dear older: I did not expect tears!

My friend, writing colleague, and gardening expert, Margaret Roach and I touch base almost daily. Often it’s just a texted line or two, to compare notes on the weather, what we had for lunch, or what’s worth reading in the New York Times. Sometimes, though, we go deeper, in leisurely chats over Skype and even in that most old-fashioned form of correspondence, actual letters. On occasion over the years, we’ve tidied up our communications and shared them with our readers, a series of letters we call “Dear Old, Dear Older” (Margaret has five years on me). The imminent publication of her all-new edition of her classic A Way to Garden: A Hands-On Primer for Every Season is quite an occasion, certainly warranting more than a texted “Congrats.”  And so I put some of my first impressions of the book down for her — and for you — to read. Margaret’s response to my letter is here. (All of our past correspondence can be found here.)

Dear Older,

I was just thinking: we’ve been friends nearly a decade. Looking back at the countless hours we’ve spent together – whether it’s sipping green tea at your work table as we scribble notes and brainstorm writing ideas, or wandering through your garden in all seasons, or sharing screenshots over Skype while you manifest some small WordPress miracle on my website – I’m struck, as always, by how creative, keen-eyed, and deeply knowledgeable you are.

You wear it lightly, all this hard-won, wide-ranging wisdom — never preaching, always gently guiding, revealing, encouraging. And yet, I’d venture to say this collaborative, can-do spirit is what truly defines you. What you know, you share, be it a planting tip, a recipe for compost or tomato sauce, a seasonal to-do list, or advice about getting rid of Japanese beetles. (By hand, damn it, one at a time.) No surprise then that you’re the one I (along with your legions of fans) turn to when I need some trustworthy advice, a workaround, a reason why, or just a pair of fresh eyes on an old problem.  Knowing you as I do, my meticulous, brilliant, generous friend, I was fully prepared to be impressed by the all-new edition of your gardening classic, A Way to Garden.

But honestly, Margaret, I didn’t expect to cry.

For a book lover, there’s nothing quite like holding a fresh-off-the-press copy of a brand new title in one’s hands.  And I’ve eagerly ripped into a lot of padded envelopes over the years, holding my breath till the contents are revealed —  from the various works I ushered into life as an editor in the early ‘80s, through sixteen curated volumes of The Best American Short stories, and eventually on to the nervously awaited first copies of my own books.

Always, still, there’s a rush of emotion when a book is born, whether it’s a volume I’ve had a hand in publishing, the latest work of an admired writer, or a dear friend’s much-anticipated, finished-at-last project.  Still, I’ve never once shed a tear over an advance copy of anything. Not until yesterday, anyway, when I sat down and began to slowly turn the pages of your beautiful new book.

Oh my goodness.

Part of this unexpected gush was surely because the physical book itself makes such a powerful first impression, stunning to behold with its lavish photos and gorgeously designed pages (kudos to your publisher on sparing no expense!), and then so intimate, encouraging, and convivial once one ventures within.

Opening to any page — be it a dramatic close-up of succulents stuffed into a strawberry jar, a handy list of germination times for favorite salad greens, or a gentle reminder to stop chasing peak moments and to the savor the little ones instead – is to hear your voice and to be right there at your side, in the garden, privy to its (and your) secrets.  So maybe the sudden emotion I felt was partly relief, too.  At last, it’s all right here, captured in print and stunning photographs forever — everything you have created, nurtured, learned, and are ready to pass along.

I vividly remember how magical it was to set foot for the first time into the verdant world that exists behind your deer fence, a formidable barrier that keeps foraging marauders at bay but which also encloses within its high walls an entire universe of wonders.  It was October, and you led us around the back corner of the house and straight into the embrace of a venerable hundred-plus-year-old apple tree, as if facilitating an introduction between two cherished friends.  And then you squatted down and set about filling a few sturdy cardboard boxes with drops.  There were, it seemed, thousands of apples, both overhead and on the ground. You and the tree encouraged me to take as many as I could possibly make use of.

Somehow your new book, in all its visual largesse, and chock full as it is of practical advice and personal rumination, puts me in mind of that memorable day and its bounty. It’s as if every luminous photo, every tempting recipe and eloquent plant profile, every quiet reverie on change, impermanence, and the passage of time, is an offering.  And, too, each page is just so much a reflection of you, you as a friend, as a writer, as a seeker, and as a gardener: open-hearted, opinionated, wise, and kind.

As E.B. White’s Wilbur noted upon first reading Charlotte’s latest spider-web masterpiece, “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.”  To which I would add, “and a good gardener, too.” No wonder, then, that as I read through these pages and pore over the photographs, matching names at last to plants I’ve always wondered about, what I feel, all over again, is that sense of deeply rooted hospitality that first kindled our friendship.  Except that now, here, it’s the essence of Margaret distilled into book form, as if you’re saying to all of us who have ever asked how deep in the soil to set the eyes of a bare peony root, or who have yearned to harvest a sweeter tomato from the vine:  “Come, join me in the garden. I’ll show you.”

