Seed to Dust
Life, Nature, and a Country Garden
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
For readers of Late Migrations and H is for Hawk
A stunning meditation on gardening and the wisdom of plants, " that rare book that will appeal to nonfiction readers everywhere. . . Candid, tender, thoughtful and absorbing."—Shelf Awareness (STARRED Review)
"With chapters. . . [that] shimmer like lantern slides, lit with luminous imagery. . . Seed to Dust is an invitation to read this world as Mr. Hamer does—with a close eye to what changes, and what does not."—The Wall Street Journal
Marc Hamer has nurtured the same 12-acre garden in the Welsh countryside for over two decades. The garden is vast and intricate. It’s rarely visited, and only Hamer knows of its secrets. But it’s not his garden. It belongs to his wealthy and elegant employer, Miss Cashmere. But the garden does not really belong to her, either. As Hamer writes, "Like a book, a garden belongs to everyone who sees it."
In Seed to Dust, Marc Hamer paints a beautiful portrait of the garden that "belongs to everyone." He describes a year in his life as a country gardener, with each chapter named for the month he’s in. As he works, he muses on the unusual folklores of his beloved plants. He observes the creatures who scurry and hide from his blade or rake. And he reflects on his own life: living homeless as a young man, his loving relationship with his wife and children, and—now—feeling the effects of old age on body and mind.
As the seasons change, Hamer also reflects on the changes he has observed in Miss Cashmere’s life from afar: the death of her husband and the departure of her children from the stately home where she now lives alone. At the book’s end, Hamer’s connection to Miss Cashmere changes shape, and new insights into relationships and the beauty and brutality of nature emerge.
Just like all good books and gardens, Seed to Dust is filled with equal parts life and death, beauty and decay, and every reader will find something different to admire.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Gardening isn’t just a vocation for Marc Hamer, it’s a window into the soul. In this evocative memoir, he brings us to work with him, giving us a glimpse at how his work shifts and changes with the seasons. Simultaneously, Hamer takes us on a candid autobiographical journey, exploring his bleak childhood, a period of homelessness, and lessons learned during the decades he spent working for wealthy clients with ornate gardens. With these personal stories, recounted in wonderful, lyrical language, he touches upon vital issues like class, masculinity, marriage, and fatherhood. Seed to Dust is a wise reminder to slow down and smell the flowers—metaphorically or otherwise.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hamer (after How to Catch a Mole) delivers a lyrical if navel-gazing memoir of this time working as a gardener in Wales. Describing himself as a man with "broken nails and skin-cracked fingers" whose "deepest relationships are not with humans, but with wind and rain," Hamer lives a "sixteenth-century kind of life" with his wife of 35 years, Peggy, and is bewildered by his grown children's decisions to live more modern lives, leading him to wonder, "Am I the last of the simple ones?" In the garden, he works by instinct and impression, and dismisses the importance of plant names, noting the temporary nature of labels. Hamer frequently refers to the authors he's reading (Sebald, Bukowski, Rimbaud) and his own poems, and writes in a luminous prose: Unopened daisies are "fields of pearls straining... to blink open their eyes"; peonies are "strong, closed baby-hands reaching for the sun." Such beautiful descriptions come often, but the effect is spoiled by Hamer's unrelenting man-of-the-earth posturing: he's a "tramp," a "vagrant," a "wildflower," and, by the end, it's overpowering. Still, gardeners and armchair philosophers will find his musings strike a chord.
