Becoming a Gardener: What Reading and Digging Taught Me About Living

A personal account of what it means to become a gardener.

To make her new house in Connecticut truly feel like home, Catie Marron decided to create a garden. But while she was familiar with landscape design, she had never grown anything. A dedicated reader with a lifelong passion for literature, Marron turned to the library of gardening books she'd collected to glean advice from a variety of writers on gardening and horticultural topics both grand and small.*

Marron's quest to become a gardener, however, was about more than learning the basics about mulch or which plants work best in the shade. She sought something far more elusive: to identify the core qualities and characteristics that make a person a gardener and an understanding of what a garden could mean to her as it had to multitudes of other gardeners over the centuries.

In Becoming a Gardener, Catie Marron chronicles her transformation into a gardener over the course of eighteen months, seeding the details of her experience with rich advice from writers as diverse as Eleanor Perényi and Karel Capek, Penelope Lively, and Jamaica Kincaid. As she digs deeper into her readings and works in the garden itself, Marron not only discovers the essence of gardening but in the words of Michael Pollan, “the endlessly engrossing ways that cultivating a garden attaches a body to the earth.”

A delightful blend of informed opinion, personal reflection, and practical advice, Becoming a Gardener explores topics as varied as the composition of dirt, the agricultural wisdom of avid kitchen gardeners George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, the healing power of digging in the soil, and the beauty of finding solitude in nature. Throughout, Marron carefully plants special illustrated features, such as musings on the merits (and detriments) of the rose, essential tools, moonlight gardening, children's books which feature gardens, and her favorite gardens around the world. Also included is an annotated list of recommended writers, books, and films related to gardens and gardening, and a monthly to-do calendar.

Becoming a Gardener*is a very special and moving portrait of life and the enduring power of literature and nature that is sure to become an instant classic.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

"1138787017"
Becoming a Gardener: What Reading and Digging Taught Me About Living

A personal account of what it means to become a gardener.

To make her new house in Connecticut truly feel like home, Catie Marron decided to create a garden. But while she was familiar with landscape design, she had never grown anything. A dedicated reader with a lifelong passion for literature, Marron turned to the library of gardening books she'd collected to glean advice from a variety of writers on gardening and horticultural topics both grand and small.*

Marron's quest to become a gardener, however, was about more than learning the basics about mulch or which plants work best in the shade. She sought something far more elusive: to identify the core qualities and characteristics that make a person a gardener and an understanding of what a garden could mean to her as it had to multitudes of other gardeners over the centuries.

In Becoming a Gardener, Catie Marron chronicles her transformation into a gardener over the course of eighteen months, seeding the details of her experience with rich advice from writers as diverse as Eleanor Perényi and Karel Capek, Penelope Lively, and Jamaica Kincaid. As she digs deeper into her readings and works in the garden itself, Marron not only discovers the essence of gardening but in the words of Michael Pollan, “the endlessly engrossing ways that cultivating a garden attaches a body to the earth.”

A delightful blend of informed opinion, personal reflection, and practical advice, Becoming a Gardener explores topics as varied as the composition of dirt, the agricultural wisdom of avid kitchen gardeners George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, the healing power of digging in the soil, and the beauty of finding solitude in nature. Throughout, Marron carefully plants special illustrated features, such as musings on the merits (and detriments) of the rose, essential tools, moonlight gardening, children's books which feature gardens, and her favorite gardens around the world. Also included is an annotated list of recommended writers, books, and films related to gardens and gardening, and a monthly to-do calendar.

Becoming a Gardener*is a very special and moving portrait of life and the enduring power of literature and nature that is sure to become an instant classic.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

16.99 In Stock
Becoming a Gardener: What Reading and Digging Taught Me About Living

Becoming a Gardener: What Reading and Digging Taught Me About Living

by Catie Marron

Narrated by Janina Edwards

Unabridged — 2 hours, 48 minutes

Becoming a Gardener: What Reading and Digging Taught Me About Living

Becoming a Gardener: What Reading and Digging Taught Me About Living

by Catie Marron

Narrated by Janina Edwards

Unabridged — 2 hours, 48 minutes

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Overview

A personal account of what it means to become a gardener.

To make her new house in Connecticut truly feel like home, Catie Marron decided to create a garden. But while she was familiar with landscape design, she had never grown anything. A dedicated reader with a lifelong passion for literature, Marron turned to the library of gardening books she'd collected to glean advice from a variety of writers on gardening and horticultural topics both grand and small.*

Marron's quest to become a gardener, however, was about more than learning the basics about mulch or which plants work best in the shade. She sought something far more elusive: to identify the core qualities and characteristics that make a person a gardener and an understanding of what a garden could mean to her as it had to multitudes of other gardeners over the centuries.

