THE GARDENER’S EYE AND OTHER ESSAYS ...

THE GARDENER’S EYE AND OTHER ESSAYS by Allen Lacy (Henry Holt: $14.95; 281 pp.). These columns on gardening reflect Lacy’s enthusiasm for unusual hybrids, older garden books and mixed plantings. Lacy concedes he likes big, showy daffodils “for the same reason I enjoy a production of Aida, complete with extras carrying fans of peacock feathers and a few elephants onstage during the triumphal march,” and concludes a description of a rare iris, “I would not kill to get this plant for my garden, but a crime of lesser gravity is not unthinkable.” Some of the plants he describes may not do well in Southern California, but amateur horticulturists everywhere will enjoy Lacy’s delight in his subject.