Prior to starting this blog, I did very little garden-related reading. In fact, most of the garden reading I had done was the technical kind, usually to research a plant or a seed. It never crossed my mind to want to read a gardening book for pleasure – and now I find myself craving garden books and garden blogs. Recently, I read two remarkable books at the same time, and I am enchanted.
From the moment I received One Writer’s Garden, by Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown, from my friend Catherine, I knew it would be a difficult book to categorize. It’s definitely a gardening book, but it’s a biography and a history book, as well – all woven together with strands of roses and irises and camellias.
The garden, located in Jackson, Mississippi, was designed and planted by Chestina Welty, an amazing woman who passed her love of gardening on to her daughter, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Eudora Welty. In beautifully written narrative, the reader is transported to a time that now seems almost other-worldly.