After I pulled myself together yesterday, I couldn’t resist the urge to find my old 1998 edition of A Way to Garden and set it down on the kitchen table alongside the updated one.  Now a collector’s item, it was a much-heralded book in its day, but it is also so thoroughly of  its day, which is to say, of your youth and of your garden’s earlier incarnation, too.

So, how wonderful it is that art and garden beds, unlike life, permit us an occasional do-over. And in this brand new edition, graced by twenty-one additional years of growth, reflection, trial and error, and hands-on learning, you’ve really seized your chance.  A stroke of brilliance, I’d say – and probably of necessity, too, as you contemplated all that’s changed in your garden and in your thinking about plants, not to mention in the world at large, over the last two decades.  (I’m so glad you talk about the climate!)

Still, this new book is so much more than a do-over.  It’s twice the size, for one thing, with so much more to read and look at.  I’m seeing it not as a second try at getting it right, but rather as the more evolved and expansive progeny of that very first guide, the one that started it all.

What I noticed right away, as I sat down to read more thoroughly, is not only your own ever-deepening sense of interconnectedness as you and your garden mature and grow older together, but also how your passions inspire me to look more deeply into the hows and whys of gardening myself.  With each entry – from “A Moment for Lilacs” to “Putting Up a Year of Herbs” – I’m reminded of just how abundant and astonishing the natural world is when one slows down long enough to really look, and too, that I could become a more skilled and graceful steward of my own patch of ground.   Your book may be first and foremost about gardening, but it’s also about gratitude, commitment, resilience, and paying attention.

Perhaps one reason the new edition feels richer and more personal than the first, and even more like an extension of you, is because this time around you took almost all the photographs yourself, recording the moments as they happened – a sudden shaft of sunlight illuminating a cloud of spring crabapple blossoms, a garter snake peeking out from its niche in a stone wall, a pair of Hubbard squashes that look for all the world like an old married couple deep in conversation on a bench.  Each is a poignant, indelible record of life’s fleetingness.   And each reveals your affinity for this time and this place in a way no hired photographer, no matter how skilled, could ever hope to achieve. I love seeing your world through your eyes, attuned always to wonder, beauty, and evanescence. And I love meeting the friends who share your home, too, all those blessed frogs and birds and butterflies. Page by page, season by season, there you are, ready to capture and to share with us not only the stuff we need to know to succeed in our own gardens, but also the changes, both infintesimal and dramatic, that unfold on just over two lovingly tended New England acres in the course of a year.

Finally, I want to say this. Grateful as I am for the hands-on aspects of the book, I suspect I’ll return just as often to the essays you’ve written at the beginning of each chapter. These reflections, each a kind of mini-memoir, address the very themes we all wrestle with every day of our lives – how to be better humans, how to live more thoughtfully on the earth, how to create more sustainable relationships with our loved ones be they human, plant or animal, how to let go of what’s over, how to work with what is, and how to summon new faith as we step forward into whatever’s next.

“There is more to this gardening stuff than planting, I guess,” you conclude in your reflection about mending at last the decades-long distance between you and your sister.  “No wonder, then, that the language of gardening and the language of life have so many words in common: words like tend and cultivate, words like grow.”  Yes. Here, too, you are our guide.

You suggested (kidding, I hope!) that the reason I got all weepy when I first saw your book is because I’m old and unhinged.  But that’s not it. In fact, the opposite is true.  Your magnificent evocation of a life well lived, replete with passion, joy, and intense curiosity, makes me feel the very opposite of old.  It reminds me how much is still possible, how much there is yet to learn, how much fun there is to be had out there in the dirt. And that if life is long and we are lucky, we might even get a chance now and then at a do-over.  What a joy it is to help you celebrate the arrival, at long last, of what is surely your masterwork, the all new A Way to Garden!

Love,  Old

By becoming a gardener, I accidentally—blessedly—landed myself in a fusion of science lab and Buddhist retreat, a place of nonstop learning and of contemplation, where there is life buzzing to the maximum and also the deepest stillness. It is from this combined chemistry that my horticultural how-to and ‘woo-woo’ motto derives.

On the second half of that equation, I think of my garden and myself as the two main components of the same organism. That perspective makes me think about the gardening year as roughly parallel to the six seasons of my own life, from conception through birth and on to youth, adulthood, senescence, and finally death and afterlife. Moving from phase to phase takes months or years (if all goes well) in the case of a human; in the garden, it’s all packed into a single year, and then starts over, and over, even long after the gardener is gone.

—Margaret Roach