In Becoming a Gardener, Catie Marron chronicles her transformation into a gardener over the course of eighteen months, seeding the details of her experience with rich advice from writers as diverse as Eleanor Perényi and Karel Capek, Penelope Lively, and Jamaica Kincaid. As she digs deeper into her readings and works in the garden itself, Marron not only discovers the essence of gardening but in the words of Michael Pollan, “the endlessly engrossing ways that cultivating a garden attaches a body to the earth.”

A delightful blend of informed opinion, personal reflection, and practical advice, Becoming a Gardener explores topics as varied as the composition of dirt, the agricultural wisdom of avid kitchen gardeners George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, the healing power of digging in the soil, and the beauty of finding solitude in nature. Throughout, Marron carefully plants special illustrated features, such as musings on the merits (and detriments) of the rose, essential tools, moonlight gardening, children's books which feature gardens, and her favorite gardens around the world. Also included is an annotated list of recommended writers, books, and films related to gardens and gardening, and a monthly to-do calendar.

Becoming a Gardener*is a very special and moving portrait of life and the enduring power of literature and nature that is sure to become an instant classic.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.


Editorial Reviews

JUNE 2022 - AudioFile

As the title suggests, this audiobook is designed for the listener who is new to gardening, rather than one with years of trial and error. Interspersed with personal narrative, the text offers a goodly supply of tips and advice useful at any level of gardening. Narrator Janina Edwards’s voice has a neighborly quality that always reaches a sympathetic ear. Confident, reassuring, confiding, she tells you what tools you need and makes you want to plant and till. If you already have spade (not shovel) in hand, she helps you focus on the value, the purpose, the esprit of gardening. Here is a short, pleasing choice for summer listening, indoors or out. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

★ 08/02/2021

“Gardens have mattered deeply in people’s lives ever since Eve ate the apple from the tree,” writes Marron (City Squares), a contributing editor at Vogue, in this impressive meditation. When Marron moved to Connecticut, she realized that “to feel rooted,” she needed to “put down roots” and start a garden, so she gave herself 18 months to design and watch a full plant cycle. Along the way, she learned how to be a gardener by reading books by such writer-gardeners as Beverley Nichols, Eleanor Perényi, and Henry Mitchell, and also by good ol’ trial and error. Gardeners make mistakes all the time, Marron suggests—this is just one of the many lessons she lays out. Others include that to be a gardener, one must hang around other gardeners, that gardeners are witnesses to death, and that kitchen gardens are more work than other kinds. As she recounts the skills of “observation, planting techniques, and patience” she gained during her trial, she shares plenty of practical tips for others looking to get started—an “annual to-do list,” for example, breaks down seasonal tasks and what to plant when—and lush photographs compliment Marron’s musings. Aspiring and seasoned gardeners alike will want to have this on the shelf. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Oct.)

From the Publisher

"Like so many others, especially during the awful times of the pandemic, [Marron] came to understand the peace and solace of working one’s own plot of soil: “As Alfred Austin, the poet laureate of Britain from 1896 to 1913, once wrote, ‘We come from the earth, we return to the earth, and in between we garden.’ ” — Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal

"Like so many others, especially during the awful times of the pandemic, [Marron] came to understand the peace and solace of working one’s own plot of soil: “As Alfred Austin, the poet laureate of Britain from 1896 to 1913, once wrote, ‘We come from the earth, we return to the earth, and in between we garden.’

Wall Street Journal

"Like so many others, especially during the awful times of the pandemic, [Marron] came to understand the peace and solace of working one’s own plot of soil: “As Alfred Austin, the poet laureate of Britain from 1896 to 1913, once wrote, ‘We come from the earth, we return to the earth, and in between we garden.’

JUNE 2022 - AudioFile

As the title suggests, this audiobook is designed for the listener who is new to gardening, rather than one with years of trial and error. Interspersed with personal narrative, the text offers a goodly supply of tips and advice useful at any level of gardening. Narrator Janina Edwards’s voice has a neighborly quality that always reaches a sympathetic ear. Confident, reassuring, confiding, she tells you what tools you need and makes you want to plant and till. If you already have spade (not shovel) in hand, she helps you focus on the value, the purpose, the esprit of gardening. Here is a short, pleasing choice for summer listening, indoors or out. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID: 2940176225051
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 05/03/2022
Edition description: Unabridged
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