MMQC Publishers

A Garden in Laguna by Hortense Miller, Pub. 2002 Cloth, limited edition: $35. ISBN 0-9713337-0-X. This lavish 7" x 10" book contains more than 23 years of essays that reflect the charm of the unique Hortense Miller Garden in the heart of Laguna Beach, California. Included are sixteen full-color pages of exquisite photographs by Steven Gunther, a landscape photographer well-known for his work in Sunset magazine, as well as a biographical essay on Hortense. Hortense Miller, essayist and legendary green woman of Laguna Beach, invites us into her world of plants and animals. Her style is simple, lucid, and very midwestern in its unpretentiousness; her erudition is worn lightly. She is one with her subject, and the overall effect is the feeling of a fresh breeze and the smell of newly-turned earth. Queen of the world-famous vertical garden planted on the steep eastern slope of Boat Canyon, centenarian Hortense Miller is one of the treasures of artistic Laguna Beach. Her garden notes are as distinctive for their historical allusions as for their scientific precision; one is as likely to learn something about Charlemagne and Cleopatra as about the unexpected gifts of a fire or the essences of vines and ravens.