Becoming a gardener What reading and digging taught me about living

This elegant ode to gardening is filled with charming watercolors, photographs, and illustrations of all things green and goodly. Marron (City Squares, 2016) eschews traditional how-to-grow guides, instead concentrating on the somewhat ethereal process of figuring out how to use the land via one's favorite spots and other inspirations and, then, by trial and error, designing a garden with a nod to seasonality and sustainability. In this very personal road map, Marron also traces her own evolution as a gardener, with homage to her late husband. Her narrative itself mesmerizes, with profiles of the five types of growers (scene setters, plant people, colorists, collectors, dirt gardeners); stats about Thomas Jefferson's 330 varieties of 99 species of vegetables and herbs; and her plants and trees of note, from kale and rhubarb to sweet peas and dahlias. Following in her footsteps will require not only a leap of faith, but a rock-solid hope that all will be fine. Great advice in these days. Appended: Annual to-do list, literary mentors in the garden, recommended reading and viewing, select bibliography.

"Gardens have mattered deeply in people's lives ever since Eve ate the apple from the tree," writes Marron (City Squares), a contributing editor at Vogue, in this impressive meditation. When Marron moved to Connecticut, she realized that "to feel rooted," she needed to "put down roots" and start a garden, so she gave herself 18 months to design and watch a full plant cycle. Along the way, she learned how to be a gardener by reading books by such writer-gardeners as Beverley Nichols, Eleanor Perényi, and Henry Mitchell, and also by good ol' trial and error. Gardeners make mistakes all the time, Marron suggests--this is just one of the many lessons she lays out. Others include that to be a gardener, one must hang around other gardeners, that gardeners are witnesses to death, and that kitchen gardens are more work than other kinds. As she recounts the skills of "observation, planting techniques, and patience" she gained during her trial, she shares plenty of practical tips for others looking to get started--an "annual to-do list," for example, breaks down seasonal tasks and what to plant when--and lush photographs compliment Marron's musings. Aspiring and seasoned gardeners alike will want to have this on the shelf. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Oct.)