‘The Curious Gardener: A Year in the Garden’
By Anna Pavord
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(Bloomsbury, $35)
What it is:
“The Curious Gardener,” a collection of essays and planting particulars gathered into a bouquet for each month, is the latest enticement from Anna Pavord, longtime gardening columnist for London’s The Independent newspaper and author of the best-selling botanical page-turner “The Tulip.” Take note that the columns, many of which were originally written for a British audience, do tend to assume we are all blessed with the soils and sea-swept winds of the United Kingdom — which, alas, we certainly are not, we who muddy our mitts in Yankee dirt. The terminology can be different too — a strimmer to Pavord is a trimmer to us.
What makes it armchair-worthy:
The passages about what to plant where, and how to tend to a garden’s idiosyncrasies, are worthy perhaps of the potting shed, or might be dragged to the garden’s edge come planting season, when you need a true guide to the digging. But it is in the meditations throughout (the one on the inner workings of roots and soil, as fine an explication of that earthly poetry as we’ve ever read) that earn this charmer a place on the armrest of your favorite well-worn wingback.
As is often the measure of a book’s readability, barely a page went by before a pen was grabbed for starring and underlining and all-round exclamation-ing. In this collection for the curious, you’ll find morsels you’ll never forget.
One fine line:
“Optimism is an essential tool in the gardener’s kit. Much more important than a strimmer. And quieter.”