York Magazine. It was called 'English Girls in New York, They Don't Go Home Again.' It just took off. This was before the Tina Brown days."
She appeared on local TV - “one of those little fab moments"¯ and soon after that, an agent called her to do a book on the comparison of English and American manners and morals. “It was really about what it was like going to bed," she says.
Just about the same time, House & Garden Magazine contacted her about writing for them. Her test was to write about an apartment decorated by legendary interior decorator Mrs. Henry Parish II, who redecorated the White House for Jackie Kennedy. “I was terrified. I didn't know who she was. I talked to her and wrote the article. I wrote the piece and became on staff. That's how I became interested in houses." One of her favorite architects is Addison Mizner who designs Spanish/Mediterranean architecture.
Seebohm left House & Garden Magazine after seven years, wrote books and moved to Ithica with her husband, who ran Cornell University Press. Until then, architecture and design was the focus of her writing. But an ignored space outside her house called to her one day. “I knew nothing. My father was a gardener and it quite suddenly all came to me. I wrote about learning to be a gardener for the New York Times and New York Magazine. I wrote about how you make mistakes."
In 1986 she and her husband moved to New Jersey, where she designed a sunken garden at her new house. It was modeled after a Gertrude Jekyl garden with a long canal of water in the middle. Then, "in '93 I divorced my publishing husband and moved down the road. I have this gem of a house."
Seebohm says her garden is made for her along the Delaware River in all its visual, audible, evolving glory. She added a “little Italian vista"¯ and terraced garden. She does plant a small vegetable garden, admitting, "I'm a weekend gardener." She also plants perennials and bulbs.
A previous book, “Private Landscapes," written in 1994, is another gem. “It was very much based on my own experience of having a small piece of ground. The gardens were mostly small and very personable."
In the most recent pursuit of Seebohm, when Rutgers University Press called her to do a book about the houses and gardens of the great Garden State, she recruited Cook, who had photographed her for a magazine. “It was a great project. I discovered aspects of New Jersey I never really thought existed," Cook says.
These days, illustrated books are Seebohm's bread and butter. She still freelances, writing house stories for the English House & Garden Magazine and travel pieces for The New York Times. Every gardener should own her books.
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published February 19, 2004
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