In this splendid collection of short essays, gardener, writer, and professor Allen Lacy takes readers on a series of garden excursions, beginning at home. Lacy writes of his experiences with a variety of plants--evening primrose, prairie gentian, sumac, coreopsis, fuchsias, gloriosa lilies--in his own garden in New Jersey. Then he charts his travels to other gardens, in the United States, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands. Final essays in Farther Afield include a discussion of garden writing, profiles of other horticulturists, and humorous pieces on cats and houseplants, and, of course, flamingoes.