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The Roots of My Obsession: Thirty Great Gardeners Reveal Why They Garden
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About The Roots Of My Obsession: Thirty Great Gardeners
Product Description Why do you garden? For fun? Work? Food? The reasons to garden are as unique as the gardener. The Roots of My Obsession features thirty essays from the most vital voices in gardening, exploring the myriad motives and impulses that cause a person to become a gardener. For some, it’s the quest to achieve a personal vision of ultimate beauty; for others, it’s a mission to heal the earth, or to grow a perfect peach. The essays are as distinct as their authors, and yet each one is direct, engaging, and from the heart. For Doug Tallamy, a love of plants is rooted first in a love of animals: “animals with two legs (birds), four legs (box turtles, salamanders, and foxes), six legs (butterflies and beetles), eight legs (spiders), dozens of legs (centipedes), hundreds of legs (millipedes), and even animals with no legs (snakes and pollywogs).” For Rosalind Creasy, it’s “not the plant itself; it’s how you use it in the garden.” And for Sydney Eddison, the reason has changed throughout the years. Now, she “gardens for the moment.” As you read, you may find yourself nodding your head in agreement, or gasping in disbelief. What you’re sure to encounter is some of the best writing about the gardener’s soul ever to appear. For anyone who cherishes the miracle of bringing forth life from the soil, The Roots of My Obsession is essential inspiration. Review “In revealing, deeply personal and highly reflective essays, the joys, challenges, and rewards of gardens are limned by the finest hands in the field.” —Booklist “This charming, simple book makes a great gift for gardening friends, who can curl up with it on a rainy day and reflect on their own obsession.” —Publishers Weekly “After finishing the book, you may even feel a bit better about your own all-consuming horticulture hobby.” —Country Living “This is a wonderful book because you can leave it by your bed and open it to any short essay and find yourself relating, laughing, or learning.” —Winston-Salem Journal “A visual feast of inspiration combined with practical advice on how to put together a garden that shines throughout the year. A great winter read.” —Pacific Northwest Magazine From the Back Cover Delve into soul of gardening with Tony Avent, Thomas Christopher, Rosalind Creasy, William Cullina, Rick Darke, Page Dickey, Helen Dillon, Ken Druse, Sydney Eddison, Fergus Garrett, Nancy Goodwin, Susan Heeger, Daniel J. Hinkley, Thomas Hobbs, Penelope Hobhouse, Panayoti Kelaidis, Roy Lancaster, Tovah Martin, Julie Moir Messervy, Stephen Orr, Anna Pavord, Anne Raver, Margaret Roach, Marty Ross, Claire Sawyers, Amy Stewart, Roger B. Swain, Douglas W. Tallamy, Richard G. Turner, Jr., and David Wheeler. A portion of the profits from this book will be donated to the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. About the Author Thomas C. Cooper is senior editor at Boston College Magazine. He is also the former editor of Horticulture magazine and The Gardener. He has written for the New York Times and the Atlantic and is the author of Odds Lots. He lives in Watertown, Massachusetts. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Introduction by Thomas C. Cooper There are at least thirty reasons that people end up as gardeners. The essays that follow are proof of that. In fact, the motivations are far more numerous. A few folks seem born with a seed clutched in their fists; others make the choice deliberately, having ruled out banking or triathlons. But for most people, including the authors of this book, their transformation into gardeners is evolutionary, the result of years, often generations, of small unnoticed actions, the way a piece of land is shaped by wind, rain, sunshine, and the antics of man, until it has been changed entirely. The accounts in the pages beyond, by many of today’s finest garden writers, are portraits of that metamorphosis. I was raised on a strain of gardening that combined the minor virtues of engineering
