One Man's Garden - Hardcover

Mitchell, Henry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395633192 ISBN 13: 9780395633199

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992

Synopsis

For twenty years, Henry Mitchell has been delighting readers of the Washington Post with his wide-ranging adventures in his small city garden. The best of his columns, collected here, reflect an uncommon zest for gardening, along with more good advice than you can find in a dozen how-to books. In fact, as he says, "If gardeners spent less time running about doing things they think they are supposed to do and more time contemplating the beauty of the world's plants, they'd get more out of their gardens and be less of a pest to the civilized world."
Whether he is being serious ("Tea Roses: The Secrets of Success") or hilarious ("Before You Bring In the Plants, Make Sure Your Rugs Are Clean"), Mitchell deftly deals with the likely and unlikely decisions a gardener is called upon to make every day. While rationing a precious Christmas gift of fertilizer, he observes that horse manure, like youth, goes all too quickly.
"When you first start to garden," he writes, "you usually have no idea what the real delights are going to be." Henry Mitchell shares both his delights and his agonies, whether he is happily hoarding pickle jars for growing seedlings or agitating over which plants to uproot and toss out of his garden.

About this title

Review

Mitchell is a miracle in the world of garden writing, where so much careful prose instructs with patronizing intent. Henry Mitchell blazes, bullies, roars, then whispers, awed by the beauty he enables us to see through his eyes. This is a man who once took two weeks off from work so that he could watch his iris bloom. Here his failures and foibles are cataloged along with his triumphant successes. He grew water lilies from seed, achieving a single plant instead of the expected 50, but as he admits, 50 would really have been a bit much, while one seedling water lily became a source of considerable delight to the proud parent. To prevent heat stroke in water-lily season (Washington, D.C., summers are fierce), he cooled off by eating iced Walla Walla onion sandwiches as he gazed at the flowers for two or three minutes at a stretch before the intense heat won out. Quirky, funny, wise, and impassioned, this book is a lasting treat, the kind that rewards each year's rereading with fresh insights and heartfelt laughter.

About the Author

Henry Mitchell, who died in November 1993, was one of America's most beloved garden writers. He was especially famous for his weekly "Earthman" columns in the Washington Post.

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0395633192
• ISBN 13: 9780395633199
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 262