In Gratitude: How a Gift from a Boss Led to a Love for Gardening Books
Ever since I could read, I’ve kept them close. My favorite, A Child’s Book of Poems, illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa, is annotated with an elaborate review system of stars and hearts that I drew on pages of poems I particularly loved.
Picture books eventually gave way to novels and poetry. When I started work as an editorial assistant at magazine, Stephen Orr, one of the editors I assisted, gave me a bundle of books by some of his favorite garden writers as a holiday gift.
A glimpse of just a few shelves of my treasured garden books.
I sought out more, scouring used bookstores and estate sales.
I filled my shelves with practical how to guides like Barbara Damrosch s The Garden Primer whose spine is now broken with use pages fingerprinted with soil edifying books like Doug Tallamy s Bringing Nature Home and Nature’s Best Hope volumes to turn to when I want to be transported such as Visions of Paradise