I have mixed feelings about this book. The illustrations, many of them pages from early herbals and cookbooks, were great. The appendices were full of helpful information. And I learned about some great research resources. If Leighton had stuck to the actual subject, it would have been a great read.
Sadly, her prime goal seemed to be defending her Puritan ancestors, and using their gardening records as a platform for rehabilitating their image. And if she'd stuck to their letters, diaries, and notes, she would have succeeded: they were utterly charming pieces of writing. Instead, she made one maddening digression after another - bringing up and then glossing over the Salem witch trials, defending the Puritan's contentious relationship with the local Indian tribes by calling said tribes "truly simple savages", describing the men as lazy, suggested that they were simply irritated because the Puritans treated their women so much better, and wrapped up this topic by dismissing the Indian contribution to American herbal knowledge. She also thought it was appropriate to relay a "humorous" anecdote about a slave who didn't want to be raped. I'd like to point out that the copyright in my edition is 1970. The combination of her brittle, ironic, upper-crust writing style and her bigotry made her sound much like a Nazi version of Martha Stewart.
Lastly, she should have avoided talking about herbs, because she was wrong an awful lot.
I swore a lot while reading this book.

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