Feast your eyes on “Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens,” by William Cullina, Dorothy E. Freeman, Ph.D. and Barbara Hill Freeman (Hard cover, 191 p., $34.95) Down East Books, Maine. 

It’s a beautiful book, starting with a lively cover picture of its already-famous Children’s Garden.

“An Unexpected Garden,” the Introduction’s title, describes these acres, once wild and now with astonishing gardens for people to discover. In recent years, it was lost land, where the beginnings of a failed housing development lay.

At a 1992 Maine Rhododendron Society meeting in Boothbay, I heard two men asking about land for a new botanical garden. The beginning of this book tells the 20-year history of the Gardens and how they grow where they are. 

Then, in easy prose, each area is described: why it’s there and how it was donated and designed. Seaside botanical gardens aren’t created every day. What an understatement!

Skip the words if you must (I really don’t advise it) but not the photographs. Eight distinguished photographers (including Executive Director Cullina and Director of Communications Freeman) have filled this book with the beauty and color to invite the reader to visit.

The Garden of the Five Senses has plants, sounds and textures for everyone. The Visitor’s Center has art exhibits, a gift shop, a library and Resource Room, as well as a cafe. The latter is next to the Kitchen Garden which grows colorful vegetables and herbs for its use. The Shoreland Trail has woods and views of the Back River; and the Fairy Houses are a sight to see.

Kids enjoy investigating the intriguing features in the Children’s Garden: a boat, houses with green-planted roofs, a maze and chickens. See some of this in the photos – and notice that grownups are also exploring this garden.

Lynn Karlin’s picture on the book jacket shows some of life in the Children’s Garden. May I suggest that when you read “Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, A People’s Garden” you keep that jacket on, because underneath the hard cover is a prosaic black.

Find the book online or in local bookstores. Any Maine library should have a copy. How about a volume for a historical society? A garden club? 

In his Afterword, William Cullina hints at other projects to come on this once-abandoned property. Stay tuned.