Review by Booklist Review
In this gem of a book, artist, designer, and educator Millman, host of the Design Matters podcast, reflects on her lifelong journey as a gardener, beginning with her frustrating and failure-prone early efforts, then through the decades during which, thanks to an accumulation of shared knowledge and experience, she has found abundant fulfillment. Millman's illustrations are the focus here: soft, gauzy watercolor paintings juxtaposed with crisply detailed color photographs. The text is brief and handwritten, suggesting a quick read, but most readers will want to slow down and savor the experience. The author's spouse, writer Gay, contributes a collection of 10 fresh, plant-based recipes that feature the garden's harvest. Reflective, inspirational, and meditative, this is the perfect "off-season" recharge for gardeners, whether aspiring or experienced. But even non-gardeners will find comfort and nourishment in a book that is as much about self-care as it is about tending a garden.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Design Matters podcaster Millman (Why Design Matters) presents an expressive celebration of gardening. Pairing images with tender reminiscences of a life spent working in the soil, Millman suggests that she "began to associate gardening with wonder" after unearthing a dollar bill while planting apple seeds in her grandparents' Brooklyn backyard and supplements her memory with watercolor renderings of apples and a photograph of light shining through the leaves of a mossy tree. Recounting her faltering efforts to start her own garden as an adult, Millman discusses how even hardy rhododendrons and boxwoods perished in the plots she cultivated in the backyards of her Manhattan abodes until a neighbor taught her the ropes of urban gardening. Elsewhere, she details lessons she learned from the activity, as when she describes how watching a seed grow into a tree taught her the value of patience. The dreamy illustrations of daisies, roses, tomato plants, and other flora will inspire in readers the same sense of awe that Millman feels while working with nature, and recipes that Millman's wife, Roxane Gay, developed to make use of the foods produced in their garden are a bonus, detailing how to make panzanella, tomato galette, and shaved carrot salad, among other dishes. Gardeners will relish this reverent offering. (Apr.)
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