The Backyard Parables
Lessons on Gardening, and Life
-
- $17.99
Publisher Description
Margaret Roach has been harvesting thirty years of backyard parables-deceptively simple, instructive stories from a life spent digging ever deeper-and has distilled them in this memoir along with her best tips for garden making, discouraging all manner of animal and insect opponents, at-home pickling, and more.
After ruminating on the bigger picture in her memoir And I Shall Have Some Peace There, Margaret Roach has returned to the garden, insisting as ever that we must garden with both our head and heart, or as she expresses it, with "horticultural how-to and woo-woo." In The Backyard Parables, Roach uses her fundamental understanding of the natural world, philosophy, and life to explore the ways that gardening saved and instructed her, and meditates on the science and spirituality of nature, reminding her readers and herself to keep on digging.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Popular garden writer Roach (I Shall Have Some Peace There) mingles personal reflections about her gardening life with helpful added sections that render nuts-and-bolts information. For example, she details her thoughts about laying out a bed with slow growers and young woody plants. "Not every woody thing is so happy to be kept on as tight a leash as a yew or privet will tolerate." Such reflections are followed by a new section that addresses how to keep deer at bay. The pattern of personal narrative coupled with practical guidelines carries the book along. Her insights are clever, animated, and expertly drawn. Yet the pacing can be jarring at times. She describes lingering in the garden in a captivating narrative voice, then shifts gears into a segment that compels the reader to grab a pen and notebook. Practical interruptions notwithstanding, the book is an insightful guide and a fun read.
